Education and Dramatic Art critically examines the origins and development of the drama in education movement. This new edition brings the argument up to date and takes account of ten years of political and educational change in its proposals for an alternative educational agenda. The first section of the book traces the origins and developments of drama in schools in the context of changing political times. The claims of prominent practitioners are examined and the responses of the drama in education movement to the slow erosion of the principles of progressive education are analysed. Part two examines the developmental and pedagogic claims of drama in education. Theories of knowledge and meaning, claims about authenticity, and assumptions about school drama's supposed radicalism, are all called to account. The final part shows how drama education can escape from the narrowly focused classroom methodologies of the past to stand alongside the other arts as a fully fledged curriculum subject with its own, distinctive body of skills, knowledge and understanding.