Can drama courses contribute in developing employability skills? A diary study.

Abstract

The increasingly competitive workplace environment requires not only content-based skills but also process-based skills such as creativity, communication skills and the ability to cooperate. Enterprises invest heavily in training programs in order to develop the existing skills and abilities of their staff and create a culture of collaboration. Another field for which collaboration and communication skills are of vital importance is theatre. Drama courses include a number of exercises that can lead to better communication among the articipants and they use almost purely collaborative methods to achieve the final goal of every exercise so that the team learns how to cooperate effectively. This type of lessons offers the opportunity to the participants to build and develop their existing skills and abilities in an enjoyable way, free of stress and as a result it is easy to convince individuals to participate. For this reason, this research aims to explore the techniques that are used in drama courses in order to better develop the collaborative communication skills of adult learners and what other generic employability skills can be developed. For the research we used the diary technique to explore the way that skills learnt in the drama course, influenced the personal and professional lives of individuals. The idea of the research is based on the author’s experience of drama workshops, and thus the authors experience will be reflected upon within the research.