This paper is a situated biographical reflection on the author's Hong Kong teaching experience written using a narrative inquiry approach, describing attempts to generate innovative pedagogical practices. The journey explores how autocratic, traditional Chinese cultural expectations in Hong Kong education have nurtured a commonsense belief in "discipline first and then teach". This teacher/researcher adopted alternative approaches to authority through the use of developmental drama which made teacher image and teacher-student power relationships an object of talk and study. The aim of this paper is to bring together theories and pedagogical models based on the sociology of education, social psychology and drama pedagogy in an effort to change how we teach marginalized students in one distinctive Chinese cultural context.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188790903503627]

The rationale for this study is that students' views on their own learning play an integral part in their educational journeys. Students' voice has been gaining recognition as a vehicle for cultivating ownership of learning, restoring classroom dialogue, and developing strategies for school improvement. These benefits echo the pedagogical purposes of drama education. This study examines how a group of primary students in Hong Kong relate drama pedagogy to their learning in two curriculum subjects: Chinese Language and General Studies. Working with a group of primary students introduced to drama as a medium of learning for the first time, the researcher seeks to find out what aspects of the drama programme is seen by the students as pertinent to their learning in these subjects. The students generally found the Process Drama units more closely related to the learning in General Studies than Chinese Language. Factors influencing their views include the learning focus of the Process Drama work, students' beliefs about learning in these two school subjects, and the pedagogical approaches previously adopted in their school.
[Copyright of Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569780902868770]