WHO WE ARE Drama For Schools at The University of Texas at Austin What is DFS? For 20+ years, Drama for Schools (DFS) has partnered with schools to improve education through arts integration. DFS scales K-16 research-practice partnerships in local, regional, and global contexts within urban, suburban, and borderland communities. Our model is grounded in an arts integration practice called drama-based pedagogy (DBP), which uses theater techniques—like improvisation and role-play—to interweave academic, social-emotional, and aesthetic learning into teaching. Example DFS research-practice partnerships include work with The Austin Independent School District and Mindpop in support of the Creative Learning Initiative in all public schools in Austin, Texas. The U.S. Department of Education and McAllen ISD in IB elementary schools in McAllen, Texas. The U.S. State Department and U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo to create inter-ethnic exchange in schools and universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The U.S. State Department and U.S. Embassy in Warsaw to support civic education for Polish and Ukrainian educators. The University of South Australia, Carclew Youth Arts and South Australia’s Department for Education to increase Aboriginal approaches to numeracy in primary schools. The Taiwan Ministry of Education and National Chengchi University to increase progressive teaching methods in K-12 education Why Arts Integration? Arts integration engages participants’ experience, imagination, and bodies as key sources of knowledge and meaning-making. DFS uses a humanizing approach to arts integration that emphasizes the importance of (1) communities of practice, (2) embodiment, (3) imagination, and (4) story in teaching and learning. DFS’s approach to arts integration uses drama-based strategies to create a wide-range of arts integrated products including digital stories, theatrical performances, visual art installations and ‘Zines. We support teachers and students to think and work like artists in order to expand their potential to learn in both arts and non-arts subjects. “We focus on the culture of learning in educational contexts because we believe that how and why we learn are as important as what we learn.” (Dawson et al., 2025)
