The Challenges and Prospects of Teaching and Learning Dramatic Arts in Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

Dramatic education is an all-inclusive academic discipline which uses as tools branches of learning that bear upon the dramatic impulse. It utilizes eclectically each and every single discipline into one unified body of knowledge, so that it can help man to comprehend the nature of experience. Educational drama or Dramatic education is as old as education itself. In the course of history, both have been periodically reviewed, refined and ultimately codified into a set of principles for use in formal learning environments. However, education is yet to tap the full resources that drama is capable of providing because of some lapses inherent in the teaching and learning Dramatic Arts. Hence, this research investigates the challenges and prospects of teaching and learning of Dramatic Arts in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It identifies such problems as apathy, lack of basic instructional and infrastructural facilities, inadequate funding by the government and non-inclusion of drama in the curricula of primary and post-primary schools, as the major challenges impeding the effective teaching and learning of the course. It was discovered however, that graduates of the course have a very bright prospect in the labour market after leaving school, aside the fact that dramatic education can help inculcate moral discipline and confidence in the entire society. The paper therefore concludes by recommending that government and all stake-holders in the educational sector should improve upon the funding of Dramatic Arts in our tertiary institutions so as to provide the necessary instructional and infrastructural facilities needed for the effective teaching and learning of the course. Primary and post-primary schools’ curricula should also be reviewed and expanded to include the teaching of drama, if the dream of the much-sought golden educational future must be realized.

Key words: Dramatic Arts, Learning, Teaching, Theatre and Tertiary, Institution