Breaking silos: the effectiveness of a knowledge integration approach for dance curricula

ABSTRACT

The knowledge integration (KI) approach has been widely studied and recommended for improving the learning and teaching of science subjects (biology, physics, etc.). If the cognitive processes of learning, however, do not vary across domains, then what is helpful for science should also be helpful for dance. Choosing the teaching and learning of an improvisational and creative dance as a case on the far opposite end from the usual seated and normative science curriculum, one randomized-controlled trial and one before-after intervention trial were conducted to test if a KI curriculum is more effective than a common curriculum. Both trials found the KI approach significantly more effective in improving the performance of young dancers. As found, KI can be effectively applied to the curriculum design of breakdance, thus providing evidence to support the universality of this approach. It is implied that KI can, ergo, benefit learners of more subjects, including the artful ones, and need not be siloed as relevant only for science education.

KEYWORDS:

• Breaking
• education
• pedagogy
• curriculum design
• best practices
• knowledge integration

Introduction

‘To some degree all teaching is “across the curriculum”, as no subject area is taught in a vacuum and yet curriculum, timetables and teacher education continues to be siloed in discreet learning areas’ (Buck and Snook 2017, 321). The knowledge integration (KI) approach to teaching and learning was developed by science educators for science education. In this silo, the benefits of KI have been extensively discussed (Vexler 2021). For teachers, KI teaching tools, methods, and materials have been found conducive for curriculum design and implementation. For pupils, learning with KI has been found to result in deeper understandings – of biology, physics, and other science subjects – which translate to higher academic achievement scores. Summarily, use of the KI approach has consistently improved science education to the point of being, arguably, a best practice. Dance, art, language, physical education, and STEM education are siloed as if they should not contribute to each other, but it would be a shame if we did not investigate the potential for pedagogical best practice to cross domains.

Building on the legacy of constructivism (schema, mental models, etc.), Marcia Linn started promoting KI over 20 years ago (Clark and Linn 2003). She compiled pedagogical recommendations from studies on memory, cognition, and meta-cognition to present ways for helping new knowledge integrate with prior knowledge as pupils learn. With recent studies on body motion and math learning (Abrahamson and Sánchez-García 2016), dance and physics learning (Zohar et al. 2018), and arts and STEM learning (Halverson and Sawyer 2022), emphasizing how linked the silos can be, this original research proceeds another step forward by arguing that if learning is not siloed, then the study of effective pedagogies need not be siloed either. KI, as a best practice in science education, could also be a best practice for dance education.

While dance curricula are usually aimed at growing students’ knowledge about dance and abilities to dance, dance education is often dichotomized as pedagogy for technique and pedagogy for creativity. Educating dancers to learn and improve their technique can be more/less teacher-centric/student-centered (Schupp 2022), feminist (Barr and Oliver 2016), and/or culturally responsive (Melchior 2011), but scholars summarily describe the most common dance pedagogy as occurring when students watch, mimic, and practice the motions and choreographies presented to them by their teachers. Educating dancers to learn and improve their creativity must be done in an environment that encourages the innovation of new dance ideas (Rowe and Zeitner‐Smith 2011). Creativity is often developed with improvisational dance and by having students recombine moves from different dance genres into new choreographies. Our research joins the work of Ørbæk and Engelsrud (2021) who ‘focus on how to enable pupils to create dance’ (322). Complementarily to how Leandro et al. (2018) used a creative dance curriculum to help children better understand math, we explore how KI can be used to help children be more creative with dance.

Tsouvala and Magos (2016) call for dance learning to be more mentally stimulating and advocate for a curriculum that transforms frames of reference as it generates new knowledge. Such transformative learning requires cognitive processes of critical reflection, which is exactly what the KI approach was designed to do. Using KI to achieve transformative learning can help dancers more effectively link themselves with their world and express these links in motion.

‘Breaking’ is a very improvisational and creative dance (Li and Vexler 2019, 433). When youths are spinning, rolling, jumping, and miming to loud music, it seems as though the activity is greatly disconnected from the scene of a science classroom in which pupils are seated to listen, read, ponder, problem-solve, and discuss how the universe and its contents work. In science, there is usually one conventionally most-correct answer that can be reached with the tools we have at our current disposal. Conversely, in breaking, there are unlimited ways for each dancer to express, and all of them can be correct. There is no one conventionally most-correct way to break (Yang, Bai, and Wei 2022). Learning occurs in both silos, however, and the KI that is widely known as great for science could also be effective for breaking because the transformative learning that it possibly promotes could help give voice to imaginative expressions of links between previously compartmentalized knowledge (Tsouvala and Magos 2016).

This research thusly aims to inspire new discourse on theories of teaching, learning, and curriculum design. By applying best practice for the education of seated pupils to the context of dancing pupils, the hypothesis that approaches to classroom pedagogy are also beneficial to dance pedagogy can be retested, now from the specific angle of breaking. This study presents and explains an experimental breaking dance curriculum, then compares it to a conventional breaking dance curriculum, to give educators additional tools and insights for use in practice. This dual study that encompasses theory and practice contributes to both learning scientists and learning engineers (Kolodner 2023), also presenting the studied KI framework as a cognition-based tool for learning engineering. Lastly, suggestions for further study are proposed.

Background

On breaking

Breaking is a dance that originated in the hip-hop parties of New York during the early 1970s (Li and Vexler 2019), with participants who enjoyed forming circles and taking turns dancing in the circles to segments of music called ‘breaks’ (433). These dance circles were social activities; participants would play off each other’s ideas to present dance moves and concepts as responses to how the other participants have moved. When a friendly circle would become very competitive – with breakers who motivated each other to dance even more radically – the exchange would turn into a ‘battle’ (Li and Vexler 2019, 433). As breaking battles drew more attention, support for competitive breaking grew and ultimately brought this dance to the point in its history of becoming an Olympic event.

Koutsougera (2012) noted that breakers value originality and creativity. Essentially, breakers should not copy the moves of other breakers (Iacovino 2013), but instead tap into their own imaginations to develop personal styles and variations (Shimizu and Okada 2012). Battling is complex because breakers dance to any unfamiliar or unexpected music that is played for them while moving in response to the danced challenges of their opponents, so ‘the battle scenes of breakdance are highly improvisational’ (Shimizu and Okada 2012, 2322). Battles began as a natural occurrence within circles, then evolved into modern tournaments of purposefully scheduled battles that are judged by specific expert panels, with material prizes usually being awarded to the competition winners (Li and Vexler 2019). Unchanged by its sportification, olympic battles continue to be very improvisational and dancer creativity is still central (Yang, Bai, and Wei 2022).

Breaking education based on the practice of moves and choreographies is very popular, especially in dance studios (Vexler 2021). Learning of this dance originally occurred through ‘traceable educational lineage[s]’ (Schloss 2009, 52), in spaces where neophytes could model veteran community members (e.g. parties, jams, battles, and practice sessions occurring in parks, clubs, subway stations, community centers) and receive direct motor and verbal instruction from those who received it from those who originated this dance form and its culture. As breaking proliferated, however – and especially through video media (Li and Vexler 2019) – ‘emphasis on […] choreography’ became a ‘status quo’ of this dance education (Foley 2016, 63), in both formal and nonformal/informal contexts (Shapiro 2004). Many breaking educators, whose lineages often trace back to YouTube videos, pass on the moves and sequences as viewed online (Fogarty 2020).

It is very common to have the main contents of breaking classes be the learning and practice of certain dance moves, which are later sequenced together. Breaking learners, as they progress, are expected to use these moves and sequences as the ingredients for their own creative contributions. It is also commonly expected for learners of moves and choreographies to internalize certain aesthetics of motion through their practice, which many teachers hope will bring them to a level of skill that will eventually enable them to properly absorb more advanced dance and culture concepts.

On best practice in education

Hargreaves and Fullan (2015) described best practices as those that have been perfected for one decade or longer, repeatedly found highly effective, and are widely recommended by researchers in the field. Since researchers have begun suggesting ever-improving methods of pedagogy, innumerable scholars have studied myriad theories – each with their particular terminologies – but many aspects of various theories seem to overlap and parallel. When researchers of different approaches reach similar conclusions, the related recommendations can be acknowledged as best practices. Points of consensus supported by (over) a decade of study include recommendations that are frequently suggested by researchers of progressive pedagogies, dialogic pedagogies, constructivism, differentiation, cognitive science, social learning, significant learning, conditions of learning, learning environments, brain-based learning, and others (Vexler 2021). In 2005, Gilbert translated the thoroughly studied educational theories of ‘critical pedagogy, democratizing the classroom, and multiple intelligences’ (32) – among others – to dance pedagogy and summarized that ‘a balanced, in-depth curriculum’ should include a mix of ‘concepts (dance vocabulary, history, anatomy, etc.), technique (steps, patterns, fundamental movement, etc.), improvisation or choreography, and verbal or written feedback and reflection (by students and teachers) in every dance class’, with all components made accessible ‘in an age appropriate way’ (34).

A mix of best practices for science, dance, or any curriculum seemingly consists of recommendations for guided interaction (Freire and Ramos [1972] 2005; Hausfather 1996; Matusov 2009; Navaie 2018; Schunk 2012), which are fuelled by productive questions (Asterhan 2015; Cherbow and McNeill 2022; King 1994; Webb 2009). The curriculum also provides differentiation and diversity (Du Plessis and Bisschoff 2007; Garibay 2014; Gronseth and Dalton 2019), during active and experiential learning (Dewey 1938; Hulaikah et al. 2020; Prince 2004; Schwartz 2012), which is based on constructivism (Furberg and Silseth 2022; Johnson 2009) and considers the effect of prior knowledge (Gagné 1985; Sosa et al. 2018; Strangman, Hall, and Meyer 2004; Zertuche, Gerard, and Linn 2012). The Pygmalion Effect (Santini 2014), compassion (Lampert 2003), and positive feedback (Dweck 2015) should also be applied to create a student-centric environment that encourages, strives for, and celebrates the ongoing improvement of all pupils. Any curriculum aiming to enhance pupil motivation should also follow the recommendations of self-determination theory (Chu and Zhang 2018; Niemiec and Ryan 2009; Orsini, Binnie, and Wilson 2016) and make the learning more significant by incorporating all components of Fink’s (2003) taxonomy, as recommended by Deksissa et al. (2014), Jenkins (2016), and Fashant et al. (2019). Such an ideal mix, however, seems practically difficult to concoct. Luckily, its many ingredients can be organized within a KI framework, chosen because it inherently already includes many of these desired aspects and because following the research-based suggestions of KI theory is also identified as a best practice (Vexler 2021).

On knowledge integration (KI)

For over 30 years, educational researchers have been explaining how students come to class with certain notions of a topic and how the learning process is often a systemic adaptation of these notions until they come to resemble those that are normative (Vosniadou 2009). Even earlier in history, however, many forms of pedagogy already focused on defining, challenging, and reshaping old knowledge, as well as creating new knowledge through inquiry, experience, and problem-solving. KI is a relatively new term that can be used to explain what these earlier scholars were describing. Even recent studies on ‘sensemaking’ mention KI as a ‘good’ thing to do when learning science (Odden and Russ 2019, 197).

Within the field of pedagogy, KI refers to methods for dynamically ‘linking, connecting, distinguishing, organizing and structuring “models” of scientific phenomena’ (Linn 2000, 783). Recognizing the ideas that students already have when they come to class as ‘building blocks’, ‘instruction can invite students to distinguish among their models, to test them on scientific and everyday problems and to reformulate their ideas’ (Linn 2000, 783).

KI guidelines help educators create activities that promote knowledge integration. According to Linn (2000), ‘the first tenet’ of KI instruction ‘emphasizes building on what students know in order to enable students to connect new ideas’ (784). The second tenet – ‘making thinking visible’ – involves modelling processes that ‘integrate, restructure, reconsider and sort out’ knowledge, using diverse examples to ‘allow students to appreciate the range of paths to knowledge integration’ (787). The third tenet – ‘encouraging students to listen and learn from each other’ – stresses the building ‘on ideas from peers’ who ‘introduce new perspectives and motivate students to reconsider their own ideas’ (788). This creates the ‘productive classroom community’ (788) of learners in a collaborative environment that many educators advocate for. The fourth tenet – ‘promoting autonomy’ – involves establishing a ‘rich, comprehensive inquiry process that students can apply to varied problems both in science class and throughout their lives’ (790). To complete new knowledge integration, teachers should provide learners with ‘ways to connect personally relevant problems to class topics and, have opportunities to reflect and experience using a robust inquiry process in diverse contexts’ (791).

Davis and Linn (2000) highlighted how ‘knowledge integration requires students to expand their repertoire of ideas’, but also warned that ‘unless those ideas are reflected upon, they cannot be linked to and reconciled with current ideas’ (819). Additionally, reflection practice helps students become ‘autonomous integrators of their knowledge’ (Davis and Linn 2000, 819), especially when given productive reflection prompts (Davis 2003). Since KI was investigated in varied contexts, Davis (2004) later advocated ‘for the utility of the knowledge integration perspective’ even to learners of tertiary education undergoing professional vocational training (21).

Although KI recommendations are based mostly on findings from science education studies, KI has been accepted as a useful approach to pedagogy and lesson planning, so scholars continued to research its other dimensions. Chen and Bradshaw (2007), for example, examined the effects of question prompts, knowledge integration prompts, and problem-solving prompts embedded in a web-based learning environment and found that ‘students who received knowledge integration prompts had significantly higher scores in overall problem-solving performance’ (359). Zertuche et al. (2012) specifically studied openers, referring to the first learning activity of a class, and found that KI openers spurred ‘significant learning gains’ (79).

Recent studies on KI delved deeper into the details of specific directions. Fam et al. (2019), for example, focused on interactions that underpin successful knowledge integration in transdisciplinary research and proposed a more dialogic approach to encourage epistemological pluralism. Other scholars mapped progression levels of knowledge integration. Xu et al. (2020), for example, did so on the topic of momentum by identifying students’ understanding of the concept as ‘novicelike’, ‘transitional’, or ‘expertlike’ (1) to better help them ‘make the necessary connections within their knowledge structure, leading to a deeper conceptual understanding’ (1).

Consisting of guided interaction, inquiry, diverse ideas, diverse activities, and consideration of prior knowledge, KI-based pedagogical strategies also include elements of significant learning, active learning, and experiential learning. KI researchers also recommend peer collaboration, as well as competency development and autonomy promotion. Such recommendations link with the aforementioned self-determination theory (SDT), which details how learners become more autonomously motivated when their psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy are satisfied (Deci and Ryan 2008; Ryan and Deci 2019). SDT explains why application of the recommended KI practices positively affects pupils’ achievements from the motivational psychology point-of-view. As research on KI repeatedly finds the related guidelines for teaching highly effective, and tenets of KI-based instruction echo widely accepted best practices, this approach was chosen to form the framework with which an experimental breaking dance curriculum was constructed.

KI curriculum design

Forming the framework

KI studies usually present models consisting of four cognitive processes. Zertuche et al. (2012), for example, wrote that the purpose of each process is to ‘elicit’, ‘add’, ‘distinguish’, and ‘integrate’ ideas (85). Chang and Linn (2013) echoed that KI activities are designed to ‘elicit ideas and predict’, ‘add ideas’, ‘distinguish ideas’, and finally ‘reflect’ (863). Wang et al. (2019) also presented the ‘four processes of KI instruction to guide students’ deep understanding of knowledge’ (121) as ‘eliciting’, ‘adding’, ‘distinguishing’, and ‘sorting’ (121). Most recently, Gerard et al. (2022) presented a curriculum visualizer tool in which learning activities are coded as follows: ‘Elicit Ideas’, ‘Discover Ideas’, ‘Distinguish ideas’, and ‘Connect or Reflect’ (663). Although the names slightly differ, the concepts remain largely the same.

By synopsizing KI research (including Bagno, Berger, and Eylon 2008; Linn and Eylon 2006; Walter et al. 2018), we construe that the processes involve: (1) activating and identifying learners’ prior knowledge; (2) introducing and explaining new information; (3) analyzing the new information through categorization, visualization, summarization, and application, so to gain a better understanding of it; and (4) reflecting on how the new knowledge compares to the prior knowledge, how the new knowledge ties with knowledge of other contexts, and what one can do with the newly updated knowledge at one’s disposal. For professional development, with a readership of teachers and teacher educators in mind, we meticulously re-evaluated the slightly different phrasing that appears in previous KI studies and hereby propose naming the processes ‘elicit’, ‘add’, ‘analyze’, and ‘fuse’.

‘Analyze’ was chosen because it is a broad umbrella term. Processes of analyzing include cognitive activities of inspection, characterization, comparison, exploration, evaluation, summarization, and other manners in which pupils can develop better understandings of newly-added knowledge. ‘Fuse’ was chosen to emphasize the process of connecting newly-understood knowledge to the previously-understood knowledge, along with the metacognitive reflection on how this merging occurred, which results in a new understanding that is more than the sum of its parts. The framework used to organize the experimental breaking education curriculum is detailed in Table 1, along with the updated terminology that epitomizes each process, facilitates its accessibility to dance instructors (and all teachers of all subjects, in general), and eases application during practice.

Table 1. The KI framework.

Cognitive Process	Goals	Design Principles and Practices
(Definitions of ‘What’)	(Explanations of ‘Why’)	(Examples of ‘How’)
Elicit: prompting learners to articulate and explicate their existing knowledge	To induce awareness of pre-existing knowledge as a substrate for inspection and refinement	Focus current mental models by: Making thinking visible Wait time Delayed judgement Documented declaration (written, recorded, or drawn)
Add: providing learners with opportunities to encounter new knowledge	To enrich the existing repertoire with new knowledge for inspection	Transfer knowledge with: Reading assignments Peer instruction Observation Demonstration Experimentation
Analyze: steering learners to characterize and connect new and previous knowledge	To inspect and categorize new knowledge for assimilation into the existing schemata	Guide deep critical thinking via: Exercise Inquiry Debate Sorting Reasoning (inductive and deductive)
Fuse: spurring learners to fasten the connections in specific, adaptive, and conceptual contexts	To consolidate and associate the refined interpretation of the knowledge, striving for a new mental model	Integrate knowledge with: Reflection (meta-cognitive) Value recognition Translation to other (micro/macro) contexts

The four KI cognitive processes (visualized in Figure 1) liken knowledge to puzzle pieces. New pieces are mixed in with those already existing in the mind and different connections are considered. Once the mind knows how to fit the pieces well, science concepts come to make sense, and deeper understandings are gained. In breaking, however, once the mind knows how to fit pieces well, they can be creatively remixed to form even more knowledge combinations, such as new dance moves. As visualized, ‘analyze’ activities focus on how individual pieces fit, while ‘fuse’ activities review how the whole fitted puzzle ultimately looks. This visualization recognizes that KI – applied in pedagogy – is not always linear because certain activities might overlap (stimulating some aspects of multiple processes and not necessarily in the typical order).

Figure 1. Visualization of the four KI processes.

Image of puzzle pieces as a metaphor for knowledge datums in a person’s mind.

Read the detailed description of this figure

Image of puzzle pieces as a metaphor for knowledge datums in a person’s mind. A spotlight shines on 1 piece to visualize the process of elicitation. A new puzzle piece enters the mind to visualize the process of addition. A magnifying glass examines the new piece and how it can possibly connect to the previously elicited piece and its adjacent pieces. Once the new piece is in place, we see the fully fused puzzle now more complete than before.

Merzel and Walter (2020) referred to educators who design KI-inspired curricula and implement activities that stimulate pupils to undergo the four cognitive processes as ‘cognitive learning engineers’ (CLEs). This dimension of the teacher’s role pertains to planning, constructing, and providing opportunities for learners to be guided through these processes. This guidance often requires adjustment in real time – with potential improvements identified during reflection between lessons – to most effectively stimulate the acquisition, refinement, and integration of knowledge. Here, we allude to the broad meaning of knowledge that includes concepts, perceptions, ideas, skills, and methods, etc.

CLEs stand in contrast with traditional teachers who mostly just provide new knowledge and then assess how much of it was memorized or how much of it has become available for use. Teachers who enact project-based, problem-based, flipped classroom, jigsaw, discovery, dialogic, or other nontraditional forms of learning are also CLEs if they consider the cognitive processes that activities promote and fit such activities appropriately along their lesson plans. The KI approach is, ergo, very learning-centered (Blumberg 2004). Summarily, CLEs set cognitive goals – not just knowledge goals – to steer towards. By adopting the KI framework, all teachers can easily become CLEs. In the context of dance education, CLEs can facilitate the transformative learning that enables a more diverse, meaningful, and confident expression (Tsouvala and Magos 2016).

Using the framework

The KI framework can be used to design single lessons or entire curricula, which include large and small cycles (and epicycles) of the four cognitive processes. Activities pertaining to all four processes can fit into one worksheet or stretch over multiple class hours, and no matter if one is teaching or learning in progressivist, constructivist, democratic, dialogic, differentiated, critical, flipped, jigsaw, experiential, distance, or any other educational context, this model can always be tried. Specific activities of prior knowledge elicitation, new knowledge addition, new knowledge analysis, and final fusing can be designed and implemented according to any base educational philosophy – simultaneously staying true to the chosen pedagogy while still reaping the full benefits of these general best practices that are easy to remember and put to practical use by any teacher or autonomous learner.

Likewise, using KI as a guide for designing effective breaking dance lesson plans facilitates CLEs’ implementation of a breaking dance and culture pedagogy – full of discipline-specific contents and practical training methods – while simultaneously enjoying the advantages of following the best practices for education that improve both the teachers’ and the students’ experience. The framework can help structure lesson plans for teachers and, for students, the cognitive effects of KI cycles can provide more stimulating learning. Mixing more ingredients of best practices, such as guided inquiry, peer collaboration, and positive reinforcement into a breaking dance curriculum theoretically make it even more efficient and effective. A class on breaking musicality, for example, can consist of uniquely cultural contents and methods, simply structured to start with a recall of prior knowledge about musicality before introducing learners to the breaking dance concepts of musicality. That same class can also include a peer collaboration practice activity, followed by the application of the same knowledge for a different task and, during class, if CLEs make effective use of feedback, then the breaking education has been improved, but its essence has not changed.

According to Vexler’s (2021) literature review, KI has been most often studied in the context of science classes. Theoretically, KI can be used to identify student conception, prepare progression levels, as well as design and implement any class on any topic, but educators have yet to delve into deep discussion on this universality. This study, therefore, focuses on the creation, implementation, and analysis of a KI curriculum for dance, to test the utility of a KI framework for a silo that seems far removed from the science class.

Research questions

Since learning that is experiential, active, creative, interactive, collaborative, diverse, inclusive, differentiated, motivating, and significant – within a positive environment and guided by CLEs – should be highly effective, it is hypothesized that breaking dance education can be facilitated by the adoption of the relevant research-based recommendations. Guided by the KI framework, lesson plans can follow a model of learning cycles and epicycles to effectively promote the desired cognitive processes, so it is also hypothesized that a KI-based curriculum design for breaking can likewise improve the quality of the dance education.

To test these hypotheses, relevant research methodologies have been planned, trials have been conducted, and data have been analyzed. The research questions that guided this effort are:

1. Can KI recommendations be useful for designing a breaking dance curriculum?

2. Is a breaking dance curriculum informed by pedagogical best practice more effective than a common dance curriculum?

Methodology

Paradigm

To create an effective breaking dance education curriculum, cultural contents of motion, music, performance, interaction, and innovation can be engineered as activities that are organized within a KI framework. Exploring methods for improving educational outcomes, best practices can be applied to the implementation of this curriculum. A randomized-controlled trial (RCT) can then be used to quantitatively compare the experimental curriculum to a commonly prevalent one. RCTs ‘are increasingly used to evaluate programs and interventions in order to inform education policy and practice’ (Mayo-Wilson, Grant, and Montgomery 2014, 1), and this positivistic method is also very useful to the study of issues pertaining to dance education (Vexler 2020). Likewise, a trial that measures subjects’ before and after intervention differences can provide further data that could be useful for comparison. This study includes both kinds of trials, doubly able to examine the issue at hand. The RCT, first, compares differences between the control and experimental groups. The before-after intervention trial (BAIT), secondly, compares differences between one group’s pre- and post-intervention scores.

Ethics

In accordance with accepted guidelines for social science research in educational settings, all studies involving minors were conducted with the full assent and consent of participants, their parents, and their dance instructors. To maintain participant anonymity, confidentiality, and privacy, so as to only provide generalizations, data was analyzed as aggregate population averages of groupings by dance experience and groupings by control-experimental (cross-sectional) or before-after (longitudinal), never reporting results of individuals or studios. This research was approved by the Shanghai University of Sport and the local authorities of each city in which the dance studios were located. Travel to China and to these cities was approved by visas and other documents authorized by the national and provincial authorities.

Participants

RCT

This trial was conducted with a small sample of five volunteers from its experimental group. These five volunteers experienced the KI curriculum (see below) over the course of 10 weeks (one class of 90-min duration per week). Never having learned or practiced dance before, this was their only dance education experience. To compare their average rate of improvement with the common (C) curriculum average rate of improvement, 15 pupils that learned the C curriculum for 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years were identified to constitute the control group. Therefore, this RCT included a total sample of 20 participants, as detailed in Table 2.

Table 2. RCT participant details (at trial’s end).

Group	Curriculum	Average Experience	Average Age	Sample Size
Experimental	E	9.60 lessons (σ = 0.49)	10.4 (σ = 1.02)	5 pupils
Control 1	C	41 lessons (σ = 3.25)	10.8 (σ = 1.17)	5 pupils
Control 2	C	87 lessons (σ = 3.90)	11.4 (σ = 1.36)	5 pupils
Control 3	C	150.80 lessons (σ = 7.25)	11.6 (σ = 1.62)	5 pupils

Kliziene et al. (2018), in their RCT study on the effects of exercise on adolescents, compared pupils of similar age, so our RCT’s participants were also selected to keep the age range as small as possible. Although pupils with more dance experience tend to be older, an average age of 11.05 years and an average age range of only 1.2 years were achieved.

The 15 control group pupils lived in different areas and practiced breaking under the guidance of different teachers (six total teachers). Control group teachers were recruited from studios in China that we observed to be teaching the C curriculum. Despite breaking’s tradition as a creative dance, a pilot study surveyed 100 dance studios around the globe and found that 76 of the breaking teachers in the studios teach the C curriculum, with its teacher-centric approach that emphasizes the repetitive learning and practice of breaking dance techniques. Recognizing the C curriculum as the most common curriculum in many parts of the world, 20 C curriculum teachers located in 20 different Chinese cities were contacted and asked to participate in our study. Six of these 20 teachers agreed to participate. At least two students of each teacher were selected for study, considering suitable age and experience.

The five experimental group pupils were taught by the first author in a dance studio in the city of Qufu, China. Eight pupils learned the E curriculum in this studio with this teacher, but two members of the group were not of suitable age for their data to be compared in this study. Assent and consent were not provided by another child and his parents, so his data is also not included in this study. Out of the eight pupils who enjoyed their first ever dance experience learning with this teacher in this studio, our study analyzes the data of five participants.

It would be too costly and time-consuming to guide dozens of participants through a larger RCT. Finding dozens of pupils who never learned dance but wish to commit to a 10-week breaking education program is also difficult. The study of a larger sample was, therefore, conducted as a BAIT for pupils who were already participating in a breaking education program.

BAIT

Each intervention lasted 15 consecutive days (during the summer vacation), for 90 minutes per day. Ninety-seven pupils at eight studios experienced the E curriculum intervention. Instructors at these studios reported usually providing pupils with a typical C curriculum education, and observations of their classes corroborated these reports. The first author travelled to teach the E group at each location, where pupil ages ranged from 7 to 16 years. See Figure 2 for more BAIT sample details.

Figure 2. Intervention participants’ dance experience, by setting (N = 97, μ = 1.69).

Bar graph shows eight dance studios with pupils whose dance experience ranges from less than 1 year of learning to over 4 years of learning.

Read the detailed description of this figure

In the BH dance studio, 2 pupils had less than 1 year of dance experience, 2 more had between 1-2 years of dance learning, and 3 pupils were well into their second year of dance learning. In the M dance studio, most pupils completed their first year of learning and were continuing to learn. Some pupils at M studio were already well into their second and third years of learning. The E dance studio had 11 pupils whose experience ranged from 1 to over 4 years. NS studio had 27 pupils who have been learning between 1 and 3 years of dance. The 6 pupils in GD studio all had less than 3 years of learning. 11 pupils in the HG studio all learned together despite some having less than 1 year of learning and others having over 4 years. 16 pupils at SC studio mostly had between 2 and 4 years of dance learning. 8 pupils in studio XY mostly had less than 2 years of dance learning.

A previous survey identified 70 dance studios in China that use the C curriculum. These were all contacted to participate in our study. The span of one summer vacation, however, limited our scheduling to eight studios in three different cities. Each city is in a different Chinese province, so pupils in the west, south-east, and north-east of China experienced the E intervention. In each city, we sampled at least one studio in its center (urban) zone and at least one studio in its periphery (suburban or rural) zone. The diverse age ranges, years of dance experience, and geography of the 97 pupils help to generalize our study’s findings.

Curriculum details

The C curriculum centers on the practice of single moves and choreographies that are to be uniformly performed according to instructors’ aesthetics. During practice, therefore, instructors point out flaws in performance to help pupils perfect the routines. Beginner-level contents usually include typical breaking moves, such as the ones generally known within the breaking world as ‘Indian steps, salsa steps, knee drops, sweeps, six steps, kick outs, CC kicks, baby freezes’ (Vexler 2021, 59), as well as ‘headstands, backspins, shoulder freezes, and windmills’, perhaps also ‘a basic sitting thread’, practiced repeatedly by a class arranged ‘in neat rows’ (59). Lessons are often peppered with warm-up exercises, fitness drills, static stretching, and other types of practice, but the C curriculum is characterized by its main focus on practicing the instructed dance oeuvres. This curriculum falls under the category of ‘steps-only’, which Gilbert (2005, 34) so disagreed with, and exemplifies the ‘status quo’ (focused on choreography) that Foley (2016) wished to ‘combat’ (63). As a common form of breaking education (Li and Vexler 2019; Vexler 2021), pupils taught this curriculum compose the RCT control group.

The KI curriculum, on the other hand, focuses on breaking dance and culture concepts. Pupils are taught ways of understanding music, exploring body motion, and sharing their feelings, communications, and ideas as dance moves. This curriculum poured pedagogical best practices into the KI lesson planning framework to create one unit that included activities of prior knowledge elicitation, new knowledge addition, analysis of the new knowledge, and fusion of the new knowledge within pupils’ pools of total knowledge. The KI unit’s instructor taught no certain moves or choreographies, using only conceptual prompts to help pupils develop their own moves and choreographies. Specifically, pupils are asked questions, offered cultural/historical/conceptual information, and encouraged to explore any moves of their own choosing, as elaborated in Table 3. Question prompts for the KI curriculum are further elaborated in Table 4.

Table 3. Expression of KI theory within the E curriculum.

KI Process	Prompt	Activities
Elicit	1. Presentation of what students know about breaking dance and musicality; 2. Discovery of what motions students can think of and perform.	1. Asking pupils to define breaking; 2. Asking pupils to describe the music they hear (and its sounds); 3. Having pupils share various moves of their imagination and choice; 4. Having pupils try matching any moves of their liking to certain sounds in the music.
Add	1. Attention to what peers have shared; 2. Attention to safe practice; 3. Attention to new breaking knowledge.	1. Sharing more examples of ideas and moves; 2. Sharing more examples of various sounds within different music tracks; 3. Providing guidelines for safe practice; 4. Discussing breaking dance and culture concepts.
Analyze	1. Experimentation with and practice of new moves; 2. Matching of moves to music and sound; 3. Performance of new moves within sequences of improvisational dance.	1. Autonomous practice; 2. Circle games; 3. Battle games; 4. Group practice creating sequences with peers.
Fuse	1. Creation of original moves, variations, and combinations; 2. Application of knowledge when dancing; 3. Reflection on performance and practice.	1. Solo and group performance; 2. Discussing practice and performance; 3. Discussing the value and importance of various dance and culture concepts. 4. Free circle; 5. Single and team battles.

Table 4. E curriculum queries.

Example Questions	KI Process	Response Type
What is breakin’?	Elicit	Verbal
What do dancers do?	Elicit	Verbal
What is the most important thing that dance can’t exist without?	Elicit	Verbal
What sounds do you hear in this music?	Elicit	Verbal
What motions can you[r {body part(s)}] do?	Elicit	Motor
What do you think of the dancer who always repeats the same moves?	Add	Verbal
What do you think of the dancer who always dances in the same height/space/direction?	Add	Verbal
How do you feel about watching another round of dancers performing similar moves?	Add	Verbal
Can you dance one move on the snare, another move on the bass, then freeze on the horn?	Add	Motor
Who has an idea for a move to share with the class?	Add	Motor
How would you dance to this segment of music?	Analyze	Motor/Verbal
What move can you do to express that sound?	Analyze	Motor
How can you dance a toprock move as footwork?	Analyze	Motor
Who can share a way to combine their favorite moves?	Analyze	Motor
What elements of motion are in this three-step?	Analyze	Verbal
Can you dance a different variation of the move we just saw?	Fuse	Motor
In a circle, if someone dances like this {short combo}, what moves could you use to play off their dance?	Fuse	Motor/Verbal
How do you feel about your performance?	Fuse	Verbal
How did you practice last week, and do you plan to practice differently this week? Why?	Fuse	Verbal
If someone dances a six-step to backspin to baby freeze combo, how do you smoke them in battle?	Fuse	Motor
Is it important to practice flipping moves? Why?	Fuse	Verbal
How did watching the old footage help you improve?	Fuse	Verbal

KI curriculum activities include listening to drumbeats, understanding rhythm, isolating various sounds or lyrics in a piece of music, exploring the use of different body parts, and exploring dance at different posture heights and directions – also with different degrees of spatial change – and then sharing dance with circle and battle games. Instead of teaching predetermined moves or choreographies, the KI curriculum instructor provides positive feedback to pupils who explore diverse ways of expressing their own dance ideas and offers suggestions for safer and more efficient training. Hoping to apply best practices, develop creativity, and provide the ‘balanced, in-depth’, and ‘age appropriate’ dance pedagogy (Gilbert 2005, 34) that researchers of breaking education fervently promote (e.g. Yang, Bai, and Wei 2022), this curriculum begins with the practice of simple motions on the sound of the drum snare in a looped instrumental track and ends with pupils participating in a battle tournament with intricately mixed music that they have never heard before.

Assessment

Pupil performance was measured using the OUR System criteria, often used to measure dancer performance during professional breaking competitions (Shimizu and Okada 2018). This system includes five scoring categories of Foundation, Originality, Execution, Dynamics, and Battle. Foundation includes points on musicality, Originality includes points on creativity, Dynamics includes points on movement difficulty, Execution includes points on confidence, while Battle includes points on the competitive exchange between dancers. The highest score that any exceedingly exceptional champion dancer can receive is 25 (five full points for each of the five categories).

Since not many professional judges were yet familiar with the new Olympic assessment criteria, it was decided to use the OUR criteria, which have already been stable and official for many years. Unfortunately, no data on OUR System internal validity is publicly available, with no such testing ever reported. Vexler’s (2021) review on breaking noted how quantitative research on breaking competition is still new and too scarce. Fortunately, the OUR System criteria, having been used to score hundreds of battles in dozens of tournaments, are very externally valid.

Videos of the RCT participants during breaking competition were scored by five professional breaking competition judges, all over age 26 and with at least 5 years of judging experience. The 20 videos – of pupils that none of these RCT judges have ever met – were presented in random order, titled A to T, to allow for blind scoring. Before they began rating, all judges were presented with the OUR criteria (see supplementary material), provided with explanations on each category, and given opportunities to ask for further clarifications. All responded by expressing their familiarity with the OUR categories.

Videos of the BAIT participants dancing in battles against peers were recorded twice (before and after). Some of the 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games breaking tournament judges and judges from other world championship breaking events were asked to watch the videos and score the performances. Five judges responded. As official Olympic breaking event judges and judges of other top-tier tournaments, the scores of these knowledgeable veterans are most able to reflect the pupils’ actual competitive performance. Before they began rating, all judges were presented with the OUR criteria, provided with explanations on each category, and given opportunities to ask for further clarification. All responded by expressing familiarity with the OUR categories. Due to some pupils being absent, poor filming angle, or pupils unwilling for their videos to be shared, only 187 (out of 194 total) videos were uploaded for scoring (Table 5).

Table 5. Number of videos scored, by dance experience.

Years of Dance Experience	Pre-intervention (N)	Post-intervention (N)
0–1	11	11
1–2	39	43
2–3	26	19
3–4	15	16
4+	6	1

None of the BAIT judges have ever met the BAIT participants or their instructors, and the videos were presented in random order, titled as alphabetical letters (A to HP) to allow for blind scoring, so the judges had no way to know which videos were pre-intervention or post-intervention nor which student had how many years of breaking experience. To facilitate the scoring work, all videos, a Google Docs scoresheet, and the OUR system standards were posted on a private Facebook page (Figure 3). Information and documents were also shared via Messenger because such is convenient when researchers and judges are dispersed worldwide. With videos on Facebook, judges can watch and score anytime using any smart device.

Figure 3. The study’s Facebook page.

Screenshot of the Facebook page showing a link to the score sheet, further explanations as comments on that post, and a list of videos titled A, B, C, D, etc.

Read the detailed description of this figure

Screenshot of the Facebook page showing a link to the score sheet, further explanations as comments on that post, and a list of videos titled A, B, C, D, etc. The videos are marked as having been ’watched’ or not by a viewer.

Analyses

Score statistics were calculated with SPSS 25. The RCT was analyzed cross-sectionally, testing for significant variance between control and experimental groups’ scores, while the BAIT was analyzed longitudinally, with repeated measures testing for significant variance between the one groups’ pre- and post-intervention scores. Univariate comparisons targeted the scores of each OUR System category and then each participant’s total OUR score.

Findings

RCT

Regarding the RCT, scores ranged from 1 to 3. The average Foundation scores for C group pupils with 1, 2, and 3 years of practice were 1.4, 1.4, and 1.6, respectively; the average Originality scores for C group pupils with 1, 2, and 3 years’ practice were all 1; the average Dynamics scores for C group pupils with 1, 2, and 3 years’ practice were 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6, respectively; the average Execution scores for C group pupils with 1, 2, and 3 years’ practice were 1.2, 1.2, and 1.4, respectively, and the average Battle scores for all three C groups were 1. The average total scores, by year, were 5.8, 6, and 6.6. Variance testing of judge scores per category, as well as average total scores, found no significant difference (p > 0.1), indicating suitable interrater reliability.

The KI learners scored significantly higher, F(3,16) = 9.02, p < 0.01. Pairwise comparisons (Tukey HSD post hoc analysis) found all E group scores significantly higher than all three C group scores. Even with their 3 years of practice, the C3 group still scored significantly less than the E group novices (Q > 0.479 and p < 0.05). The average E group Foundation, Originality, Dynamics, Execution, and Battle scores were 1.8, 1.8, 1.8, 1.6, and 1.8, respectively, summing up to 8.8. These scores, visualized in Figure 4, indicate that the participants who experienced the short KI unit displayed better competitive performance than participants who experienced up to 3 years of the C curriculum.

Figure 4. Average RCT video scores, by group.

Bar graph showing all E group scores as higher than all C group scores.

Read the detailed description of this figure

Bar graph showing all E group scores as higher than all C group scores, even higher than the scores of those who have been practicng C curriculum breaking for 3 years.

BAIT

Regarding the BAIT, univariate tests revealed that all average scores for each category, as well as the average total OUR scores, were significantly higher post-intervention, all F(1,933)>30 and all p < 0.01 (Table 6). Bonferroni post hoc pairwise comparisons showed that the post-intervention average Foundation, Originality, Dynamics, Execution, Battle, and total scores have all improved significantly (p < 0.01) by 0.43, 0.56, 0.22, 0.35, 0.44, and 2.03 points, respectively. Variance testing of inter-rater reliability found no significant difference between the judges’ scores, as all provided similar average totals for the performances that they saw – Before F(4,480) = 0.45 and After F(4,445) = 1.49, both are p > 0.1.

Table 6. Pre-post intervention variance test results.

Dependent Variable	F	Sig.
Foundation Scores	101.45	0.00
Originality Scores	218.11	0.00
Dynamics Scores	30.08	0.00
Execution Scores	85.88	0.00
Battle Scores	113.32	0.00
OUR Totals	211.62	0.00

Figure 5 shows BAIT pre- and post-intervention total average scores based on pupil dance experience. Those with 1–2 years’ experience improved the most (gained 2.84 points) and those with 2–3 years’ experience improved the least (gained 1.47 points). The 15-lesson KI curriculum gained pupils, on average, over two points. Comparatively, average improvement per year for the C curriculum does not even reach one point. Looking at the difference between pupils who experienced C education, scores curiously dropped during and after the third year.

Figure 5. Pre-post intervention mean overall scores.

Graph shows the before scores are all less than the after scores for dancers with less than 1 year, more than 1 year, more than 2 years, and even up to 4 years of dance expereince.

Read the detailed description of this figure

The before scores of those with less than 1 year of C dance learning, over 1 but less than 2 years of C dance learning, 2-3 years of C dance learning, 3-4 years of C dance learning, and over 4 years of C dance learning received total average OUR scores of 6.69, 7.59, 9.52, 9.32, and 9.26, respectively. The total mean after scores for these pupils were 8.64, 10.43, 10.99, 11.28, and 9.20.

All research findings and statistical tests found the KI curriculum to be more effective. According to the RCT scores, the E group pupils had an average total of 2.2 points over the C3 pupils. BAIT scores also show a similar average improvement of 2.1 points post-intervention. Both RCT and BAIT found that the E curriculum more efficiently improved pupils’ performance whether they have never before practiced dance or if they already have been experiencing the C curriculum for over 2 years.

Discussion

Theoretical implications

This study supports the claim that pedagogical best practices are universal (Vexler 2021). For math, science, sport, or dance, theories of education need not be researched only as discipline-specific. Applying educational theories to different disciplines naturally requires discipline-specific adaptations, but KI – often used for science – has demonstrated its utility in the teaching and learning of dance, so there is evidence to support the claim that the same cognitive processes lead to improved performance in both science and dance.

Complementarily, Zohar et al. (2018) showed how dance can be used to facilitate the learning of physics. They described how embodied pedagogy, involving motor skills and creative physical motion, ‘manifested deep conceptual and affective relations with the subject matter’, which can help develop students’ ability to ‘solve problems by engaging in imaginary sensorimotor simulation of phenomena under inquiry’ (Zohar et al. 2018, 67). As pedagogies of physical motion (such as embodiment) link with the teaching and learning of science, this study links a pedagogy of science education (KI) to the teaching and learning of dance. With the KI learners having demonstrated better performance, including enhanced creativity, it seems that their learning was transformational (Tsouvala and Magos 2016), as intended, by helping the dancers integrate new ideas into their dance.

With motion and cognition tied closer together, it has become clearer that body functions are integral to learning. Azevedo and Mann (2018) highlighted the importance of gestures, touch, tool manipulation, and other motions during learning. Ma (2016) likewise presented physical changes of space and perspective as important for learning, such as how conducive to geometry learning it can be to go outside with various resources, arrange them into shapes, and practice understanding those instead of the usual small flat shapes that appear on papers in classrooms. Furthermore, Solomon et al. (2022) found that embodying physics made its learning accessible to more pupils. Such studies synopsize humanity as learning better when bodies are moving.

Conversely, huge corpi of sports, gymnastics, dance, and other movement culture literature include studies of training for better motion. Apart from these, however, stands this current study on breaking that, due to breaking’s creative nature and its potential to be so personally diversified, views it as a dance to be learned instead of only trained. This stance entails suitability for exploring the study of embodiment pedagogies in the opposite direction – examination of how learning processes and experiences can more effectively produce body motion. Finding that science approaches can facilitate dance learning completes the two-way street that began to be built by those (such as Zohar et al. 2018) who found that dance approaches can facilitate science learning.

With this connection of such seemingly separate silos, one could theorize that there are two distinct levels. The first-level pertains to cognitive processes, which are common to all learning, regardless of discipline. The subordinate level is discipline-specific, wherein teachers engineer these cognitive processes to advance pupils along their courses of study. Sometimes, effective means of facilitating learning are interdisciplinary (Bear and Skorton 2019). As Buck and Snook (2017) wrote, the integration of ‘arts across the curriculum’ can enhance ‘learners’ achievement within both the arts and the other subject areas’ (332).

Alongside implications in favor of interdisciplinary education, perhaps using dance+science hybrid curricula, it is implied that dance can hold more prominence in schools. Zooming into implications for scholastic dance development, it is important to understand the hows and the whys. First, let it be known that common dance pedagogies are very standardized. For talent division, many organizations assess student abilities to perform exact dance routines according to their standards (Qi 2018). Green (2003, 99) wrote of ‘a pedagogy that is prevalent in dance studios’ as:

one in which teachers do not necessarily attempt to help students find meaning in their dance experiences and empower them to own their own bodies. I am referring to a more conservatory approach to dance education, a type of pedagogy that exists in universities and colleges too, particularly in ballet and modern dance classes. It is an approach that gives power to the teacher to manipulate students’ bodies. This traditional pedagogical approach is more closely associated with an unchanging way of teaching dance […] a practice that moves from repressive control to the implementation of a system that requires subjects to be observed and corrected through the ritual of dance technique classes.

McCarthy-Brown (2009) stressed the need for a more student-centric dance education that would be more culturally relevant, inclusive, and diverse. Breaking, taught according to the KI curriculum, can provide this more desirable dance experience because it recognizes that learning processes need not produce similar results for all pupils. Prior knowledge differences vary new knowledge integration, so integrated knowledge diversely manifests as dance. KI tenets thusly align with desired breaking and dance education qualities, among other pedagogical best practices.

The KI curriculum allows students to express their agency and develop their unique competencies in a socially supportive environment. According to SDT, when students’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are satisfied, they will be more autonomously motivated to learn and their performance will improve (Occhino et al. 2014). Gonzalez-Dehass (2016, 427) emphasized independent learning as a vital 21^st century competency, stating that it is ‘an important role of education’ to encourage ‘students to be independent and self regulated learners’ by ‘cultivating an adaptive motivational foundation’ in the ‘early years of a student’s academic career’ (427).

While the C curriculum could keep students dependent on teachers to provide them with both knowledge and guidance, the KI curriculum can foster dancers who become increasingly able to continue developing by themselves. This can be a virtuous cycle; as neophytes’ unique dance develops, their engagement with the dance becomes increasingly satisfying of their needs, so they might continue to enjoy a motivated long-term improvement. Such linkage aligns with claims that student-centered pedagogies inspire self-regulated life-long learners (Sungur and Tekkaya 2006). Theoretical links between KI and SDT recommendations are, ergo, also highlighted. The curious C pupils’ drop in performance scores after their third year of breaking learning could be due to their age progression into adolescence, but it could also be due to their motivation and understanding of the dance having been damaged by repressive rituals. Such damage could be less likely to occur if their dance education used KI from the beginning.

The use of the KI framework for both activity (micro) and curriculum (macro) design might be generalizable as effective for any pedagogy. With benefits found in science and dance, it can also be taken to art, history, math, music, language, and other directions. As research continues to report KI advantages, all educators of any discipline can explore how it possibly improves the quality of their curricula, because this study found evidence to support a claim of KI’s universality.

Practical implications

Since the KI curriculum was found to increase performance scores more efficiently, coaches and policymakers can now rethink the kind of breaking dance education that they want to provide. Breaking dance teacher certification could also benefit by including aspects of the KI curriculum, such as its emphasis on pedagogical best practices and their application within dance education settings.

Contrary to how C curriculum teachers typically focus on what is not yet performed well, KI curriculum teachers praise all attempts to perform. Positive reinforcement stimulates learning (Schunk 2012) and, as an inclusive and differentiated pedagogy (Stanford and Reeves 2009) – not imposing any certain aesthetic – the KI curriculum encourages students to find their own ways to excel. By mixing pedagogical best practices and the KI approach to curriculum design with breaking-specific contents, teachers can provide more than just steps.

One teacher role, as cognitive learning engineer (CLE), entails building pupil competencies by stimulating the cognitive processes that achieve curriculum goals. Merzel and Walter (2020) defined CLEs as engineers of learning opportunities who are responsible for constructing the knowledge and skills of students by designing, executing, and controlling – in real time and with potential improvements based on retrospection – the cognitive processes pupils experience, in accordance with the goals of the teaching. This terminology aptly describes KI curriculum teachers. Conversely, C curriculum teaching only engages students in rote learning.

The repetitive practice of choreography, as a sort of rote learning, is considered passive, without meaningful construction and application of knowledge. Such surface learning focuses on memorization instead of understanding (Biggs and Tang 1999). From their perspectives, teachers who lean on such rote learning of breaking moves and choreographies could be trying to instil the repertoires, conventions, and techniques that facilitate improvisation with fellow breakers, but it cannot work as long as it continues to lack any development of affective sensibilities for in-the-moment responding (Leander, Carter-Stone, and Supica 2023). In the specific case of competitive breaking, a curriculum that supports deeper learning develops students’ abilities to freestyle and be creative with their dance. Typical breaking oeuvres can be taught and practiced, during ‘add’ processes, but curricula should also provide more cognitive activities. Contrary to how the C curriculum’s repetitive imitation stifles the creativity so crucial to competitive achievement (Yang, Bai, and Wei 2022), the KI curriculum includes many stimulants of ‘creative productivity’ (4). The mix of ingredients that compose the KI curriculum also produces the balanced and culturally focused pedagogy that dance educators, in general, and breaking educators, in particular, so fervently advocate for (e.g. Foley 2016; Gilbert 2005; Li and Vexler 2019). Echoing the idea that ‘traditional models of dance training culture might not be appropriate to develop the creativity of Urban Dance especially’ (Chappell and Hathaway 2018, 23), the KI curriculum answers calls for more enriching cognitive processes in dance education, not only for learning’s sake, but because such also seem to improve battlers’ competitive performance. Implicitly, the cognizance, learning, and creativity skills that the KI pupils developed in the studio could also translate to their success in other silos of learning and life (e.g., Abrahamson and Sánchez-García 2016; Halverson and Sawyer 2022; Leandro, Monteiro, and Melo 2018).

This study demonstrates the utility of applying research-based best practices from core-curriculum classes to creative dance classes. The KI approach, developed for science class, seems effective also as a framework for designing more cognitively stimulating dance curricula. As breaking education curricula goals might include Olympic talent cultivation, avenues to improve effectiveness – such as emphasizing teachers’ work as CLEs – should be explored. Armed with these findings, we can now call on education scholars to break the silos and try more (seemingly interdisciplinary) studies that demonstrate how research-based learning and teaching recommendations that were previously associated with a certain subject can help those who are engaged in other subjects. Certain tools, like the KI framework presented here, could be universally helpful in all subjects. If so, studies should not be trying to find the best practices for learning one certain discipline, but instead be trying to find the best practices for learning anything.

Zooming back into the niche of breaking dance education, quality can be improved if teachers and teaching certification would share more effective pedagogies, instead of just focusing on typical motions and oeuvres. This study is a novel contribution to this endeavour – not only describing a specific curriculum design and teaching methodology but also providing empirical evidence to support claims of effectiveness.

It is implied that even beginner pupils can, and perhaps should, dive right into the learning of breaking concepts – from the very first lesson – with no need to first be able to dance any certain typical moves or sequences. The preliminary practice of moves and choreographies seems less effective, especially over time, not necessarily facilitating future understandings of concepts. Translated to other arts, it is interesting to ponder if, for example, learning of sketching, painting, design, music, sculpting, story-writing, architecture, etc., could be more effective if started from concepts instead of from a repetitive practice of rudimentary/fundamental skills. Likewise, as embodied pedagogy can help make physics learning more accessible (Solomon et al. 2022), KI pedagogy can also perhaps make dance learning more accessible, and encouraging such physical activity is crucial for youths’ healthy development.

Schupp (2022) recommended pedagogies that encourage the reflection of personal values and aesthetics as linked to each dancer’s culture and community. Schupp (2022) wrote that best practices in dance education tend to ‘unintentionally privilege Eurowestern constructs’ (2) and called for new sets of best practices for dance pedagogy to be adopted. Dance teachers can become CLEs and implement better dance pedagogy by adopting KI as one of their new best practices.

We recommend adding KI to professional development because CLEs can use KI to reshape humanizing dance education experiences by promoting student agency, inclusive contents, and an environment in which ‘students integrate their knowledge’ to enrich their dance (Schupp 2022, 12). Students and teachers can feel boxed in traditional perceptions of dance (Tjersland and Borovica 2023), so adopting ideas that come from other disciplines, such as the KI approach, can help break down the mental and societal silos that limit us.

Discourse on dance education and pedagogy has been largely dichotomized. Concerning knowledge about dance and knowledge for dance, structuring curricula and implementing lessons with the KI approach can seemingly help both. Using KI to learn from textual, visual, and audial media – as often done in science classrooms – can help one grow their knowledge of dance just as it has been known to help one grow their knowledge of science. Our current study findings of increased performance scores show that KI can also help grow one’s knowledge for dance. Concerning technique and creativity, our study findings of higher scores for all performance categories imply that KI can improve a dancers’ creativity and technique (which are most mirrored by the ‘originality’ and ‘execution’ scores, yet higher ‘foundation’, ‘dynamics’, and ‘battle’ scores also reflect improvements of technical and creative skills).

This study presents a KI way of teaching creative dance, but even teachers of ballet technique classes could perhaps utilize KI to first present what the pupils already know about a certain move, add new knowledge about that move, and continue to activities that help analyze and fuse the new knowledge. Self-educators can also organize their own learning in accordance with KI to hasten their progress. Our study has demonstrated how useful KI can be for curriculum design, teaching, and learning of breaking, specifically, but a broader view sees KI as possibly conducive to any dance pedagogy and an even broader view sees KI as possibly conducive to the teaching and learning of anything. This study of breaking has broken some of the walls that previously separated between arts and science education silos.

Recommendations for future study

Aside from replicating the RCT and intervention with more and varied modifications, the data of battle win-loss ratios between pupils of different groups could be analyzed to reach new conclusions regarding curriculum quality. Battle data can be gathered from interventions or RCTs, but such is also available to researchers observing dancer battles, in authentic settings, when they compete in breaking tournaments. Interviews with tournament judges, including those who created the judging systems, could further inform research on competitive breaking and its related educational aspects (Fogarty 2019).

Furthermore, it is recommended to study models for breaking dance education quality assessment. According to such models, curricula would be defined as of higher or lower quality. Pupils’ performance could then show if the education deemed better really returns better results. Our study findings imply that the most common (C) curriculum is of low quality, and those wishing for better quality breaking pedagogy should explore the less common E curriculum. Assessment, however, need not be focused solely on competitive breaking performance as the measure of curriculum success, because not all dancers aspire to compete in tournaments, so other criteria for assessment – perhaps based on (SDT) need satisfaction – can be explored. In the same vein, replications can include a control group, a KI group, and a third group – whose curriculum follows a different hypothetically effective approach – to continue the quest for discovering the best breaking education practices.

Regarding the KI framework’s universality, on both micro and macro levels, teachers of myriad disciplines can adopt it to design classroom activities or entire curricula and then analyze the outcomes. Such research can include combinations of KI with other pedagogical best practices and context-specific best practices, in attempts to find the most ideal combinations for any certain program’s pedagogy. Later, new pedagogical discoveries can be introduced to teacher training, professional development, or other policies to see if and how they ultimately affect pupils sitting in schools or dancing in studios.

Reaching beyond the limitations of this study, research should compare the effect of the teacher with the effect of the curriculum. Although the C group participants had different instructors, the same one instructor taught the E curriculum (for both the RCT and the BAIT). This instructor qualitatively shares that the use of KI greatly increased the coherence of his teaching and seems to improve his dancers’ learning, so he continues to use this approach even to this very day. While the biggest difference between how instructors interact with their students and guide their improvement could be the curriculum, with its distinctive methods, teachers’ varying voice sound, physique, clothing, (body) language, dance movement, time invested in building relationships, and other characteristics could also affect pupils’ learning. Future study should, ergo, test for differences between teachers by having multiple instructors – each teaching a different KI group – so that different classes’ C group and KI group scores can also be compared among each other. Use of structural equation modelling or multilevel (nested) modelling (possibly a multilevel SEM) could test the effect of the teacher, which possibly mediates or moderates the effect of the curriculum. Such study would tie research to broader questions of teacher–curriculum relationships and how both (teacher and curriculum) collectively affect learning outcomes. For this study, specifically, it was adequate for one experimental curriculum teacher to answer the research questions, as it was found that KI recommendations can, indeed, be used for designing a curriculum for dance unrelated to the sciences. Also, a breaking dance curriculum informed by pedagogical best practice can, indeed, be more effective than a common dance curriculum. The limitations and extents of these possibilities, however, must continue to be explored.

Lastly, enhanced interdisciplinary education could perhaps be achieved if future studies attempted to not only use dance to teach other disciplines through embodiment (e.g. Zohar et al. 2018) but also use other disciplines to teach dance. The practice of breaking and learning of sociology can perhaps be mutually conducive, as dance education itself can be closely tied with many matters of cultural, social, and even civic subjects. This is especially true with breaking, as myriad values and philosophies are inherent to its culture (Li and Vexler 2019). Such studies can help educators redesign interdisciplinary activities to achieve greater impact. When trying to tie the learning of breaking with the learning of civics, for example, using KI to avail a focus on social concepts of dancing together in circles and battles should hypothetically – based on this study – be more effective than attempts to ingrain civics ideas by learning and repeating dance steps. Oppositely, classroom learning of social values such as how to celebrate each other’s differences, and be united by our differences rather than divided by them, can end up translating to breakers who confidently express more personal character, creativity, and respect when they step out of the classroom and into the circle.

Conclusion

The wish to provide teachers with a study-based framework to design and implement their curricula has inspired this research on KI in breaking dance education – a topic never studied before. We set out to answer two research questions with two trials that were conducted to offer more insights for both dance education, KI research, and learning in general. One research question pertained to the hypothesis that a curriculum informed by pedagogical best practices would more effectively cultivate new breaking talent. Research on KI portrayed it as a pedagogical best practice, but such research was most often conducted in the context of scholastic science classes, so another research question asked if KI recommendations can be useful to the design of an artful dance curriculum (seemingly unrelated to the sciences). The hypothesized more ideal breaking dance curriculum was thusly created using the KI approach.

Statistical testing of data from one RCT and one BAIT found the KI curriculum to be significantly more effective than the common curriculum. This has been interpreted to mean that research on scholastic core curriculum pedagogies can also inform the improvement of dance education. We join the ranks of others who have been breaking silos by demonstrating that learning of arts, sciences, and body motion are inherently linked. By emphasizing the processes of learner cognition, dance instructors can become CLEs whose engineered lessons and courses achieve better results, just as the science class CLEs have been achieving. Those wishing to improve their breaking dance teaching and learning can do so by trying the KI approach detailed in this manuscript because the pupils who experienced the experimental KI pedagogy achieved significantly better performance scores within relatively little time. These findings, their implications, and recommendations for future research have been discussed. Terminology for KI curriculum design has now been updated and educators – not only of improvisational and creative dance – can now utilize the proposed KI framework for ongoing efforts to improve their curricula.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yonatan Asher Vexler

Yonatan Asher Vexler, MA, is a b-boy and member of numerous organizations that promote hip hop and street dance culture. He is also a research assistant at two universities. His research focuses on dance, pedagogy, policy, education, sociology, training, and Olympic sports. His daily work is done in community centers, dance studios, universities, colleges, schools, and outdoor public spaces.

Avraham Merzel

Avraham Merzel, PhD, is a researcher of education. His studies focus on STEM pedagogy, including the teaching and learning of energy, quantum physics, and the interplay of physics and mathematics in physics lessons. He also studies teachers’ training and professional development. In addition, he is a high school physics teacher and leads a professional learning community of physics teachers.

Rong Zhi Li

Michal Walter, PhD, is a researcher of education. Her studies focus on the professional development of physics teachers, the incorporation of personalized teaching and learning platforms, and curriculum design. She also studies knowledge integration theory applications in practice and helps in the development of digital resources that promote STEM learning.

Michal Walter

Rong Zhi Li, PhD, is a professor who teaches and conducts research mainly for the Chinese Table Tennis College. His research focuses on international sports history, events, training, policy, and the Olympics. Aside from table tennis, he also studies the transnational popularization and subsequent evolution of wide-spreading physical activities and cultures. Breaking catches his attention as a Western sport that grows rapidly in China, as happened with table tennis, because the sportification of breaking is proceeding right now in front of our eyes.