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The purpose of this paper is to help readers understand why drama based training is effective and how it can be incorporated into learning and development initiatives.

The paper describes the basic methodologies of drama based training and presents three examples of its use.

Drama based training is at its most effective when it is engaging participants to reflect on their own behaviors and how they might adapt their behavior for their own and others benefit.

This approach can be used with various group sizes. It is suggested that organizations wanting to use this type of initiative should contract with an experienced provider, who knows how to research and write a drama based program and has an experienced and talented pool of actors to call upon.

The use of drama based training has grown over the last 20 years, but it is still an original and innovative method of learning and development.

This paper aims to describe the use of an innovative resilience-building training programme delivered to NHS Safeguarding Leads and other participating professionals over a five-month period concluding in March 2019. The developers used knowledge and expertise in both the fields of psychology and drama-based learning to promote comprehension, retention and a capacity for using and conveying these strategies to other health-care workers.

Attendees were given pre- and post-questionnaires to examine the effectiveness of the training in terms of understanding the stages of burnout, developing an awareness of personal risk factors that may be associated with potential burnout and their perceptions of the confidence they have in both evaluating their personal resilience and using acquired skills and coping techniques that they may apply to their personal and professional lives. A Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test was administered, to assess the significance of the difference between pre- and post-training scores.

Following the training, participants reported statistically significant improvements relating to their understanding of terms, including “burnout”. They also reported an increased awareness of their personal risk factors associated with burnout and felt more resilient having completed the training. Statistically significant changes were reported in all of these areas, with the drama element of the training being commended on about one third of all feedback forms where, with the post-test results, a narrative (unscored) opportunity for feedback was sought.

The authors note that a long-term follow-up of retention and use of this training was not undertaken, though they consider that, post-pandemic, this necessary training can be reinitiated and that, as with other professional initiatives, video-engagement technology may be, through innovative efforts, merged with these effective training techniques as an option for future training applications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this training programme was the first of its kind to use a psychologically underpinned drama-based didactic approach to build resilience and protect against burnout. The results of this paper show that this training used an effective and efficient medium for successfully meeting these primary objectives.

It is considered that using a similar training approach would be effective in building resilience and preventing burnout in health-care professionals.

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an innovative resilience-building training programme drawing upon the field of psychology and drama-based learning to support safeguarding professionals within the NHS.

The purpose of this paper is to probe aid readers’ understanding of the areas in which drama-based trainings are being used and how drama as a tool acts as a means to achieve desired learning and behavioral changes in organizations.

The paper uses literature review to analyze the practice of drama-based training.

Drama-based training is one of the most effective tools to engage participants. It elicits the desired response in them when they ruminate over familiar circumstances or behaviors being depicted and leads to instant recall and associations that acts as a propeller to imbibing new learning. Coming up with an alternative response or behavior as a result of experiencing events through drama could help them learn or manage the situation through behavioral transformation.

Being conceptual in nature, this model must be tested empirically by relevant stakeholders in the area of learning and development to add further weightage to literature.

By detailing drama-based training used in varied areas of specialization and how its usage has tremendous potential to facilitate bringing about desired behavioral changes, the paper demonstrates the importance of creating a lasting impact through this method of training that will specially be relevant to HRD managers.

Multidisciplinary areas in which drama- or theatre-based trainings are being used have been studied through literature review and a conceptual model of training, abbreviated as DRAMA for easy recall, has been proposed with inclusion of salient features that make drama-based interventions for training so engaging and effective for disseminating learning. This model also finds some connection with the Kolb’s experimental learning theory.

Harrods, the luxury‐store group, has used drama‐based learning to bring a new dimension to presentation‐skills training for its managers – focussing on the personal presence, energy and enthusiasm of the presenter – and to help its menswear department to deliver excellent service. With 22 restaurants, magnificently decadent food halls and merchandise ranging from exotic animals to medieval instruments, Harrods is among the world’s most famous department stores. One of London’s top three attractions, the seven‐floor store – which has more than 300 departments and 4,000 employees – serves up to 300,000 customers a day.

This paper aims to address the problems that diversity, by its nature, throws up for training professionals, and to highlight the various ways in which drama, as a learning tool, offers solutions to those problems.

The theory of experiential learning forms the back‐bone of the arguments proposed by the paper, and has many applications in the development and assessment of groups and individuals. While it focuses on a technique called “forum theatre”, all forms of drama‐based learning are founded on the theory of “learning by doing”.

The findings of the paper focus on the benefits of illustrating learning points through drama; encouraging creative thinking, risk‐taking, empathy and the use of conflict in a simulated environment to examine issues from all points of view.

These findings point to a need for an artistic and non‐directive approach to diversity training, one that is responsive to the sensitive and emotive nature of the subject. It also calls for organisations to encourage the embracing of differences within their workforces.

The learning points discussed offer a fresh perspective to diversity trainers. It suggests opportunities to address the root causes of prejudice without the risks that traditional training methods necessarily bring with them, and it is relevant to anyone involved in the design and delivery of diversity training.

This chapter explores ethical issues related to the use of drama-based methods in child and youth-focussed research projects. It begins by outlining some of the reasons for utilising drama-based research methods in projects that examine children’s perspectives and lived experiences. The chapter proceeds to discuss specific methods of drama-based inquiry including ethnodrama, ethnotheatre, reader’s theatre, play-building, devised theatre and collective creation. The sections draw on examples from recent drama-based research projects to highlight some of the key ethical considerations in drama-based research with children and young people, including specific issues surrounding representation, transparency, physical risks, power dynamics, consent, confidentiality, anonymity and reciprocity. The author shares her experiences of navigating some of the tricky ethical challenges involved in a recent participatory play-building project in Canada, providing some suggestions to help researchers in the field become better prepared to use and assess these methods and approaches in research with children and young people.

The recent world refugee crisis has mobilized societies all around the globe and has led to the multiplication of initiatives calling for support to refugees. Given the fact that one-third of the displaced population were children, measures for their immediate integration into schools were taken in most European countries. Although in Greece children with refugee experience first attended schools in 2017, teachers were not adequately prepared to cope with students who had lacked schooling for many years and with whom they couldn’t easily communicate due to language barriers. New teaching methodologies were needed for pre- and in-service teachers to bridge the gap between existing knowledge and the needs of refugee students. In this context, the authors designed a project called “Literacy through Drama” in the reception class of a public school in Volos, Greece involving 12 pre-service teachers. The findings of the study highlight that drama-based informal learning may provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop valuable knowledge about learners in authentic settings and pedagogy in practice. Faculties of education could facilitate effective community partnerships with organizations that work with refugee families and children and the school system and propose holistic curricula which include refugee student experiences. Moreover, pre-service teachers could gain skills and knowledge in supporting refugee students, identify refugee students’ needs, communicate in creative ways, and overcome deficit beliefs about refugee students.

This paper presents a study of a system that allows remote and onsite visitors to share a museum visit together in real time. The remote visitors are older adults at a care home and their relatives and/or friends who are at the museum. The museum visits are interactive. Meaningful stories accompany the museum exhibits, and there’s an audio channel between onsite and remote visitors. The aim of the study is to determine whether the remote visitors, i.e. older adults are able to use such technology and to study the mediated sense of spatial presence, social closeness, engagement and enjoyment in the visit. This study discusses the relationship between these aspects and factors leading to a better remote experience for older adults.

This study has 14 onsite and 12 remote older adult participants. Standardized questionnaires measured the mediated sense of spatial presence, the experienced social closeness and the level of participants' engagement and enjoyment in the visit of the older adult participants and traced onsite visitors in their position during the visit. The audio logs were subjected to thematic content analysis.

The results show that older adults enjoy and engage in remote visits, and that there is a positive correlation between enjoyment, engagement and social closeness. The findings argue that both the audio channel and the interactive story are important for creating an affective virtual experience: the audio channel increases the sense of closeness, whereas the interactive story makes the visit more engaging, providing structure, direction and purpose to the visit.

This work advances the state of art in the domain of technologies for older adults and addresses the needs of this population to stay in contact with both people and places.

The purpose of this study is to determine how closely an in-class role-play can mirror and capture the features and characteristics of work-based learning with real-life working experiences. The aim is also to discuss the potential and drawbacks of using role-play as a form of work-related learning.

This case study relies on qualitative data obtained from learning journals covering learning experiences on a role-play exercise. In total, 16 undergraduate students participated in a course in business-to-business marketing and took part in a series of face-to-face simulations.

Compared to the characteristics, features and potential outcomes of work-based learning, role-play can entail several similar learning outcomes. The strengths of a role-play are many. Participants can practise real-life situations in a safe environment; their learning is not restricted to a particular work setting; they are able to learn through reflection, and conflicts between stakeholders can be avoided. The comparative weaknesses include a lack of support from senior colleagues and an unclear contribution to the real world. Furthermore, the method may produce stereotypes or anxiety in the participants.

Due to the small target group, reliance on one source of data, and the phenomenological nature of findings, further studies are needed with larger target groups and different research approaches.

The findings reveal that role-play can offer higher education a supplementary tool for work-based learning.

In higher education, role-play may serve as a tool to reach many of the learning objectives of work-based learning, especially if real workplace experiences cannot be arranged.