Abstract:

The present Study stems from the need to demonstrate the benefits that Dramatization has in the context of College Education, and more specifically in the Teacher Training in Obligatory Secondary and Upper Secondary School Education.

A total of 85 students from the Teacher Training in Obligatory Secondary and Upper Secondary School Education, from the University of Alcalá, have been the sample of our Study.

The Dramatization has been used as an educational resource within two compulsory subjects of the Master’s degree, carried out transversally, during the first semester of the present academic year. These subjects are respectively: Society, Family, and Education and Learning and Personality Development.

The Dramatization has consisted in the simulation of a Judgment to the protagonist of a successful Spanish series, called Merlí, which has been broadcasted in different channels and digital platforms in the national and international territory.

This series is about a Secondary Education teacher who works in a public school in Barcelona, who, with his non-otrthodox way of giving class,captures the attention of the students towards his subject. This series has been chosen as the basis for a dramatization in the classroom, where the accused is the protagonist of the series and where the students have played the roles of the different characters of the series. The "Trial to Merlí" has been only the last piece of the process of preparing for the activity. In fact, at the beginning of the semester, students were asked to watch the series throughout the course of the semester, in parallel to what was being worked on in class. Jointly, a Blog/forum was created where the students could comment on the chapters of the series.

Students had also 2 classes of preparation for the trial, where they chose the roles that they wanted to interpret and were divided into work groups in order to develop their characters and prepare the trial.

At the end of the semester, the students represented "the trial to Merlí", in a fictitious court, located in the Faculty of Law of the University of Alcalá.

On January of this year, individual and group interviews were developed for a total number of 11 students, who voluntarily offered to participate in the study.

The qualitative results, obtained through the analysis of both group and individual interviews, show the following:
The students interviewed have acquired social, communicative and psychological competences throughout the teaching-learning process, carried out throughout the preparation of the Dramatization in the Classroom. Through the Dramatization, they have acquired new resources and tools to use in the classroom when they will be teachers and school counselors in the context of Secondary Education.Students have recognized a clear improvement in their coordination and teamwork skills, in addition to their emotional competencies; Students feel the need to encourage dramatization in the classroom at all stages of education.

Training in Obligatory Secondary and Upper Secondary School Education, has proven to be successful and necessary for the future development of the teaching work on the part of the students and for the acquisition of social, psychological, educational and communicative competences on their part.

Keywords:

Dramatization, cooperative work, social competences, psychological competences, educational competences and communicative competences.