Dorothy Heathcote

Dorothy Heathcote MBE (29 August 1926 – 8 October 2011) was a drama teacher and academic who used the method of "teacher in role" as an approach to teaching across the curriculum in schools and later in other settings. She was a highly accomplished teacher of theatre and drama for learning and amongst her many achievements she defined and developed "mantle of the expert" as an approach to teaching. The key book she wrote with Gavin Bolton, that explains her Mantle of the Expert approach to Education, is called Drama for Learning (1994). The most significant previous book that explains her Drama approach was written by Betty Jane Wagner and was entitled Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium.

She was born in Steeton, West Yorkshire in 1926. After failing her eleven-plus exam she studied at the local elementary school, leaving in July 1940, a month before her 14th birthday, to work alongside her mother as a weaver in a woollen mill.

Heathcote worked there for five years and expected to stay there for the rest of her working life, but at the behest of her fellow workers, the mill boss, Charlie Fletcher, sponsored her to go and study drama at the Northern Theatre School in Bradford under the guidance of Esme Church. Famously Fletcher told her, as she left, that if it didn't work out there would always be three looms waiting for her at his mill.

At theatre school, Heathcote set her heart on becoming an actress. But at the end of her second year Esme Church told her she had no future on the stage, "My dear, you're very talented – quite fearfully so at times, but you are not the right size for your age, for the roles you can play… I think we have to face it." She then suggested teaching.

While on teaching practice Heathcote travelled around Yorkshire visiting schools and working with random sets of pupils. Using her training she invented drama from whatever opportunities presented themselves to her. She also started teaching evening classes at the Bradford Civic and directing amateur productions in local village halls.

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