Assessing Creativity: The challenges associated with situating the performing arts, particularly drama, within a national framework of senior assessment

by Zoe Brooks

This thesis comprises an enquiry into the perceptions of secondary drama teachers in New Zealand regarding the effect of the introduction of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) on teaching and learning in the secondary drama classroom. One of the central sites of tension in the implementation of NCEA in drama appears to lie in the variance between the requirements of the assessment process and the creative focus of drama pedagogy. At the same time, within drama itself, it is evident that there are competing discourses in drama which educators are working to resolve. To maintain the student-centred and explorative nature of drama education, while retaining its position as a mainstream secondary subject, requires a creative synthesis of these competing discourses.

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2011

About the author

I am a British writer and poet. I spend half my life in a partly restored old farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where I write all my novels and poetry. I aim to write popular books, which have complex characters and themes that get under the reader's skin. My fantasy adventure novel Mother of Wolves is available on Amazon. The three books (Girl in The Glass, Love of Shadows and The Company of Shadows of my Healer's Shadow Trilogy are also available and my long poem for voices Fool's Paradise, which won the EPIC prize for best poetry book.

I have two blogs. One is my personal blog http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com. The second is the magic realism blog, on which I read and review a different magic realism book a week, it's on http://www.magic-realism.net.

I also have a weekly online newspaper http://www.womens-fiction.net, which features the best articles about books by and for women.

I was a successful published poet in my teens and twenties, (featuring in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology). Then my son arrived and I was juggling motherhood and career and somehow there wasn't time for the writing. So many women will know how that feels. I regretted it of course and I kept on writing in my head.

I worked with disadvantaged people for about twenty years. It was emotionally hard work but very rewarding. But it took its toll and a few years ago I realized that I couldn't continue. I needed to start writing again.

In my career I had listened to so many brave women (and men and children), to their stories of the terrible things that happened to them and of their survival. I'd worked with asylum seekers, the homeless, abused women, people whose lives have been broken, women like the central character in Girl in the Glass. I have never had their experiences and I suppose the only way I could start understanding was to work it through using my imagination. Not that the central character in Girl in the Glass is any one woman, she isn't, her story is her own.