Why Drama Has an Impact on Student Personality Development: A Qualitative Interview Study With EFL Drama Students

Drama Activities and Student Personality Change

Over the past two decades, research in Drama Education, Theatre and Drama Studies and Arts Psychology has led to a growing understanding of how drama activities in the L2 classroom influence the personality of students who take part in these activities. In line with Personality Psychology (Roberts & Yoon, 2022, p. 491), personality can be defined as “the panoply of individual differences that characterize people. […] There is […] a common tendency to equate personality to the study of personality traits.” Among these traits, the best-known personality attributes are the so-called Big Five, which organize a person’s personality into the five domains of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience; more specific personality traits, such as resilience, empathy, creativity, motivation or anxiety, are sub-facets of these larger traits (pp. 491–492). Personality development, then, is concerned with “continuity, change, and factors associated with change in personality” (p. 495). For personality development that takes place as a result of students’ participation in drama, the focus is typically on personality traits that can plausibly be addressed through drama activities, such as their emotional skills, social skills, empathy, motivation or creativity (Grosz et al., 2022; Langer et al., 2020).

With regard to Drama Education in the L2 classroom, earlier case studies repeatedly indicated that drama activities have a positive impact on students’ personality development (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; McAtamney, 2021; Piazzoli, 2011, 2014). In this fashion, Kao and O’Neill (1998) examined the “psychological impact of drama activities on […] participants” (p. 80) in several cases studies with L2 learners and emphasised its positive effect on students’ confidence, their foreign-language anxiety (FLA) and their motivation to participate in L2 drama teaching (pp. 79–114). McAtamney (2021), in a study with secondary-school learners of L2 English, observed that the students’ imagination and creativity as well as confidence increased as a result of taking part in a drama program offered by the University of Sydney. Piazzoli (2011), working with university-level L2 Italian students, found that their foreign-language anxiety was reduced owing to the ‘affective space’, or feeling of trust and belonging, created in her drama courses. In a later study, Piazzoli (2014), again with adult learners of L2 Italian, observed that the students’ agency, understood as learner engagement in the course, was heightened during drama improvisations in which the students took on imaginary roles.

Moreover, building on these case studies and using quantitative study designs, several studies (i.e., experiments and quasi-experiments with pre- and post-tests) were conducted to examine which personality traits were affected and how strongly these personality traits were developed by drama activities (e.g., DICE, 2010; Fleming et al., 2004; Freeman et al., 2003). Two meta-studies (Grosz et al., 2022; Langer et al., 2020) that summarised the earlier quantitative research (including DICE, 2010; Fleming et al., 2004; Freeman et al., 2003) came to the shared conclusion that previous study findings were often inconsistent between studies and that some earlier investigations suffered from design flaws that limited their ability to make conclusive statements. More specifically, many experiments in the meta-studies used small samples, were unable to detect significant differences between control/No-Arts and experimental/Arts groups, and relied on student self-selection to attend control and Arts groups, which lead to biased starting conditions, since Arts groups may already attract more creative, motivated, etc. students. Langer et al. (2020) thus describe the quantitative “research situation as insufficient” (p. 48; translated) and emphasise that the “scope of the earlier studies does not yet allow for comprehensive, reliable statements on the existence of transfer effects [of the Arts] on [student] personality” (p. 48; translated). Accordingly, despite the promising results from earlier case studies (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; McAtamney, 2021; Piazzoli, 2011, 2014), there is still a need to conduct further, and yet more rigorous, quantitative studies to validate the findings from earlier case study research.

Apart from this research gap in quantitative research, there is also limited qualitative research on why the identified effects of drama activities on student personality might occur in L2 drama teaching. Hence, the reasons or explanations why dramatic approaches might have an impact on the students’ personality are still largely unknown. The previous research literature only offers isolated observations which are scattered throughout earlier case studies. Some examples of reasons or explanations for a drama-derived personality change are the following: “Involvement in the imaginary roles helps low-proficiency learners to forget about their fear of speaking in public” (Kao & O’Neill, 1998, p. 91), which assumes that a reason for less FLA is taking on a role; “because we are acting, […] we are more comfortable” (McAtamney, 2021, p. 124), which assumes that a reason for more confidence is acting; “learners were able to decrease their anxiety within the affective space generated by process drama” (Piazzoli, 2011, p. 562), which suggests that a reason for less FLA is the feeling of trust in a drama group. Although these are promising insights, further research is required.

Set against this backdrop, we conducted the following study to address the crucial question of why drama activities might affect students’ personality change and will present results from a sample of students who attended EFL (English as a Foreign Language) drama clubs. These drama clubs were part of the extra-curricular activities at a comprehensive school in Göttingen, Germany.

Background

As background for our study, Personality and Arts Psychology research offers a key distinction between personality traits and states. Here, a personality trait is defined as “enduring personality characteristic that describes or determines an individual’s behavior across a range of situations” (APA, 2015, p. 1098). A trait, in other words, is a permanent characteristic of a person, such as their openness, i.e., whether they are more curious or more cautious, their extraversion, i.e., whether they are more outgoing or more reserved, or their foreign-language anxiety, i.e., whether they are more or less anxious to use a foreign language. In turn, a personality state is defined as the current state of a corresponding trait, or as “status of an entity […] at a particular time that is characterized by relative stability of its basic components or elements [i.e., its trait]” (APA, 2015, p. 1026). Accordingly, although a person’s personality traits are relatively fixed, they are adopting different states as they vary around their respective trait anchor points. This state variation depends on the situation, activity or social interaction that a person is currently engaged in. As a result, students’ personality states are constantly influenced by classroom teaching, as it engages students in specific instructional activities or situations. For instance, a student who is praised for their classwork in the L2 classroom will experience a rise in their motivation as state. As described, this current motivation as state will vary around its anchor point of motivation as trait (i.e., whether this student is generally motivated to study the L2 or not).

In turn, personality traits are connected to the variation of their states as well. Here, research in Arts Psychology assumes that repeated state variations may lead to a change in their corresponding traits over time (Geukes et al., 2018; Grosz et al., 2022). Grosz et al. (2022), using extraversion and agreeableness as examples, observe the following: “Several models of personality development propose that long-term personality trait change occurs due to repeated short-term state processes” (p. 9). And, with a focus on the Arts and drama, they elaborate: “Due to all of these situational demands and opportunities for state expressions of extraversion and agreeableness, drama, music, and dance education might increase trait levels of extraversion and agreeableness [in students] in the long run” (p. 9). For instance, in drama education, a student who repeatedly takes part in short improvised scenes, which requires them to contribute spontaneous ideas using their creativity (state), may increase their general ability to generate new, creative responses (trait) over time. The same state-on-trait-effect is also known from therapeutic treatments, which intend to alter a person’s permanent traits by repeatedly having them experience situations with more beneficial states. For instance, a person who suffers from a fear of spiders (trait) may be treated by experiencing several low-anxiety encounters with toy spiders (state). Over time, these low-anxiety states may lead to a decrease of the person’s trait anxiety. Of course, in more conventional terms, this state-on-trait-effect can also be described as a simple training effect.

In the same way, for classroom instruction, repeated state changes in a didactically desired direction may lead to corresponding trait changes in students, so that learners become more confident, more empathetic, more creative or less foreign-language anxious, when they repeatedly experience desirable states of these attributes in their classroom.

For the study reported in this paper, it is important to emphasize that it is concerned with personality states only. (Interestingly, this is presumably true of the majority of earlier studies as well, although this fact is usually not acknowledged). Hence, to avoid a confusion of traits and states, a subscript (S) for (states) will be used with all personality attributes as states: e.g., motivation_(S), empathy_(S), FLA_(S), etc. This is done to avoid the misconception that the student personality development that will be discussed in this study is necessarily a permanent one. However, as noted above, Arts Psychology proposes that changes in personality traits occur owing to repeated short-term changes in their corresponding states (Geukes et al., 2018; Grosz et al., 2022).

In addition, it should be noted that the study was part of a larger research project: “Bühne frei: Schulische Bildungsangebote im Bereich Darstellendes Spiel” (“Clear the Stage: School-Based Education in the Performing Arts and Their Impact on Personality Development”). In this quantitative project, the researchers examined several relationships between drama activities and (changes in) personality states in students who participated in L2 drama groups (Wirag & Surkamp, 2022). In the “Bühne frei” project, major study findings were that: 1) acting increases student motivation_(S), 2) acting increases student empathy_(S), 3) role work decreases student FLA_(S), and 4) feedback on the L2 increases student FLA_(S). Since these four relations were the most relevant findings of the “Bühne frei” project, this paper examines reasons and explanations for why these effects have taken place.

A Qualitative Interview Study with EFL Drama Students

Research Questions

In line with the above-noted shortage of empirical studies on the why-question of drama-based personality change, the overarching research question of the present study was the following: Why might drama activities in the L2 classroom have an impact on students’ personality states? As this study focused on four specific relationships, and on those relationships only, this broader research question could usefully be divided into four more specific questions:

• RQ 1: Why does acting increase motivation_(S) in students?

• RQ 2: Why does acting increase empathy_(S) in students?

• RQ 3: Why does role work decrease FLA_(S) in students?

• RQ 4: Why does feedback on the L2 increase FLA_(S) in students?

To address these four research questions, a qualitative study design was adopted. The study’s qualitative data were derived from student interviews, whose answers were further analysed using a Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring, 2015). The study is designed to add to the earlier literature on why the above drama activities might affect the students’ personality states (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; McAtamney, 2021; Piazzoli, 2011, 2014). The students’ interview answers, which responded to the research questions, thus led to the generation of additional assumptions that complemented earlier drama research.

Study Sample

The sample for this study involved students who had attended eight EFL drama clubs. The students attended these EFL drama clubs as part of their extra-curricular activities at a comprehensive school in Göttingen, Germany. Comprehensive schools in Germany run from grade 5 to grade 9 or grade 10. After grade 10, students can go on to attend a grammar school until grade 12/13. As a result, comprehensive school covers the whole range of lower and upper secondary education and includes all types of student achievement levels. All EFL drama clubs were run over half a school year, or 13-14 sessions, and finished with the performance of a short play in English. While four of the drama clubs took place in the Unterstufe (grade 5-6), the other four clubs were conducted in the Mittelstufe (grade 7-10). Table 1 below shows the socio-demographic information of the students who attended these eight EFL drama clubs.

From the student total of 50 students (see Table 1), a participant sample of 32 took part in the study interviews. The participants for our study were sampled from this student total by way of a “convenience sample”. In this sample type, students are collected “based on their availability or ease of recruitment […] from a pool of potential participants” (Riazi, 2016, p. 60). In our case, students were asked to participate in the interviews after their EFL drama clubs had ended. The school principal gave her approval to conduct the study in the afternoon clubs at school. Caretakers were given letters with consent forms through which they approved of the participation of the students.

As a result, our sample differed from a generic student population in at least four aspects: i.e., comprehensive school students, age range from 10-15, voluntary attendance of an EFL drama club, and, finally, willingness to take part in an interview. Strictly speaking, therefore, the following study findings should be generalized to a student population with the above attributes only.

EFL Drama Clubs

The eight EFL drama clubs were run over 13-14 sessions in groups of 6-10 students. In contrast to Kao & O’Neill (1998) and Piazzoli’s (2014) work, which employed Process Drama as the pedagogical approach, within these drama clubs the students produced set plays using scripts written in L2 English. In some of the drama clubs, completed scripts were used (e.g., “Angel” by Naadir Joseph, found via the search engine Lazy Bee Scripts), while in other clubs the plays were co-written with the students (e.g., a Christmas play with a view to the upcoming season). Each EFL club session began with a warm-up (cf. Farmer, 2007), which, depending on the phase of the overall club, was followed by different weekly activities. In week 1 and 2, the L2 script was read to ensure its comprehension, and roles were allocated to students. With co-written plays, the teachers prepared the scripts before the sessions, and students suggested changes as they went through the script. In weeks 3 and 4, students engaged in role work activities around their own character, for instance, by writing a role biography or by improvising in role. The remaining weeks were dedicated to play rehearsals and occasional acting exercises. In those weeks, students would rehearse ‘their’ scenes, while the rest of the group observed and gave feedback on the scenes and acting. After week 13 or 14, the plays were performed at a school function or school Christmas market in front of an audience of 30-50 people consisting of parents, siblings, classmates and teachers. During the Covid Pandemic, the final performances were recorded and distributed to the students and their families as films.

Study Procedure

Student Interviews

All student interviews were conducted after the last session of the EFL drama clubs, either in class (before the Covid Pandemic) or online via Zoom (during the Covid Pandemic). In total, nine interviews were carried out, in which the 32 sample students were divided as follows: 4, 5, 6, and 1 student from the Unterstufe, and 3, 5, 3, 3, and 2 students from the Mittelstufe. Where possible, the interviews were conducted in small groups of 2-5 students. This small group setting was favoured since the interview topic was both unfamiliar and somewhat difficult for the students’ age. In small groups, however, students could elaborate on each other’s answers, so that they produced longer and more substantial answers. All interviews were standardized and used the same protocol: i.e., a welcome and opening statement, a fixed series of questions, a thank-you and closing statement. The interview questions were open-ended, so that students were free to answer in any way and at any length they wanted. If necessary, the interviewer would use prompts to encourage longer answers: “Tell me more about this”, “How did this work exactly?”, etc. The same questions were put to all of the students.

In line with research questions 1-4, the interview questions related to the above four relationships: Why does acting increase motivation_(S) (RQ 1)? Why does acting increase empathy_(S) (RQ 2)? Why does role work decrease FLA_(S) (RQ 3)? And why does L2 feedback increase FLA_(S) (RQ 4)? In this way, for instance, the interviewer would ask, for RQ 1: “We have discovered (via our broader study – “Bühne frei”) that the more you act in the drama club, the more you feel motivated to participate. However, I don’t really know why that is. Can you tell me why this happens from your experience in the drama club?” By asking equivalent questions for the other effects, the interviews collected the students’ reasons and explanations for each of the above four research questions. The interviews lasted between 20-40 minutes and were conducted in German, the interviewer’s native language and a language that all students were fully fluent in. In the interviews, there was no indication that any of the students did not understand the questions or what was being asked of them.

Qualitative Content Analysis

After the interviews were carried out, the interview data were transcribed into a written text using a literal transcription style. That is, the interviews were written down as they were heard by the transcriber using a standard alphabet (Mayring, 2002, pp. 89–91). After the transcripts were completed, the students’ answers were analysed with regard to research question 1-4. For the analysis, a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) of the summary type was carried out (Mayring, 2015, pp. 69–90). Mayring’s summary QCA is a systematic approach to reduce a large amount of qualitative data to a smaller size while maintaining its original content.^[1] It makes use of deductive and inductive categories to organize the reduced data. Deductive categories are previously known categories that are brought to bear on the data, while inductive categories are subordinate ideas that arise from the data itself and are then sorted into an appropriate deductive category (Mayring, 2015, pp. 69–90). The deductive categories were the four relations that the interviews had asked about (and which corresponded to research question 1-4). The inductive categories, which emerged from the data itself, were the students’ reasons and explanations for these relations (which represented the answers to research question 1-4).

In the analysis, the students’ inductively obtained reasons were divided into explanations “for” (+) and “against” (-) the above relationships. Or, in other words, students would give reasons for both why a given state (e.g., motivation) was strengthened and why it was weakened through a given activity (e.g., acting). While this might seem surprising, in retrospect this fact is more straightforward: Although the overall effect of a drama activity on a given personality state was positive (e.g., acting increases motivation overall), some aspects that were part of acting had increased motivation (e.g., playing a role), while other aspects had in fact decreased motivation (e.g., passive observation). However, if all “for” and “against” aspects were added up, the overall impact of acting on motivation would still be positive. Here, a widely known strength of qualitative study designs becomes apparent, that is, their ability to generate information that could not have been obtained by researcher introspection alone (Mackey & Gass, 2022, p. 217).

Study Results

The results of the summary QCA, relating to research questions 1-4, are shown in the following Tables 2-5. As indicated, all tables are divided into the students’ reasons “for” (+) and “against” (-) the effect of a drama activity on a personality state.

Finally, to facilitate the practical use of these study findings for L2 drama teaching, Table 6 highlights all (+)/(-) reasons that teachers can directly control through their own teaching and their own lesson design (see also Practical Implications below). Remember also that these are reasons that were offered by the students in their interviews, so that they need to be checked against a teacher’s professional experience (see Discussion of Study Method below).

Discussion

Discussion of Study Results

As Tables 2-5 show, the Qualitative Content Analysis of the students’ answers revealed a larger number of reasons or explanations for the impact of drama on students’ personality states (e.g., why acting increases motivation). When evaluating these results, it is important to emphasize that not all of these reasons were mentioned by all of the students. In fact, some explanations were repeatedly given by many students (e.g., acting in itself is motivating), while some reasons were mentioned by only a few students (e.g., strange warm-up exercises are demotivating). These differences in explanations reveal both differences between students and, since the reasons combine across students, a larger picture on the group level. For drama teaching in the L2 classroom, the reasons’ sum on this group level is presumably more important, since a teacher will usually offer one teaching activity for the whole group, which therefore addresses all students. At the same time, the teacher can expect individual students to differ in how they react to her teaching based on specific (+)/(-) reasons that are individual to them.

Regarding the reasons themselves, it is fair to say that the above responses probably do not come as a surprise to researchers and teachers experienced in L2 Drama Pedagogy. For instance, we would expect that “acting in itself”, “theatre games”, “to observe progress in the play” and “to act without the script” motivates students, while “passively observing” and “learning the script” demotivates them. However, the analysis also produced a number of results that were less apparent or easily predictable. These findings are presumably more informative for L2 teachers and researchers owing to their less conspicuous nature, and will briefly be discussed here.

Firstly, Table 2 highlights that “group pressure/group expectations” were a reason for greater motivation in students. This finding appears counterintuitive, since pressure is typically seen as a demotivator in education (e.g., high parental expectations). However, in the EFL drama clubs, students were thinking ahead to the final performance of the play, which they would put on as a group at the end of the club. As a result, they were arguably motivated to work on their acting to improve the play’s quality and thus to meet their peers’ expectations. Secondly, Table 2 mentions “(strange) warm-up/acting exercises” as a reason for less motivation in acting. Here, some students may have felt uncomfortable when participating in certain warm-up or acting exercises, since some exercises involve unusual movements (e.g., exaggerated face expressions to show emotions) or uncommon vocalization techniques (e.g., deliberate breathing, voice vibrato, ‘drama gibberish’). Typically, warm-up exercises require students to step out of their comfort zones – which is why they are ‘warming up’ –, which may have felt ‘strange’ to some learners. Also, some students may not have seen the connection between the warm-up and acting exercises and the development of their own acting skills. If they considered those exercises as unrelated to their own acting and quality of the final play, their motivation might have suffered. Thirdly, Table 4 highlights “having a fixed text” as a reason for more FLA among students. Again, this seems counterintuitive, since students who read off a fixed script no longer need to worry about their cues or missing lines, which should ease their speaking anxiety. However, learners may feel pressured when faced with a fixed text, to which they have to pay close attention, and which they have to deliver with some degree of accuracy. Presumably, students were afraid of missing cues, skipping lines, or of not pronouncing L2 words correctly, which translated into a feeling of language anxiety. In turn, once students had memorized their lines, and were freed from the script’s authority, they were able to deliver their lines more naturally and spontaneously, which should have alleviated their FLA.

Going back to the earlier case studies and their occasional mentions of reasons and explanations for personality change through drama (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; McAtamney, 2021; Piazzoli, 2011, 2014), our study in fact uncovered some of the same ideas that were also observed in those earlier studies. For instance, Kao and O’Neill (1998, p. 91) noted that “[i]nvolvement in the imaginary roles helps […] learners to forget about their fear of speaking in public”, which directly corresponds to “immersion/being inside of the role” as a reason for less FLA in Table 4. Also, Kao and O’Neill (1998, p. 91) observed that drama is able to “ease the beginning learners’ anxiety because the pressure of ‘speaking well’ and ‘doing it right’ does not exist”, which matches the students’ “self-doubt about their L2 ability” as a reason for more FLA in Table 5. Also, they mentioned (1998, p. 85) that students “enjoyed participating in drama and were motivated to participate further”, which corresponds to “acting in itself” as a reason for more motivation in Table 2. Piazzoli (2011, p. 569) observed that the “medium of role” was “essential to the students’ spontaneous willingness to communicate”, which also matches “immersion/being inside of the role” as a reason for less FLA in Table 4. These corresponding links between our results and earlier case study research show that the same findings are in fact obtained across different L2 drama classrooms and with different groups of foreign-language learners. The earlier case study observations and our findings therefore complement each other, thus lending additional plausibility to the results from earlier research sites.

Finally, when considering our results, it needs to be reiterated that the above reasons refer to changes in the students’ personality states only. As pointed out, to what extent these state changes will eventually lead to permanent changes in a trait is a question of ongoing research (Geukes et al., 2018; Grosz et al., 2022). Still, even if this state variation does not translate into trait changes, it is surely beneficial for students to experience high levels of current motivation or empathy, or low levels of foreign-language anxiety, in a drama session they attend. It is likely that this will enhance the quality of their classroom experience and contribute to the quality of their artistic work.

Discussion of Study Method

From a methodological perspective, the results of the qualitative study design were promising: While a part of the above reasons might have been obtained through researcher introspection alone – e.g., that passive observation is demotivating –, the majority of explanations could not have easily been obtained – e.g., that having to act and speak at the same time increases FLA. At the same time, the study comes with several methodological limitations. Firstly, the interviews asked the students about rather abstract topics that some of them had visible difficulties responding to. In fact, in some cases, students simply replied that they, as well as the interviewer, also did not know how to explain the effect in question. Here, it would have been helpful to give students examples of suitable answers before the interview took place using a relation that was not part of the later interview. Secondly, the study was limited by an obvious ‘epistemological constraint’ with regard to what students can know about the reasons for their own behaviour. Some explanations for the above relations might simply be hidden from students’ self-reflection, even for learners who have experienced these effects first-hand in their own drama clubs. Finally, as the study used a qualitative design, the final validity of its new theory is, scientifically speaking, still unknown. After all, students might be partly (or fully) incorrect in their assumptions, which are effectively ad hoc theories about the socio-structural and learner-psychological laws that govern the L2 drama classroom. Therefore, future confirmatory studies are needed to confirm (or falsify) this set of assumptions (together with the assumptions yielded by earlier case studies). Still, for the time being, these combined and updated findings can be considered as temporarily valid answers to the question of why drama activities have an impact on the students’ personality, and can consequently be applied in L2 drama teaching.

Practical Implications

As seen in Tables 2-5, students in the EFL drama clubs gave a whole series of reasons and explanations for the above research questions 1-4. The implications of these findings for the L2 drama classroom are rather straightforward: If drama teachers wish to ‘move’ their students ‘up’ or ‘down’ in these personality states, they need to use the above (+)/(-) reasons in their own teaching. In fact, since the (+) and (-) reasons are opposed in their effect, teachers, in order to raise a state (e.g., motivation), would have to either use more (+) or less (-) reasons; to lower a state (e.g., FLA), they would either use more (-) or less (+) reasons. To illustrate this idea, if a teacher wanted her students to be more motivated in class, she could, for instance, play more theatre games, have students act more, highlight progress in the play (see (+) reasons in Table 2) – or reduce passive observation during rehearsals and shorten lengthy discussions about the play (see (-) reasons in Table 2). However, as shown above (Table 6), not all (+)/(-) reasons can directly be influenced by the teacher’s lesson design and teaching, such as whether students watch the portrayal of figures on stage (for empathy). In addition, several (+)/(-) reasons cannot usefully be avoided in an L2 drama classroom, such as students having to learn the script (for motivation). As a result, some of the (+)/(-) reasons are, as it were, beyond the teacher’s control, so that they do not need to be reconsidered when planning and teaching an L2 drama lesson.

To conclude, the above study results, which were in line with findings from earlier case studies in L2 Drama Pedagogy (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; McAtamney, 2021; Piazzoli, 2011, 2014), might be able to contribute to successful drama work in the L2 classroom. By placing greater emphasis on the reasons why participation in drama and theatre activities boosts motivation, empathy and foreign-language anxiety in participants, L2 drama teachers will benefit by gaining richer insights into their students’ classroom experiences, which in turn should lead to enhanced opportunities to support their personal, linguistic and artistic growth.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Forschungsfonds Kulturelle Bildung. This research fund was a project of the Rat für Kulturelle Bildung e.V. The author reports that there are no competing interests to declare. The German interview data as well as the Qualitative Content Analysis table that support the study findings are available from the author upon request.