Learning through Dancing

Learning through Dancing aims to develop dance practices for use in primary to tertiary school classrooms.

While dancing is a form of physical education or extracurricular activity in schools, the utility of dance as a learning aid and process remains underexplored.

Continuing my PhD research on dancing as a way of thinking, Learning through Dancing extends my insights on dance as a way of making sense with the senses to teaching methods for studies other than dance.

With research on arts in education at Harvard University, public action at Bennington College, plus facilitation workshops at Movement in Practice and The Movement Arc and fieldwork at National Dance Institute bringing dance to public schools, I will combine various knowledges and techniques to innovate learning and teaching strategies for equity and inclusion.

The aim is to develop ways of integrating and activating students’ bodies, minds, and selves in embodied, enactive, and holistic learning processes.

This research applies the sensorimotor, emotional, creative, and social skills advanced by dancing to improve progressive education models such as Universal Design for Learning, Student-Centered Learning, and Critical Pedagogy.

By sensitizing people to themselves, each other, and their environments in agential and empowering ways, dancing can help students become more active within and responsible for their learning, and help teachers reach students who may lose interest in more sedentary learning paradigms.