Over a decade ago thousands of Chilean people begun to take to the streets to protest against the injustices brought about by the educational system. Noted by its marked neoliberal-orientation, the Chilean educational system was strongly criticised by social movements led by secondary and tertiary level students, who demanded that education be understood as a basic universal right rather than as an individual commodity (Bellei, Cabalin, & Orellana, 2014). As a result of these protests, the system is currently undergoing structural reforms that claim to support this move away from a heavy market orientation in education (Eyzaguirre Guzmán, 2014). However, various analysts see the new policies as still grounded on neoliberal narratives (Reyes Barra, 2015). Considering that one of the tasks of critical pedagogy is to make schools “safe from the baneful influence of market logics” (Giroux & Giroux, 2006, p. 28), it seems relevant to inquire into methods that can help Chilean teachers in the application of critical pedagogy.

Critical pedagogy is an heterogeneous educational tradition that encompasses various viewpoints and practices, brought together by a shared commitment to emancipatory social change (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2009). Despite critical pedagogy’s longstanding presence as an educational movement, it has been criticised for its absorption with general theorising rather than with the pragmatic reality of the classroom (McArthur, 2010). This speaks of a need to discuss critical pedagogy in a contextualised way (King-White, 2012), exploring different approaches to bring it into practice. Drama in education has been identified as one valuable site to pursue critical pedagogy’s transformative aims (Doyle, 1993; Freebody & Finneran, 2016b; Grady, 2003; O’Connor, 2013). Drama’s seemingly intrinsic goals of promoting social transformation; of establishing democratic spaces of participation, of offering a safe distance from which to analyse human issues, and of encouraging a balance between action and reflection, are all characteristics that could present invaluable potential for critical pedagogy (Freebody & Finneran, 2013). However, it is crucial that the grounds behind these apparently inherent features are subjected to thorough examination so that the drama field does not fall into stagnant assumptions (Freebody & Finneran, 2016b). While some scholarship has been developed in recent years that scrutinises this in more depth in European and international settings (Freebody & Finneran, 2016a; O’Connor, 2013), there is scarce research available that centres on a Latin American context. In addition, there seems to be a lack of investigations that focus on drama as a critical methodology for teaching and learning across the curriculum. Therefore, the central research question which this study aims to address is what are the possibilities and challenges that Chilean teachers face when trying to integrate drama in education as a form of critical pedagogy in their practices? This paper presents some of the study’s initial findings, centring on a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme using drama as a form of critical pedagogy undertaken by a group of teachers in a Chilean school. The paper analyses the critical pedagogical potential and challenges that these teachers faced when introduced to drama conventions originally developed by renowned European drama educators - Dorothy Heathcote, Gavin Bolton, and Jonothan Neelands. The paper also explores the ways in which learning about drama in education changed the teachers’ educational perspectives, and how the experience of the CPD programme modified and enrichened the conceptual framework of the study.

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