Participatory Drama and Sex Education: Fadehan International College Ile-Ife, Osun State – Nigeria Experience

The paper explored the effectiveness of participatory drama as a tool for teaching sex education in secondary schools. It again examined the use of improvised drama to achieve sex education at Fadehan International College Ile-Ife. It also investigated participatory drama as an aspect of theatre for development. This was with the view to facilitating the understanding of drama as a tool for teaching sex education. This paper employed both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary source comprised improvised drama presentation at Fadehan International College Ile-Ife, Osun State-Nigeria. A 30-minute improvised drama was rehearsed among some selected students and performed. Post production discussion was conducted to ascertain if the drama presented reflect the social reality of the students. Follow up and baseline approaches was adopted at the end of the workshops. Questionnaires were administered on 5 teachers and 50 students of the school to measure the effectiveness of participatory drama on sex education. The secondary source included books, journal articles and the Internet. The data collected was analyzed using Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed models. Finding showed that participatory theatre engaged the student intellectually, and contribute to their learning process. Findings also revealed that improvised drama reflected the students’ social reality and connect emotionally to the play presented to them, since it was put together from the students’ experiences. The paper further revealed that participatory drama presentation educates and passes vital information to them. The paper concluded that participatory drama, if well put together, could serve as an effective circulation of information and facilitates dialogue and exchange of ideas among the students.