Weaving Social Foundations Through Dance Pedagogy: A Pedagogy of Uncovering

Abstract

Today’s dance educators enter classrooms populated by increasingly diverse students in which teachers’ pedagogical knowledge necessitates heightened understandings of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality. Uncovering taken-for-granted assumptions, dominant stereotypes, and educational structures that reproduce social inequalities in schools requires teacher preparation in social foundations of education. This qualitative study examined an undergraduate dance pedagogy course weaving social foundations content taught through a critical feminist pedagogical perspective over a three-year period. Narrative data were drawn from student (n = 59) writing assignments and discussion posts. Inclusion approaches for social foundations are presented. The range and diversity of student narratives amplify the challenge of, and the need for, the inclusion of social foundations in dance teacher preparation.

Notes

1. Institutional review board approval was obtained for use of student writing in this research.

2. For Unit Two readings see Asher (2006); Belenky et al. (2006); Gray (2006); Loewen (2006); McIntosh (1990/2006); Spring (2006); Risner (2005); and Wood (2006). For videos, see Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women (2010); People Like Us: Social Class in America (2001); and What a Girl Wants: How the Media Diminishes the Value of Young Women (2001).

3. All student names are pseudonyms to protect privacy.

4. For Unit Three readings, see Freire (1970/2006); hooks (1998/2006); Risner (2007); Shapiro (1998); and Stinson (1998, 2005). For videos, see Generation M—Misogyny in Media & Culture (2008), and Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity (1999).

5. In Unit One, students were asked to identify their favorite teachers. These descriptors come from those discussions.