Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

Background

There is a global consensus that stimulating and fostering children’s creativity in education is crucial. Addressing creativity has become an imperative in educational policies and in school curricula internationally. School-based physical education (PE), and specifically the teaching area of dance, has been identified as an important pedagogical setting within which to develop creativity. Existing studies have suggested, however, that dance is seldom taught in PE in ways that acknowledge creative aspects of movement learning. Scholars have claimed that teaching pre-arranged dances with predetermined movement outcomes dominate dance teaching in PE. Furthermore, studies have asserted that the overarching regulative principles of PE and PETE that privilege sport skills and physical exercise hinder creative movement learning. Still, dance teaching is frequently seen as part of expressive dance teaching in PE and PETE and is regarded as holding potential in the area of education for creativity. Little scholarly attention has been given to how teacher educators approach creative aspects in dance teaching.

Purpose

This article aims to create insights into how PETE teacher educators understand and work with creative aspects of dance in their educational practice.

Method and theory

To address our aim, we investigate how teacher educators describe their teaching of creative aspects of dance. To do this, empirical material was generated through qualitative interviews with PE teacher educators from each of the PETE institutions in Sweden. The theoretical concepts of smooth and striated spaces and experimentation by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari were used to guide the analysis of how the PETE educators described their teaching of creative aspects of dance. Deleuze and Guattari developed a framework that concerned questions of creativity and newness. Despite this conceptual framework having not yet been used in dance education in PE and PETE, their writing fits well when analysing questions of creativity in an educational context.

Findings

We identified three major themes relating to creativity in the empirical material: (a) creative aspects of expressive dance; (b) challenges that teacher educators face when introducing movement exploration in expressive dance to their students, and; (c) the teacher educators’ pedagogical work with students.

Discussion

The results of this study show that teaching expressive dance can take teaching in PE and PETE in new directions. The results provide insights into alternative ways of teaching in these educational settings that can counter the dominant ways of teaching dance. Results suggest that teacher educators operate in various striated spaces that are shaped by expectations and conventions. In such spaces, the educators aim to create momentary passages of smoothening that open up for experimentation and the development of students’ creativity. The results also suggest that expressive dance in PE and PETE emphasizes creative movement learning through which students learn to operate within new and unpredictable situations.

Physical education (PE), and specifically the teaching area of dance, has been identified as an important pedagogical setting within which young people develop creativity. Creativity is thus an important aspect of schooling. Several studies have suggested however, that dance is seldom taught in PE in ways that acknowledge creative aspects of movement learning, and that students in physical education teacher education (PETE) receive insufficient training in the area of dance. Very little research has been conducted specifically on how teachers and PETE students understand the subject tradition of creative dance. The aim of this paper is to create insights into what PETE students express and experience in creative dance lessons where we specifically explore a pedagogy based on imitation. To address this aim, empirical material was generated through observations and logbooks during a pedagogical sequence of creative dance at a Swedish PETE institution. Deleuzian concepts of palpation and experimentation were used to guide our analysis. The results of this study show alternative ways of understanding what can happen when students participate in creative dance lessons. Our findings contribute to researchers' and teacher educators' understandings of students' experiences of working with spaces of creativity in PETE, and how these experiences can be used in teaching of creative dance.

Materialities play a crucial role in both the educational practice of physical education (PE), and in physical education teacher education (PETE). This article explores how, often unnoticed, materialities, human as well as non-human, play part in movement exploration in creative dance in PETE. The methodological point of departure is a pedagogical unit in creative dance enacted as part of an optional dance course in a Swedish PETE program where movement exploration was studied. In the unit, students and a teacher collaboratively explored movement and movement assignments, including the use of materialities. In order to understand how materialities ‘co-act’ in movement exploration during class, this article provides a post-anthropocentric and Deleuzian approach. The concept dancemblage is introduced both as a way to analyse materiality and as something to work with in pedagogical practice. Moreover, the article suggests that by recognising dancemblages in creative dance teaching, teachers can be given a tool to further learn about learners’ explorations and to become open to divergent understandings about what it means to participate in creative dance