What Can Education Learn From Dance About the Practice of Education?

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 2:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Engaging Visual Data, Inquiry, and Storytelling (Table 1)

Abstract

This paper builds on the scholarship of Elliot Eisner (2002), who addressed the relationship between education and the visual arts, by attending to the intersection between education and dance. Eisner (2002) identifies six properties of the arts in his article “What Can Education Learn from the Arts about the Practice of Education?” This paper develops five contributions from the art form of dance: pacing, body stillness, moving through space, moving together, and strong endings. The author frames this exploration from her lived experience as a modern dancer and teacher educator. Scholarship from choreographers and dance educators supports the argument that insights and practices from dance contribute meaningful interventions, remedies, and perspectives to educational praxis in the post-Covid context.

Author

• Miriam Hirsch, Yeshiva University