Dancing with cultural difference: Challenges, transformation and reflexivity in culturally pluralist dance education

Abstract

In this article I describe aspects of an ethnographic inquiry in which I investigated the challenges faced by some New Zealand teachers when teaching about culturally different dances, an expectation of the Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2000, 2007). Until relatively recently dance education in New Zealand emphasised Eurocentric creative dance, and teaching about culturally different dances presented new challenges for teachers. Some of the teachers, for instance, were challenged by their lack of skills in cultural dances other than creative dance. Transformative learning and developing a reflexive view of dances from different cultures are pedagogical concepts that underpin the ANZC and I position them as key to exploring some transformations that could inform teaching about dances contextually, in theory and practice, for both learners and teachers. My main aim in this article is to inform and support the development of an ethical and sustainable culturally pluralist pedagogy in which our responsibilities to the people whose dances we study are an important and timely concern (Ashley, 2012b). I also depict this topic as providing substantial potential for further research.

Intersecting Cultures in Music and Dance Education

“…Not to mention, the philosophies and approaches of dance education imported from England and then later United States brought particular ideologies and practices. Dance education is a western construct that can often clash with indigenous Pacifi c understandings and aesthetics of dance (see Ashley 2013 ). Another postcolonial conundrum is that indigenous dance in New Zealand and worldwide have experienced deliberate oppression during early colonial-Christian missionary times.…”

Reflexive turning in culturally pluralist pedagogy for dance education: A refractive prism of understanding

“…The teachers on the in-service course were participating in a two-part learning experience consisting of a video critique exercise followed by a peer teaching presentation assessment. The teachers critiqued a video (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2002) of teaching about dance from contextual perspectives to a primary school class (Ashley, 2013b). They then proceeded to apply the understandings that they had developed during the video critique in a group discovery-based learning experience to plan a unit of dance.…”

“…In my study, teachers on the in-service course were asked to critique video of a primary school teacher teaching a class of mainly Pacific Island children (Ashley, 2013b;New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2002). The teachers' comments showed their approval of the inclusive teaching style of the creative dance activities in the video in remarks such as the following: Extended children's movements.…”