Journal of Development Communication And Applied Theatre

Recently, private access to digital technology among young learners has been on the increase. This development has made teaching and learning more challenging both for the teacher and the learner. A survey carried out by Anambra State Broadcasting Service (ABS) in 2021 showed that more children preferred playing indoors with their mobile phones and laptops than participating in the traditional outdoor play. This entails that absence of digital technology devices in their learning environment will constitute distractions to the learning process. Observations have also shown that pupils in Theatre in Education classroom usually perceive TIE activities as recreational activities, hence the inadequate attention they attach to it. The need therefore arises for TIE instructors to key in to the technological upsurge in order to sustain the interest of their learners. This paper investigated the effect of digital integration in the TIE classroom on the attention and interest of the learner in two primary schools within Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. The study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 50 pupils from the two schools. The population is divided into two to form the experimental and control groups. Each of the groups was subjected to a pre-testbefore treatment to ascertain their homogeneity levels. The instrument used was listening comprehension test based on an improvised drama “The Reward of Wickedness”. The control group was exposed to storytelling using live performance of the story while experimental group was exposed using recorded clips of the same story. The result revealed that the experimental group performed better than the control group. The paper therefore concluded that Theatre in Education class will be better appreciated if digital technology is integrated into the process. The study hence recommended that TIE instructors should integrate digital technology in TIE classroom for optimal teaching and learning.

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