In 2000, teaching about culturally diverse dances from contextual perspectives became an expectation for New Zealand schools with the inaugural The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum. Responding to the new curriculum the author, as dance lecturer for K-12 generalist teachers attending a seven day in-service dance and drama education course, faced…

This is a viewpoint that discusses the criteria applied for an objective, academic assessment of dance education and comments upon the status of dance education both in secondary education schools and professional dance schools in Greece today. The viewpoint concludes by proposing the need for an independent undergraduate dance degree to be…

This paper describes a teaching model, "The Teaching Artist", developed to address the pedagogical and cultural divide between the traditional dance teacher and the dance artist who teaches: traditionally, one teaching about dance and the other, teaching through dance. The "Teaching Artist" model was developed through the "Q150 Project." The "Q150…

The purpose of this study was to assess the physiological and psychological impact of contemporary dance classes on adolescent females. Fifty-five females, aged 14 were recruited from secondary schools in the UK. The intervention constituted a program of contemporary dance classes with an emphasis on building muscular strength. Full ethics…

Teachers' narratives, when viewed as a form of critical inquiry, can allow teachers to tell and retell stories from their evolving points of view and contextual positions, with the goal of better understanding the complexity and depth of the experiences that have informed their teaching. This narrative, which weaves the voices of the author and…

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effect of a cross-curricular programme for the teaching of traditional dances on the attitudes and perceptions of Greek pupils in the First Year of Secondary School. At the outset we anticipated that the programme would have positive results in terms of: (a) the pupils' enjoyment of the activity;…

This paper details the early stages of research which, through exploring new methodological and conceptual spaces, is being carried out with the aim of contributing to redressing the balance between creativity and performativity, in secondary level dance education in England. The Dance Partners for Creativity Research (DPC) Project is a…

There is a lack of research examining practitioners' beliefs, understanding and attitudes towards the teaching of dance in England. In order to address this gap in the evidence, this paper reports on a recent survey of dance practitioners (n = 198) living and working in Yorkshire, the largest county in England, on what they consider to be the most…

The post-apartheid Dance Studies curriculum in South Africa is attempting to offer school learners both an education and training in dance as an art form. The outcomes-based syllabi are intended to ensure that learners come to respect the diversity of South African society, and therefore a range of dance styles and genres are offered in order to…

The General Certificate of Education (GCE) A Level Dance specification, offered by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), is the only GCE course of study in the UK that focuses solely on dance. Acquisition of subject specific knowledge is a feature of its aims, while assessment, as constructed by its objectives, is assumed to be a…

Regardless of geographical limitations, community partnerships can flourish through videoconference technology. This article presents iDance Arizona (iDA) research as a tool for supporting the teaching and learning of dance in rural settings. This research focuses on university/K-12 collaborations and examines the pedagogy of videoconferencing in…

With few exceptions, dance, and traditional dance in particular, has received little attention regarding the development of technological tools that can support teaching. The WebDANCE project was a pilot study with a European scope that aimed to experiment with the development of a web-based learning environment for traditional dances. The final…

In England the government's specialist schools initiative is transforming the nature of secondary education. A three-year longitudinal case study tracked the effects of specialist performing arts college status on two schools. The sites were a mainstream school drawing pupils from an area of high social deprivation and disadvantage, and a special…

This paper introduces the reader to Wild Child--a CD-ROM resource for dance education (Schofield & Smith-Autard, 2001) and aims to disclose how research undertaken by the dance educator (author of this paper) in partnership with multimedia expert, Jim Schofield, has led to advances in pedagogy. Focusing on the teaching of dance form, the paper…