Rethinking Inclusion in Drama Pedagogy: Developing Indicators Within a 4R Holistic Framework

Contemporary research increasingly distinguishes between narrower and broader understandings of inclusion. Another perspective adopted in the recent literature is the 4R justice framework, which examines inclusion through four interrelated dimensions of justice—redistribution, recognition, representation, and relationality. Building on this framework, the study argues that, among pedagogical approaches associated with inclusive education, drama-based pedagogical approaches can be meaningfully interpreted across all four dimensions of justice and within both narrower and broader understandings of inclusion. However, the analysis reveals a key limitation in the existing research on drama-based pedagogical approaches: inclusion-related processes are predominantly examined in a fragmented manner, with individual dimensions addressed in isolation rather than as part of a coherent multidimensional construct. In response, the article proposes an integrative analytical framework for examining inclusion-related changes associated with drama-based pedagogical approaches. This framework is explored empirically through a preliminary set of teacher-informed indicators derived from the descriptions of inclusive practices associated with the use of drama-based approaches, based on written submissions collected through a structured form and follow-up semi-structured interviews with teachers. The proposed analytical framework thus adapts the existing 4R conceptualisation for the analysis of inclusion-related changes associated with drama-based pedagogical approaches and provides a preliminary operationalisation through practice-based, teacher-informed qualitative indicators that may inform future instrument-development aimed at systematically investigating inclusion in drama-based pedagogical approaches. The findings further suggest that the most critical challenge may concern representation, which emerged as the most difficult dimension to operationalise through teacher-informed indicators.