Drama and improv offer something that many traditional classroom practices struggle to achieve in such a natural way: They make the abstract element of language tangible by making it an experience of all of our senses. When we talk about anti-bias education, we are ultimately talking about helping learners notice the often invisible ways power and social presumptions work: how language shapes who gets heard, who gets silenced, and how identities and assumptions are constructed and deconstructed as “faulty” or “different.” These ideas can feel distant or theoretical, especially for young learners and even more so in a second-language context.
Improvisation starts with simple tools like “C.R.O.W.”: Character, Relationship, Occupation, Where. Yet these four elements already open the door to exploring how power circulates in everyday interactions. A “relationship” such as boss–employee or mother–son doesn’t just guide what characters say, but how they say it. Learners begin to understand status as something we perform, negotiate, and manipulate, and that it can and will change over time. Activities like a “Status Walk,” as described in Enlivening Instruction with Drama and Improv, where students embody dominance or submission, show that power is neither fixed nor neutral. Learners get a chance to play and experiment with these subtleties in a safe environment. Once learners feel this physically, discussions about social hierarchies no longer center around some abstract concept; they are tangible and can be addressed and reflected on by all learners at their individual level.
Research shows that drama is flexible enough to be integrated into any curriculum while drawing attention to the sociocultural and sociopolitical forces that shape language use – all while bringing much-needed movement and communication into the classroom. It not only strengthens linguistic competence but also raises a kind of consciousness that helps both teachers and students “recognise the role of language and culture in systems of privilege and oppression” and “use language and culture to promote equity and social justice” (ACTFL, 2006, as quoted in Cahnmann-Taylor and R. McGovern, 2021).
Dramatic play can shine light on each student’s individual perspectives and thoughts, promoting equity on a classroom level. On a larger scale, many improv games naturally invite conversations about what counts as “normal” or “good,” and how these categories are constructed. Learners begin to question why certain behaviours, accents, or identities are valued over others. Misunderstandings around linguistic differences, whether gendered nouns or unfamiliar word order, can easily lead to value judgements. It is crucial to be vigilant so as not to let such discussions drift into a place where these perceived differences are enabled and justified rather than deconstructed: A challenge that we must confront in the moment but with a lot of care. Here are some key considerations that may help educators guide a conversation:
– Ask learners to use words that do not have a negative or positive connotation. Ask them, “Yes, and how could we describe that as neutrally as possible, like you’d find it on Wikipedia?”
– Ask learners to be sensitive to these diverse contexts and think as an observer when reflecting. “How did that make me feel?” is just as important as “How could this make someone else (who is perhaps affected by this imbalance or idea) feel?” Emotional intelligence is a skill that must be honed and can be trained by “feeling through the other’s mind.”
– Ask learners to purposefully change their character by taking an opposite stance. Let them play a confident person, then a shy one, then a person who barely speaks English, then one who is as proficient as one could possibly be. How did that change how the interaction went? Who was in power? Where did you notice this shift? These are all rich questions that inspire learners to think beyond their own emotional horizon and can lead to a thorough and multiperspective view of a situation.
– Use possible biases and stereotypical portraits that emerge during play as a stepping stone to think about roles, power, and equality. Every “misstep” that could further the rift and divide the learners through their views of “belonging” and “different” can be rechannelled into a step towards a more accepting and allied view of how “different” doesn’t have to mean bad or worse.
– Support the development of this view of bias and stereotypes by having a “board of outdated views.” Students can point out possible moments of bias, stereotypes, or outdated views they encounter in the coursebook and other material. Use these inputs from students as the starting point of new scenes and discussions. (A list of examples for such possibly outdated or invalidating excerpts from the coursebook Young World can be found in the materials section.)
This work matters because biased perceptions of languages and their speakers have real consequences. They can determine how individuals are treated and whether their voices are taken seriously, regardless of how well they use the language. English as a Lingua Franca is in the unique position where no one person may claim their English as the “one and only correct version.” But exposure to one-sided accents and uses in media has become a very common occurrence. And whilst there is nothing inherently wrong about using possible misunderstandings as comedic relief, far too often the portrayals of English speakers with a different L1 background are used as hallmarks of poor education and lacking integration: views that are subtle but very damaging and that ironically affect our students, who may see others’ accents as “weird” and “deficient,” just as much as themselves. After all, this view goes both ways.
As Hall (2016) notes, keeping English from anyone in today’s day and age of digital communication must now be seen as a form of social injustice. Yet mainstream language teaching often avoids these realities and fails to empower learners to engage in these discussions. Global ELT materials — and even Young World, which was specifically written for the Swiss context in which the curriculum unequivocally mentions foreign language education as part of political empowerment, tend to present a “sanitized world,” full of safe topics like travel and shopping but devoid of any discussions about racism, gender discrimination, or inequality. This erasure is not neutral. As Freire (1968) in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed reminds us, refusing to address conflict means siding with those already in power.
Drama and improv push back against this avoidance. They create space to engage critically with real issues, rooted in students’ own experiences or allowing them to take on the role of the marginalized. They build the critical literacies needed for democratic participation: noticing injustice, reflecting on it, and, most importantly, imagining alternatives.