Explicit Instruction: A Powerful Enabler for Abstract Thinking in Senior Drama
Senior secondary drama students are expected to engage in sophisticated abstract thinking, encompassing the interpretation of symbolic elements within texts as well as the creation of original performances. A significant challenge facing drama educators is their ability to foster this abstract, creative thought while avoiding an undue cognitive burden on students.
Explicit Explanation and Modelling
Explicit Instruction
Explicit explanation and teacher modelling are fundamental components of explicit instruction. The Australian Education Research Organisation emphasises that a structured and sequenced approach to delivering new knowledge optimises student learning (AERO, 2024). Practically, this entails deconstructing complex drama concepts into manageable steps, facilitating practical demonstration. By thorough explanation and modelling of essential skills, teachers provide students with a robust foundation that fosters the subsequent development of abstract thinking.
Instruction must stay concise and focused; limiting extraneous information helps students concentrate on the learning material and reduces cognitive load. This intentional focus ensures that essential knowledge, including terminology, techniques, and stylistic conventions, is acquired effectively, thereby building a cognitive framework for more advanced concepts.
Explicit explanations and modelling in Drama furnish students with the essential tools and foundational knowledge requisite for abstract reasoning. By proactively presenting fundamental content through explicit definitions, demonstrations, worked examples, and think-aloud strategies, educators alleviate confusion and cognitive overload. As a result, students are better equipped to engage in creative and abstract problem-solving, as they can utilise a well-structured basis of concrete examples, conceptual vocabulary, and mental models supplied by the teacher.
Explicit Modelling
Explicit modelling in drama education often involves articulating thoughts aloud and providing typical examples. For instance, when analysing a dramatic text, a teacher may illustrate the interpretation of a script excerpt by reading a passage, verbalising the cognitive processes involved in identifying themes or subtext, and demonstrating how to connect textual details to overarching abstract concepts, such as the symbolic significance of a character. By articulating the cognitive processes of an expert learner in this manner, implicit analytical strategies are made explicit, thereby helping students develop their metacognitive skills. Quigley et al. (2018) assert that teacher modelling—verbalising one’s reasoning while addressing a task—enhances students’ comprehension of how to approach complex problems and reflect on their thinking.
Through a distinct modelling approach, educators can illustrate complex performance styles, such as exemplifying the Brechtian technique of breaking the fourth wall. By articulating the rationale behind this practice—”I’m doing this to remind the audience they are watching a play”—teachers not only impart the technique itself but also convey the abstract concept related to it (alienation effect, or distancing effect). This methodology equips students with a thorough cognitive framework, enhancing their understanding of complex principles.
Worked Examples
Worked examples serve as crucial modelling tools that connect concrete understanding with abstract concepts. In drama education, a worked example could involve showcasing a video of a well-structured student-created piece or presenting a sample monologue as a model, supplemented by an analysis of the components that enhance its effectiveness. These examples provide learners with strategies for problem-solving that are intended for long-term retention. By enabling students to concentrate on understanding the process rather than solely the outcome, worked examples help to reduce the cognitive load on working memory.
In a senior Drama setting, a teacher may present a performance analysis example, such as a model essay or an oral presentation analysing a play, and highlight the transition from specific observations (e.g., lighting, acting choices) to broader interpretations (e.g., themes, director’s intent). This clear breakdown provides students with a framework for abstract thinking in their analyses.
Providing explicit examples effectively clarifies abstract concepts. A diverse array of examples enables students to connect theoretical ideas with practical instances. Counterexamples serve to highlight the limitations of specific concepts. For example, a teacher could present an effective non-naturalistic scene, characterised by symbolic movement and dialogue, alongside a naturalistic scene to emphasise the distinguishing features of the non-naturalistic style. This intentional comparison reduces misconceptions and strengthens understanding.
Managing Cognitive Load in the Drama Classroom
Cognitive Load Theory
The process of focusing on learning involves prioritising clear objectives while concurrently mitigating extraneous cognitive demands. Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) emphasises the limited resources of working memory. When learners encounter an excessive number of unfamiliar tasks or irrelevant information concurrently, their capacity for higher-order cognitive processes diminishes (Sweller, 2011).
In the context of Drama, characterised by inherently complex activities, such as line memorisation, character development, and the integration of design elements, it is imperative to structure lessons methodically to avoid cognitive overload. Explicit instruction facilitates this by judiciously managing intrinsic load (the complexity of content) and eliminating superfluous extraneous load (including ambiguous instructions or distractions). The Australian Education Research Organisation posits that maintaining streamlined explanations and resources enhances students’ ability to focus on important aspects, thereby mitigating cognitive load (AERO, 2024).
Chunking and Sequencing
Drama educators can significantly enhance the learning experience by organising and sequencing educational tasks into manageable segments. Instead of addressing all elements of a performance simultaneously, educators can subdivide the process into focused units. For instance, when developing a performance focused on an abstract theme, a teacher may dedicate an initial session to brainstorming and selecting relevant dramatic images (conceptual exploration). This is followed by structuring those ideas into a cohesive narrative or sequence of scenes, and ultimately refining performance skills (such as voice and movement) to effectively convey the abstract concepts.
By isolating each component, students are encouraged to confront one cognitive challenge at a time, mastering each element before integration. This methodology aligns with the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, particularly in its emphasis on content chunking. In drama education, distinguishing between stages such as “table work,” “blocking,” and “adding emotional subtext” exemplifies this practical approach. Such a systematic method allows students to enhance their understanding, thereby improving learning efficiency incrementally.
An additional scenario occurs when students are initially exposed to non-naturalistic styles. Non-naturalistic theatre encompasses various conventions, such as character transformation, direct audience address, and stylised movement. A pedagogical strategy may involve introducing one convention at a time to facilitate effective learning. For example, in the first week, the class focuses exclusively on the transformation of objects and characters through explicit modelling and targeted exercises; in the following week, the integration of direct audience address is introduced. By structuring these elements sequentially, rather than mixing them haphazardly, the educator minimises split-attention effects and alleviates unnecessary cognitive load.
Focused Learning
Emphasising the significance of learning involves the necessity of delineating the learning intentions and success criteria tied to drama tasks. When students receive clear communication regarding the objectives of the lesson (for instance, “Today we will explore the analysis of a character’s motivation within a scene”) and the indicators of success (such as, “Students should demonstrate the ability to identify the character’s objectives and substantiate them with evidence from the script”), their cognitive resources are effectively allocated.
Clear objectives help students filter out irrelevant information and focus on the critical aspects of their cognitive processes. This clarity serves as an “advance organiser” that prepares their cognition for the abstract reasoning necessary for the task at hand. After the lesson, refining the learning experience may involve prompting students to reflect on how they achieved the specified success criteria, reinforcing the knowledge acquired and recognising any challenges encountered. Such guided reflection not only enhances focus but also contributes to metacognitive awareness (discussed below).
Scaffolding Abstract Thinking and Metacognition
Scaffolding Strategies
Explicit instruction encompasses more than just teacher explanations; it evolves into supported application (AERO, 2024), where students engage in practice and apply their skills with scaffolding until they achieve mastery. In drama education, this concept is connected to guided rehearsals and independent performances or analyses. In this scenario, the educator’s role is to design activities that motivate students to employ their acquired knowledge in increasingly abstract and innovative ways while simultaneously providing structure and feedback.
This gradual transfer of responsibility enables students to implement their learning in more intricate, autonomous tasks once they have developed a robust knowledge base through initial explicit instruction. Possessing foundational knowledge in long-term memory facilitates creative and critical thinking, as students can reference established schemas to formulate novel ideas.
Hattie and Donoghue (2016) assert that the effectiveness of deep learning tasks is contingent upon students’ ability to integrate new challenges with their existing knowledge base. Within the framework of drama education, this implies that after students have acquired and deliberately practised specific non-naturalistic techniques, they are positioned to synthesise these methods in innovative ways. This synthesis enables them to produce original works that exceed the boundaries of the material that was explicitly taught.
Scaffolding strategies are fundamental during supported application within educational contexts. Scaffolding, which includes temporary supports such as prompts, cues, and frameworks, helps students bridge the disparity between novice and expert performance. In senior Drama, fostering abstract thinking may necessitate the provision of a flexible framework for the devising process. For example, supplying students with a structured devising journal or template that prompts them with guiding inquiries, such as “What is the central metaphor of your piece? How will you represent it on stage?”, can effectively facilitate their creative engagement.
Prompts of this nature effectively direct students’ attention to the essential components of the task, particularly the abstract metaphor and its theatrical representation. This guidance helps manage the task’s inherent cognitive load. As students gain confidence over time, instructors may progressively withdraw or lessen these supports. For example, they might initially require a detailed storyboard for a performance as a scaffold, subsequently encouraging more spontaneous experimentation once the students have mastered the underlying concepts.
Consider script analysis as an academic illustration: initially, a teacher may scaffold analysis by providing a graphic organiser that lists components such as context, themes, character motivation, and dramatic language, thereby enabling students to engage in systematic critical analysis. This framework promotes their practice of abstract interpretation (for instance, inferring themes) while receiving concrete guidance. As their analytical skills develop, the educator offers less detailed organisers or merely essential questions, encouraging students to take greater responsibility for the analytical process themselves.
Effective scaffolding can direct students’ attention to essential components of a complex task and promote enhanced cognitive engagement (germane load) by encouraging learners to establish meaningful connections. Scaffolding techniques in drama education may include prompts for acting methodologies (e.g., “employ a louder projection in this line to convey authority”) as well as structured rehearsal frameworks (outlining objectives for each rehearsal, such as focusing on emotional authenticity in one session and technical staging in another). All of these strategies are designed to support learners until they can perform abstract reasoning or skills independently.
Metacognition
During the supported application phase, educators should intentionally cultivate metacognitive skills among students. Metacognition—the process of thinking about one’s thinking—is essential for fostering self-direction in abstract tasks. By modelling their cognitive processes, as previously discussed, teachers can encourage students to reflect on which strategies were effective and which were not, thereby imparting metacognitive strategies. For instance, after a collaborative session, an educator might prompt students to consider: “What was our plan? Did we adhere to it? How did we address challenges when we encountered them?” Such structured reflection enhances students’ awareness of their creative processes and helps them refine their strategies for future tasks.
By fostering an understanding of metacognitive strategies, students improve their capacity to monitor, direct, and reflect on their learning experiences. Over time, drama students cultivate the habits of planning, self-monitoring, and self-evaluating. For example, when composing a performance analysis, a student may reflect, “Am I effectively connecting my observations back to the intended dramaturgical concept?” This form of metacognitive self-questioning is precisely what the supported application should promote.
Ultimately, open-ended creative tasks within drama education represent the pinnacle of supported application. These activities, such as creating an ensemble performance from inception or directing a scene in a chosen stylistic approach, require advanced abstract reasoning and problem-solving skills. The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) asserts that open tasks, which require students to select, organise, and integrate knowledge, encourage critical and creative thinking, thereby fostering the generation of new understanding that exceeds the confines of explicitly taught curricula (AERO, 2023).
A senior Drama teacher might assign students to create a short play in the style of Theatre of the Absurd, characterised by its highly abstract and non-literal approach, after they examine exemplars and techniques. In this scenario, students are required to transfer and adapt their acquired knowledge to a new context, which constitutes a form of guided inquiry. The teacher’s role is to facilitate and support this process through regular check-ins, prompts, and constructive feedback, particularly during the initial phases.
For example, the teacher may periodically prompt groups to articulate how their selected absurdist techniques are effectively conveying the intended theme, thereby maintaining focus and encouraging metacognitive reflection on their creative decisions. As necessary, the teacher may model problem-solving strategies when groups encounter challenges, possibly invoking previously taught methodologies, such as, “Recall how we utilised an empty chair symbolically in our preceding work—could this approach be of assistance here?”
By demonstrating how to leverage prior knowledge to address new artistic challenges, the teacher illustrates to students that creativity is fundamentally supported by knowledge retrieval and adaptable thinking. Gradually, these supports are diminished, culminating in students assuming full ownership of their abstract creations.
Key Takeaways
- Complementary Relationship: Explicit instruction and abstract thinking in senior drama education are complementary, not opposing, approaches.
- Explicit Explanation and Modelling: Providing clear examples, structured cognitive frameworks, and essential terminology is critical for helping students grasp abstract drama concepts.
- Targeted Learning Outcomes: Clearly defined learning intentions manage cognitive load, guiding students’ attention towards significant content and enabling deeper engagement with complex ideas.
- Scaffolding for Independence: Through supported application, students progressively move from guided practice to independent creativity, building both mastery and self-efficacy.
- Metacognitive Development: Encouraging students to reflect on their own thinking and creative processes fosters independent, self-regulating learners who are capable of sophisticated, abstract thought.
- Cognitive Load Management: Reducing extraneous cognitive demands allows students to engage with and master complex, abstract drama tasks more effectively.
- Practical Outcomes: Explicit instruction equips students to devise innovative theatrical performances and produce nuanced performance analyses, demonstrating deep, structured understanding alongside creativity.
- Research-Supported Approach: The effectiveness of explicit instruction in promoting abstract thinking is well-supported by cognitive load theory and contemporary educational research.
- Academic and Creative Balance: Effective drama pedagogy integrates scholarly rigour with imaginative exploration, creating a robust foundation for meaningful creativity and intellectual engagement.
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Last update on 2025-06-20 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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