Visibilising the invisible: three narrative accounts evoking unassessed graduate attributes in dance education

Abstract

ABSTRACTDance holds a unique place in academia. The creative, embodied, collaborative activities typical to dance learning offer fresh insight to cross-disciplinary literature on the graduate attributes – both visible and ‘invisible’ – all graduates from a given institution are expected to hold. This article presents findings from the research project Making the Invisible Visible. We engage narrative methodology to present a series of amalgam characters reflecting specific ways in which ‘invisible’ graduate attributes are embedded in pedagogies, student-teacher relationships and student understandings of their professional skills. Firstly, we aim to create narratives that evoke the complexity of ‘invisible’ graduate attributes in tertiary dance education. Secondly, we respond to the question; How might specific ‘invisible’ attributes be made explicit and embedded in tertiary dance pedagogy? We present a framework to articulate how ‘invisible’ attributes can be made explicit and embedded in tertiary Dance Pedagogy. This framework may be utilized beyond the field of dance to generic tertiary fields of study.