Into the sea of imagination : re-considering role and collaboration in the Sydney Water Reckoning Drama Project

This paper reports on the exciting Sydney study within the ground-breaking international rolling role project, which re-considered Heathcote’s rolling role strategy in a twenty-first century, web-­based learning context. Using digital pretexts, notions of water sustainability and co-­operation were considered through drama. The Sydney site comprised a secondary drama class and their teacher in an urban high school, working on a three-month drama programme with three academic teacher/researchers. This paper analyses the drama programme by examining the way teacher/researcher roles were renegotiated within this multi-­dimensional drama project, working across drama classrooms and online collaborative platforms. It was found that teacher/researchers operated as curators of the drama learning experience and as role players and actors at key moments throughout the process drama as it rolled out across the multiple international sites. The study emphasises the importance of collaboration as scholarly activity and professional learning. Importantly it illustrates how the teacher/researchers, teacher and students were engaged imaginatively and critically in a new dynamic learning process, involving a reconceptualisation and reconsideration of Heathcote’s legacy in the digital age.