Conclusion

I admit that this research design is incapable of providing a grand view of teaching modernist literature through drama in a general sense, but it can produce some data to testify to new thinking about literary education in China in order to challenge conventional opinions. This project is inevitably just a start on a much bigger journey with this goal in mind. Hopefully it can serve to elucidate problems for further researchers who may wish to work with different kinds of literary texts and research approaches.

Chapter Five

Analysis of the Pilot Study 5.1 Introduction

The pilot study, as the preliminary component of the research project, was designed to provide an outlook on the potential participants’ existing literary understanding as well as their reading experiences; and, at the same time, to examine the possibility of drama pedagogy as a practical means to teach modernist texts. The pilot study took the form of case study. More details of the methodological design have been provided in Chapter Four, so this chapter will mainly focus on the analysis of data relative to the research questions guiding this study.

The research questions in the pilot study were:

 What are the students’ reading habits and tastes? Is reading literature, especially fiction, in any ways significant in their cultural lives?

 How do the students appreciate and evaluate the values of literary works? To what extent does their school education affect their literary

understanding?

 What do the students think of complex and difficult works, especially twentieth century modernist literature? What are the main obstacles they see in reading those texts?

 Can participatory drama change the way of reading a story from

perception to participation? And does it help young people to understand and to engage in the text; and if so, in what ways?

In this pilot study, I conducted a three hour drama workshop on Theme of the Traitor and the Hero9. I have to admit that the findings of the pilot are

constrained by the immaturity of my drama design, the limited scope of the case and the lack of triangulation in data collection and analysis. However, the data emerging still significantly informed the subsequent main project in terms of methodological design (See Ch. 4 for more information), research context and teaching strategies. Therefore I will discuss it in relation to: 1) the methodology of the main project; 2) the adjustment of teaching objectives and content; 3) the understanding it provided on how to improve the drama pedagogy. This chapter consequently includes a more detailed description of the project design outlined in the chapter on methodology; analysis of data regarding the research questions; a discussion of the impact of the pilot’s findings on the main project design; and my conclusion.

5.2 Pilot Design

The pilot study was conducted with a group of ten post graduate students (aged between 22 and 28) at Warwick University, including eight girls and two boys. There were seven girl students and one boy from the MA in Drama and Theatre Education, one girl majoring in education studies, and one boy from the Warwick Manufacturing Group. All the students spoke Chinese as their first language. None of them were from lower income families. Most of

9_{The drama scheme that I used is the first version, which has since been revised three times in the}

them had completed their undergraduate studies in very competitive

universities in Mainland China and Taiwan. Apart from the boy in WMG, who had majored in engineering, all the other nine students had an education background in humanities or the arts. The background of the participants suggests, therefore, that this was a group of well-educated young people whom we might expect to share certain cultural accomplishments.

The plan of this pilot story was to observe the three hour drama workshop on the short story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero as teacher and researcher, and to conduct a follow-up interview with four students in order to find out their ideas about reading literature and to further explore their opinions about the drama workshop, their understanding of the story as well as their

thoughts depicted in the drama exercises.

5.2.1 Observation

The participant observation was structured loosely around the drama lesson. As teacher and researcher, most of the participant observation focused on the students’ responses in the drama exercises, including the drama games, still image and scene work. I moved among the students whilst they planned the still image or scene work, in order to hear their ideas about the tasks and their understandings of the story. I observed and took notes on their acting, especially in the scene works of the story that they presented10, which was the main part in the drama scheme. I compared their responses with my initial design, which helped me evaluate the strength of the drama pedagogy

10

The scene works includes two parts in the pilot study. The first is to present three life scenes in the hero’s early life by using certain literary references, for which I provide a detailed discussion later. The second part is the exercise of ‘the last 24 hours of the hero’, See Appendix B, Drama lesson of

as well as its potential flaws. Meanwhile, it also allowed me to glimpse certain areas worth investigating in the interviews. After the workshop, I revised the field notes and coded and categorized the data.

5.2.2 Interview

My initial plan was to conduct a group interview with four students after the drama workshop, but subsequently two of them contacted me again the next day after they had read the original text. Four girls voluntarily joined the initial interview, 2 of them (Miga and Murphy) were from Mainland China and two (Charlotte and Edie) from Taiwan. I interviewed the two Chinese girls again individually after they had read the original text. All four interviewees had literature and arts-related educational backgrounds. The group interview questions reflected my interest in their reading experiences, their opinions about the current situation of young people’s reading activities in their countries, as well as their feedback on the drama lesson. In the individual interviews, I mainly focused on the students’ understanding of the original text.

5.2.3 Coding Categories

Coding Categories initially began with the issues and ideas emerging from the drama class and the interviews. The data from the interviews was mapped closely to the data drawn from the observation, in order to provide different angles for looking at the students’ responses.

In this analysis, I will focus on the following subjects:  Students’ reading experience

 The previous literary education of the students  Reading difficulties of literature in general  Moral values in literary texts

 Students’ understanding of the text  The effectiveness of drama exercises

The following analysis is considered in relation to literature on reflectionist theory, the Leavisite tradition, reception theory, and the edifying school as detailed in Chapter 2.

5.3 Reading Experience