Javaid Ahmad Dar
The Implementation part of National Education Policy 2022 focuses on joyful pedagogy. Integrating drama with science pedagogy can do pretty important things. Science drama can engage, motivate and provide opportunities for students to discuss and reason with scientific ideas. One of the main concerns of science educators is finding teaching strategies and methodologies that can improve students “learning and experiences in science”. Over the course of science history models have played an important role. Dramatizing the scientific idea is a particular type of modeling. Drama is a powerful strategy that can change the traditional view of science class from being rigid and boring to being lively and entertaining. Drama is not only a Pedagogical strategy but also linked with the job prospects of our future generation, it produces script writers, content creators which is the need of the hour.
On 28th of October 2023 The Department of Education in Science and Mathematics of the State Council of Educational Research and Training, Srinagar organized a day long Divisional Level Science Drama Contest in the Teacher auditorium SCERT Bemina Srinagar. This contest is a part of Northern India Science Drama Contest which is organized every year by National Science Centre, Delhi to encourage the students, teachers and other science communicators to explore and experiment with the dramatic form as a means of communication. Theatre or drama is an age-old cultural form of our society, which has been used for entertainment, recreation and also as a medium of social interaction (i.e. to put across the social message), in other words, correcting the society in an indirect way, thus bringing a social change. By understanding the effectiveness of this medium and also to involve more youngsters to participate in this creative medium, an attempt is made to organize a science drama festival. Initially this will be held in the cluster, District, State, Zonal level and eventually at the National Level. This is an opportunity to bring the students of different states, languages and culture to interact, exchange and explore this medium of education -THEATRE. It will finally culminate into National Science drama festival in January 2024 at Mumbai.
Our future generation’s jobs are mostly linked with social media platforms so why not extract out inner artist of our Students. Using role play to embed content makes sense. Role play is active, creative and engaging which require significant investment from their student performers. So why wouldn’t you use this innovative approach to spark children’s motivation and enrich their learning in Science.
(The author is working as Senior Academic Officer in SCERT J&K)