Dance Articulated

Editorial. The hard, but rewarding, work of collaborating across sectors - dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations

Tone Pernille Østern — 2023-12-21

This special issue is motivated by a firm belief that cross-sectoral educational collaborations are needed and have value. In response to the recognised gap in research addressing the possibilities and challenges inherent in cross-sectoral educational collaborations, we initiated this special issue. We invited research contributions focusing on dance within cross-sectoral educational collaborations, encompassing schools, teacher education institutions, and other formal or informal educational institutions as the contextual backdrop.

As we initiated the special issue, we pondered around a myriad of questions: how do teachers, teacher educators, and/or teacher candidates organise, develop, implement, and carry out collaborations with external choreographers, professional dancers, and/or dance teachers? How do collaborative planning, pre-workshops among participants, or other preparatory actions before the actual school, teacher education, or other educational institution practice support transformational mutuality? How and why do obstacles, friction, and tension arise, and how are they solved in dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations? Furthermore, how might dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations critically challenge stereotypical views on knowledge or uneven power distribution among participants in different positions in cross-sectoral collaborations? How do collaborations with other arts fields influence, support, or complicate dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations? Additionally, we contemplated the integration of dance and technology in cross-sectoral educational collaborations and how these two domains can complement each other. The eight peer-reviewed articles included in the special issue touch on and contribute knowledge in response to these, and more, questions.

We warmly invite readers to actively immerse themselves in these articles, as each presents a unique viewpoint and profound insights into the complex landscape of dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations. In doing so, we hope to ignite a passion for this important topic, inspiring transformative and collaborative approaches to dance education.

Troubling dance education from a Nordic policy perspective: A field with an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral potential

Charlotte Svendler Nielsen — 2023-12-21

This article seeks to create an overview of existing structures for dance education in the public educational systems and of cross-sectoral collaborations in the Nordic countries Denmark, Norway and Finland. A case study methodology of the field of dance education of each of the countries is used for an analysis that seeks to better understand the different kinds of structures we find in these countries. We trace ways of organising, dividing, and defining the field based on different types of documents such as policy documents, white papers, webpages, reports, research articles, and curricula. The analyses of case descriptions result in insights into which opportunities or lack of opportunities structures give for children and young people’s long-term engagement with dance as an arts educational practice, how well the systems for educating teachers seem to support dance in education, and, looking to dance education in New Zealand, there is a discussion about what might be ways forward to strengthen the field in the Nordic countries.

“It ended up being a bit too advanced”- discourses on dance collaborations in a Swedish holistic educational landscape

Märtha Gripson — 2023-12-21

It is well-known that art and cross-sectoral collaborations are needed and have value in the educational sector. The aim of this article is to describe and problematise beliefs, norms, and experiences that are articulated in descriptions of collaboration surrounding dance teaching in educational contexts in Sweden. This article rests on social constructionist perspectives and is informed by discourse analysis to problematise the experiences of collaboration regarding dance education. The empirical material consists of focus group interviews with dance teachers, pre-school teachers, and school-age educare center teachers. Analysis is focused on the discourses that occur in the empirical material, where different educators describe their experiences of collaborations. Three discourses emerge in the result: first, dance as an eraser; second, the dance teacher as inspirer and physically competent; and finally, ‘Jack in the box’—dance as collaboration? The conclusion drawn from the results is that cooperation is common, but collaborations are not. If one intends to develop shared values, alignment, and equal power relations, collaboration is required. The importance of combining dance competence with pedagogical competence adapted to the specific educational setting is essential.

The potential of multiprofessional collaboration in integrating dance in early additional language education in primary school

Kaisa Korpinen — 2023-12-21

This article explores how a multiprofessional team collaborates in integrating dance in early language education. It is based on the team members’ experiences and reflections as they combined dance with the teaching of Swedish as an additional language in grade 1 in a Finnish primary school. The project was framed by the notion of embodied learning understood as the holistic engagement of learners within their socio-material surroundings. Following socio-material approaches to education, the study examines the team of a dance teacher, a researcher, and the school’s class teachers as an assemblage and multiprofessional collaboration as events that cross subject boundaries. The data assemblage encompasses audio-recorded, embodied, and material documentation of weekly meetings, in which the team co-designed the activities. The analysis maps the collaborative process of integrating language and dance through the post-qualitative approach of embodied writing. It highlights the designed practices, the challenges and the possibilities of the collaboration, and the conditions for successful collaboration. Co-designing dance and language integrated pedagogy occurred in events of disciplinary crossings and in entanglement with the process of becoming an assembled team. These insights illuminate multiprofessional collaboration as an entry point to embodied and cross-disciplinary pedagogies in early language education in primary school.

Arts, crafts, and dance - developing aesthetic learning processes in arts and crafts through a general teacher education and higher dance education collaboration

Tone Pernille Østern — 2023-12-21

The context for this research is a collaboration that took place in 2021 between the general teacher education study program in arts and crafts at the NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University College of Dance Art in Oslo, Norway. The higher dance education institution visited the general teacher education institution with the workshop KROM, an anagram for body and spaces in Norwegian. KROM was developed at Rom for dans (Dancespaces) and is a well-established workshop project that has been touring schools in Norway widely. The KROM workshop visiting the teacher education institution became an educational design research project guided by the question: How can a workshop collaboration with the topic “body and spaces” carried out by an educational design team from a primary and secondary teacher education institution and a higher dance education institution produce insights about aesthetic learning processes in arts and crafts? An educational design team consisting of six members from the two involved institutions designed, carried out, and researched the project. Central insights offered as an outcome of the collaboration are as follows: the quality of the collaboration in the design-team itself is of crucial importance; active connections to the traditions and pedagogies of the hosting subject, in this case arts and crafts, need to be made by the hosting teacher educators in order to support the teacher candidates’ learning; and, dance engages specifically the elements of body, space, embodied collaboration, and play in arts and crafts aesthetic learning processes.

An artful encounter with dance – empowering future teachers in cross-sectoral collaborations with the Cultural Schoolbag as an example

Gunhild Brænne Bjørnstad — 2023-12-21

This article explores how teacher candidates articulate their experiences of a cross-sectoral collaboration with dance students in creating an artful encounter for pupils in primary schools in Norway. Through an arts-based inquiry, using clay as material of expression, groups of teacher candidates were filmed while creating a sculpture representing their processes. The creation process and sculpture were in turn analysed, revealing that the teacher candidates considered themselves to be scaffolding the artful encounter with the children in school, providing them with greater confidence as key personas in these artful encounters, and a better understanding of the creation of art. The analysis regarding the dramaturgy of the collaboration revealed that the teacher candidates experienced being co-creators in the project when they could focus primarily on unfolding the educational potential of the artful encounters.

"Det er jo dans, det her også ...? " – Styrking av dans i kroppsøvingslærerutdanningen i tverrfaglige og tverrsektorielle profesjonsfelleskap

Kristine Høeg Karlsen — 2023-12-21

Denne artikkelen undersøker kroppsøvingslærerstudenters arbeid med skapende dans ved hjelp av interaksjonsanalyse. Formålet er å øke kunnskapen om hvordan studentene benytter ulike semiotiske ressurser for å formidle betydning gjennom dans som uttrykksform. Studien inngår i et større tverrfaglig og tverrsektorielt samarbeidsprosjekt mellom faglærere ved en lærerutdanning i Sørøst-Norge og dansepedagoger ved Senter for dansepraksis (SANS), som tar sikte på å forbedre utdanningen av kroppsøvingslærere. Studentene fikk opplæring i skapende dans gjennom et sanselig didaktisk design som involverte bruk av digital teknologi (iPad), for å uttrykke et narrativ gjennom egne multimodale dansetekster. Ved å analysere videodokumentasjon av to økter der studentene skapte dans til den multimodale danseteksten, viser vi hvordan studentene utforsket og utnyttet ulike semiotiske ressurser for å formidle betydning gjennom en uttrykksform som de hadde begrenset kjennskap til, nemlig dansen.

Dance-Musicking: Non-prescriptive dance, music, and dance-music engagement in cross-sectoral collaborative teaching and learning

Ronald Kibirige — 2023-12-21

This article explores dance-musicking as a non-prescriptive process of interdependent engagement with dance and music in their teaching and learning contexts. The author asks how this engagement challenges and disrupts uneven institutional hierarchies, and how it cultivates a more holistic understanding of, and access to the knowledge embedded in the dancing and dance-musicking processes. The discussion is informed by the author's dance, music, and dance-music practice oscillating between formal and non-formal settings, and continuous research on the same in East Africa. It is premised on a critical observation that within the twentieth century, dance and music knowledge has continued to grow more into an institutionalized form than it has into a communal one. The article pivots the dance-musicking process as a cross-sectoral collaborative engagement for teaching and learning dance, music, and dance-music discussed on both micro and macro levels of artistic (co)existence. As such, it highlights core elements of 'communitarian' teaching and learning approaches, which have not favourably evolved alongside formal education. This situation is attributed to a lack in cross-sectoral complementarity between the formal and non-formal dance, and music knowledge bases —complementarity that works well in transforming higher education institutions into intellectual resources that positively influence, and that are influenced by their communities.

Better together: toward a joint pedagogy in folk dance and music

Petri Kauppinen — 2023-12-21

The pedagogy and practices of folk music and folk dance are firmly separate in Finland. Furthermore, the expertise in these fields focuses heavily on folk music and dance as performing arts rather than communal activities. The situation has led to the differentiation and fragmentation of professional and amateur activities. To address this gap in knowledge and practice, the KanTaMus project intends to present a pedagogical model for a joint participatory folk dance and music pedagogy devised through practice-based development work. This article explains the basic premises of the model under development. We first discuss the legacy issues crucial in Finnish folk dance and music and its pedagogy. Secondly, we outline the values, pedagogical principles, and prior development work we see as fundamental to our work. Martin Seligman's PERMA theory serves as an overall canvas for our development work. The basic elements of the theory, i.e., positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, work as a basis for our model, which emphasises embodied presence, inclusion, and interaction as crucial features of a shared learning situation in dance and music. Finally, we present the pairing process as a specific example of the application of the model.

The article and the KanTaMus project have been supported by the European Social Fund.