We Kept Bumping Into One Another: Preservice Teachers' Self-Reflection of Spatial Visualization Abilities Through Choreographing and Performing Group Dance

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Arts and Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

In this research, we investigated preservice teachers’ learning experiences through a series of geometry-themed dance activities. These pedagogical tasks were designed to examine the limit of participants’ spatial visualization abilities from the transition between (1) fully referenced positions—the choreography on grid worksheet and (2) minimum referenced positions—the dance performance on playground. The overall findings indicated preservice teachers in all assigned dance teams encountered challenges, namely, disorientation, due to deprivation of physical location references, to accomplish the learning tasks in the beginning phase. Nevertheless, the challenge of disorientation were solved among most dance teams through different strategies by adding elements to build location references.

Authors

• Song An, The University of Texas - El Paso

• Daniel Tillman, The University of Texas - El Paso

• So Jung Kim, The University of Texas - El Paso

• Josefina V. Tinajero, The University of Texas - El Paso