Drama(tic) findings

As a journalist, I was never a big fan of conferences on communication techniques – and this is an understatement. I always tended to think that communication, and especially journalism, belongs to those aspects of life that is much more pleasure to practice than to speak about. (Just like football.) Thanks God that despite this silly attitude and lack of any major journalistic training, I was not a completely unsuccessful journalist – I think it is due to my perhaps born-with inclination for journalism and communication.

However, as head of the Presidency Communications Department, I had to discover that these conferences have more to offer than first meets the eye. A few days ago I had to chair a whole-day Presidency workshop on communication techniques to deploy in school education about Europe and the EU. I was afraid of this conference a bit as I am not an expert on education. But, to my greatest surprise, I really enjoyed it! It was fascinating to see and hear from experts of various Member States how many novel and innovative ways have recently been developed to make education on European issues more interesting, enjoyable and relevant for pupils and students.

The conference, entitled’Communicating Europe in Schools’, has highlighted several good practices on curricular and extra curricular activities in order to make the most of education on European and EU issues. For me, one of the most important conclusions was that education about the EU and Europe and active citizenship studies are strongly correlated. Making pupils and students understand how their own member state works and what are their rights vis-á-vis the state are indispensible preconditions for any successful education about the EU. Another significant point made was that education about the EU and Europe should be fun and not yet another burden either for the students or for the teachers.

But my favourite findings came from a research project titled DICE (Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education). It aimed to demostrate with cross-cultural, quantitative and qualitative research that educational theatre and drama has a positive impact to improve communication, learning capabilities, interpersonal and social competences, entrepreneurship and cultural expression abilities for kids. In order to demostrate this, the project examined 111 different types of educational drama and theatre programmes in 12 countries with 4,475 students altogether.

The results were striking. Compared with peers who had not been participating in any educational theatre and drama programmes, participants feel more confident in reading and understanding tasks, are better at problem solving and coping with stress, are more emphatic, more innovative, show more dedication towards their future and have more plans. I could not help not to think on my own kids.

With research projects like this, I think it’s worth while chairing conferences. Even about communication techniques.