This paper summarises a portion of a longer research project which aims to make innovative contributions to both classroom research and drama education. The innovativeness arises in part from the combination of three settings of inquiry: a sociological setting of socio-economic status (SES), a pedagogic setting of educational drama, and a methodological setting of Conversation Analysis (CA) (Sacks, 1992) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) (Jayyusi, 1984; Hester & Eglin, 1997). The research project investigated classroom interactions in sites that differed in socio-economic areas. The focus was on process dramas that explored issues of future pathways and opportunities. The overall research question for the project was whether students from schools located in differing SES areas interacted differently in dramas dealing with future life prospects and pathways. More specifically, the project explored whether students and teachers drew upon understood notions of SES as an explicit topic or implied resource and whether they took opportunities offered by process drama interactions to reinforce, revisit and/or revise stereotypes about SES and opportunity structures. Through the above-mentioned settings, this research documented not only how students and teachers thought about and expressed social differences but also how they drew upon understandings of these differences, knowingly or otherwise, when they interacted with each other in classroom talk and process drama. A key hypothesis for the project was that educational drama provides teachers with a unique vehicle with which to explore opportunity and agency while simultaneously allowing students to take an active role in understanding the consequences of social differences (O’Neill, 1995; Boal, 1979). This paper will use CA and MCA to explore the validity of this hypothesis, including an exploration of three particular types of talk evident in the research sites: Pedagogic/Logistic Talk, Socio-Cultural Talk, and In-Role Talk. Not only were these types of talk unitised by the teachers for different purposes, resulting in different interactional outcomes, but they provided students and teachers with different ways with which to explore a particular character, event, opinion, or scenario, resulting in a rich and diverse data corpus. Actual classroom transcripts from this corpus are used to illustrate and analyse the various ways in which the classroom activities were constructed to provide teachers and students with contexts for authentic engagement and reflection. The transcripts are also employed to demonstrate comparisons between the two sites with regard to the contents, dramatic scenarios, and solutions explored. The similarities and differences in the work of the two sites will be discussed, particularly the ways in which social categorisations and attributions were developed and shared by students. In many cases, similar moral reasoning was evident in the two sites, particularly with regards to the students’ definitions of concepts such as happiness. Many of the differences discussed in this paper revolve around the explicit and implicit understandings of the causes and effects of SES that the students drew upon in their work.

The methodology of this paper is Ethnomethodologically-informed conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis. Data collection consisted of observation, audio and video recording of lessons which were then transcribed for analysis. A triangulation exercise also took place in the project that drew on field notes, interview data and student work products.

The conclusions of this paper provide answers to the research questions stated above with particular focus on: 1) the similarities and differences in the ways in which students from differing SES backgrounds drew upon their understandings of SES when participating in process drama classrooms; 2) the particular affordances of educational drama, through the exchange of moral reasoning practices, to provide teachers and students with opportunities to explore social issues and develop empathic understanding; and 3) the value of conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis to explore the particular work teachers and students do in drama classrooms.