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Drama in Science Education
The use of drama strategies to teach Science in formal and informal educational domains. The topic covers work within several fields: Similar activities are found within Drama in Education, Role Play Simulations, and Theatre in Education.

Drama as a classroom resource within Science
Classroom-based drama in Science Lessons: Drama has been used and researched as a classroom resource for topics related to Chemistry, Biology, and Physics in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Drama has been used to develop affective, cognitive, and technical knowledge in Science lessons. These activities are employed as a means to simulate social or physical systems which students could not otherwise experience. According to Marianne Odegaarde's literature review in Studies in Science education, drama in Science tends to employ improvisational drama forms rather than scripted plays.

History
Drama in Science as a secondary school pedagogy: Cited work in this field presently indicate its origins in the UK. Following on from successes in the 1980’s with cross curricular drama in Humanities subjects (and high-profile teaching-in-role work by UK Drama-in-Education pioneer Dorothy Heathcote), the Association for Science Education began publishing drama-based lessons, such as the Limestone Inquiry, a simulation of a community debate, and Galileo’s Trial, an historical role play. A central feature for learning in these activities was the perception that they could develop empathy in students for moral and ethical points of view that they might not hold themselves. At this time, research by Metcalfe, Abbot, Bray, Exley, and Wisnia asserted that drama for teaching particle theory to 10-11 year olds produced meaningful learning, in part through promoting, what they termed, ‘empathy’ with inanimate objects.

Subsequent research and promotion of drama as a classroom resource has expanded to North America, Australia, and Scandinavia in particular.

Predominant drama strategies within Science classrooms
Social simulations These tend to be employed in the form of extended role plays aimed at conveying topics which relate to the social, cultural and intellectual discourse that occur in Science contexts. These activities include debates, consensus conferences, and historical role plays. These activities reflect a focus on praxial drama, and can include the techniques of teacher in role and mantle of the expert. A central goal in this teaching approach is to engender empathy allowing students to understand the perspectives and emotions of the people whose lives they emulate in the simulations , and also discover their own reactions within a context other than in their present situation.

Physical simulations The second predominant drama strategy for classroom-based science teaching. In contrast to a focus on social issues in Science, a second strategy focuses on the teaching of abstract scientific phenomena. Through mime and action, physical simulations use familiar social metaphors and immediate experience within the human dimension, to allow children to explore ‘physical systems where the real things are too expensive, complex, dangerous, fast or slow for teaching purposes’ These strategies tend to incorporate students (and often the teacher) as individual units within a complex system; they may take on roles such as planets within the solar system, sub atomic particles within an atom, or cells and organs within the body While following simple individual objectives, the participants’ combined interactions describe a model of the system, which they can experience from within. These models can be manipulated in order to aid discussion, for example, by pausing, fast forwarding, or ‘jump-editing’ to a different period within the process (ibid). Here, the teacher and/or students provide the modelling resource for describing chemical, physical, or biological processes to provide a controllable, ‘virtual reality’ through which the teacher and students can manipulate the representation of scale, time, and space, and can communicate science analogies via different senses.

Research into physical simulations: Of the limited research within this field, four quasi-experimental studies over the past twenty years have indicated that physical simulations strategies may enable meaningful learning of abstract scientific concepts within the secondary classroom.

Physical simulations are described in Science Education variously as ‘drama models’, ‘simulation role play’ ‘anthropomorphic metaphor’ ‘metaphorical role play’ ‘drama analogy’ and ‘imaginary demonstration’ They have also been compared to rehearsal techniques in theatre known as ‘drama machines’ Somers, J. (1994) Drama in the curriculum London, Cassell.