ERIC Number: EJ847383
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 9
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1529-0824
EISSN: N/A
Dancing across Disciplines: A 21st Century Model for Educational Reform in the Academy
Mantell-Seidel, Andrea
Journal of Dance Education, v7 n4 p118-126 2007
This article describes the Dancing across Disciplines (DAD) project (1998-2002), which the author conceived in the idealism of the potential of dance and music as the great levelers, in the promise of the celebration of difference through rhythm and song, funded by a $225,000, three-year grant from the US Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education. The project was sponsored by and housed at the Intercultural Dance and Music Institute (INDAMI) at Florida International University (FIU)'s Latin American and Caribbean Center in Miami where the author has served as founder and director since 1992. Fundamental premises of the DAD project are that movement is basic to all human experience and that knowledge is interrelated. Learning is most effective when it is interactive, collaborative, interrelated, and problem-based in the real world. A primary goal of the DAD project was to establish a model of interdisciplinary program development that can be replicated within the arts, humanities, social sciences, and related fields in other institutions of higher learning. Twentieth Century education has been constructed on the compartmentalization of knowledge into discrete disciplines. These disciplines have been organized into departments that function within institutions built upon hierarchical structures of power. Learning, for the most part, has been "teacher-centered" and focused on the acquisition of this compartmentalized knowledge. With the rapid development and flow of information technology and increasing globalization, it is incumbent to embrace a new integrative, interdisciplinary, intercultural 21st Century model. In this model, the learner is at the center; faculty teach in teams and function as "model learners"; information and knowledge flows freely across boundaries of departments, centers and institutes, the community, nation, and world.
Descriptors: Educational Change, Interdisciplinary Approach, College Curriculum, Dance Education, Curriculum Development, Latin American Culture
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Florida
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A