Browsing by Author "Papatheocharous, Sofia"

Common methods of social integration research are questionnaires and interviews. Pupils’ social integration has not been studied much through observation of drama lessons. Previous literature shows that social participation is a key aspect when studying the occurrence of social integration. The aim of this study is to investigate whether drama lessons can possibly support the occurrence of pupils’ social integration. The research questions were (1) what kind of pupils’ participation occur in the videotaped data and to what degree, and (2) in what ways could the videotaped drama lessons provide opportunities to promote pupils’ social integration. This thesis is part of the KEHU program (www.kehuprogram.fi). The archived data used in this study was five videotaped drama lessons of three teachers, and it was conducted for the purposes of the Challenge of empty space -program of University of Helsinki in the year 2014. The research method was secondary analysis based on observation of videotaped data and the research design was based on elements of exploratory content analysis (data-driven and theory-driven) and data quantification. The analysis provided information about pupils’ participation type and degree. Pupils’ participation can be defined as non-participative, partially participative, and fully participative. Pupils’ social participation was defined through partial and full participation, and the analysis shows that pupils participate socially almost half of the time of each drama lesson. The drama lessons provide opportunities of promoting pupils’ social integration through activities that require pupils to play and work together, and by combining activities that require mandatory and voluntary pupil participation. Further research is needed to study pupils’ personal perspective of social integration occurrence in drama lessons.