Encountering challenges in teacher education: developing culturally pluralist pedagogy when teaching dance from contextual perspectives in New Zealand

Abstract

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 the need to expand course content from emphasising Eurocentric creative dance to pedagogy underpinned by cultural pluralism. This article provides some background to and description of the challenges encountered in a two-part learning experience that aimed to foster understanding of teaching about dance contextually, in theory and practice, as underpinned by culturally pluralist pedagogy. Data collected from the teachers, in a doctorate inquiry completed in 2010, informed a reflective evaluation of the two-part learning experience. In discussing some of the challenges encountered during the course, this article has significance for teacher education in countries that have multicultural profiles.