Reflections on Teacher Education in Dance (1991)

Abstract

Written at a time of peak prominence of a curricular approach known as discipline-based arts education (DBAE), this work acknowledges that most arts educators seem either to see DBAE as a savior, able to move arts education beyond the fringes of the curriculum into the central core where it will not be subject to the funding cuts that seem automatic with each economic downturn, or else as a sure way to destroy the arts as a personally meaningful experience. Rejecting both of these responses, the author explores her ambivalence toward DBAE (what makes it attractive and what raises concerns) and discusses two underlying issues that affect any approach to arts education. One is the inequity of our social structure, which is replicated in and through schooling. The second is oppositional behavior, the phenomenon in which young people respond to oppressive situations in ways that give them some sense of self-affirmation and solidarity with others, but maintain the oppression. The piece culminates with implications for teacher education in dance. The author suggests that teacher educators need to go beyond thinking about content and methodology to thinking about how students develop their identity within the social structure and, indeed, what that structure is and might be. She calls for dance educators to work together with other concerned educators, with students and parents, to create and construct schools in which participants can find justice, identity, meaning, and community.