Dance in the curriculum
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Articles
A Tribute to Robert Osmotherly
A Tribute to Robert Osmotherly’s inspired intellect and vision for dance and dance education in Australia.
The arts: essential learning for all teachers
The NAAE affirms that learning in and through the arts is crucial in any learning environment designed to develop a culture of innovation.
The arts in the early years learning framework
Early childhood professional have long recognised that the arts offer very young children significant ways of knowing about themselves, others and the world.
Dancing with information and communication technologies
Felicity Mandile (Virtual Schooling Service, Education Queensland) talks about the World Dance unit embedded within the VSS Dance Course and in particular, an innovative project that utilised videoconferencing technology to create a collaborative choreographic environment between two indigenous groups of students.
Booting the tutu: teachers and dance in the classroom
Ralph Buck (National Institute for Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland) focuses on how we might develop sustainable dance education practice in the primary school classroom. He emphasises the importance of changing perceptions about dance in terms of the associations with femininity, ability, performance, mastery of skill and elitism.
Shape Shifting: choreographic process as research
Linda Ashley (AUT University, Auckland) presents findings from an action research project focusing on a series of creative dance workshops. This paper includes a philosophical examination of cognition during the choreographic process in terms of educational value, and also how the process of choreography itself, is research.
Sustaining dance education in New Zealand
This paper explores challenges facing dance educators working with pre-service primary teachers in the New Zealand context. An analysis and comparison of two national curriculum documents raises the question—how should a pre-service teacher education program for primary teachers respond to the demands of recent curriculum reforms? This paper discusses changes in teacher education that have had an impact on dance educators’ responses to curriculum demands. It details this impact using one particular teacher education institution (the University of Waikato) and discusses show how a cohort of students in 2008 views the current dance education provision. In conclusion, it offers an outline of some ways forward for dance educators.
Projects
Delivering dance in the Australian Curriculum
With the arts now part of the Australian Curriculum, we are promoting dance as a key artform in alongside music, visual arts, drama and media arts.
Getting dance into the Australian Curriculum
We want dance part of every young person's education. The current popularity of dance with young people, evidenced by rocketing attendance at dance classes in studios across Australia, offers huge potential for developing creativity and innovation across the curriculum. The opportunity is huge for dance to be a valued part of every person’s education, offering creative, healthy and stimulating experiences for all Australians throughout their lives.
Publications
Dance, young people and change
Dance, Young People and Change brought together young people, parents, educators and others from around the world to share and consider the role of dance in young people’s lives. It provided critical evaluation and reflection on approaches to dance learning, teaching and curriculum for young people and offered opportunities to critique the relevance of dance for young people within education and community contexts.
More than words can say: a view of literacy through the arts
A collection of arts papers attempting to define what is meant by ‘literacy’ in each art form.
Sampling the arts
This book presents a small but insightful collection of teacher's work samples across a variety of art forms.
The Mayer key competencies in arts education
This report uses the experience of arts teachers to show how the key competencies may have a generic function across the five arts areas.
News / Blog / Press Releases / Events
Leap forward for dance education in 2012
The Australian Curriculum: The Arts
This has been an important year in the evolution of the new national dance curriculum.
One of five arts subject with its own body of knowledge, teaching strategies and learning outcomes, dance is soon to take its place in The Australian Curriculum: The Arts.
We have continued to work with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) on various drafts of the curriculum throughout 2012, engaging with teachers where the tight timelines for consultation have allowed, and keeping dance educators up to date with regular email bulletins.
Consultation for draft Arts curriculum about to end
The consultation period for The Australian Curriculum: The Arts has been extended until midnight tonight (25 September), so here's a last opportunity to have your say via ACARA's consultation portal.
Ausdance National has already responded in some detail, thanks to some excellent work by Victorian dance teachers, facilitated by Dr Katrina Rank, Ausdance Victoria's Education & Training Manager.
We also received feedback from individual teachers from around Australia, especially from Queensland, and have incorporated their responses into the Ausdance response.
Teachers have generally been very positive about the draft Dance curriculum, and we hope our detailed response will help to refine it further.
We're looking forward to seeing the final version, so watch this space for further updates.
Draft arts curriculum launched for consultation
Ausdance welcomes the launch of the draft of The Australian Curriculum: The Arts for public consultation, announced yesterday by The Federal Minister for School Education, the Hon. Peter Garrett. The consultation period will be for three months, until 23 September.
The new curriculum will, for the first time, entitle all young people to learning in dance at school, a major breakthrough for students and dance educators. The four other subjects in the arts curriculum are drama, media arts, music and visual arts.
Ausdance has played a strong lobbying role in having dance included in The Australian Curriculum: The Arts, and has supported ACARA—the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority—in the development of the dance curriculum.
We encourage you, as dance teachers in schools, students and parents, to continue having your say throughout this next consultation stage.
Reviewing the new Australian arts curriculum
Arts curriculum writing for Foundation to Year 10 is well underway.
The draft rationale, aims and broad scope and sequence have already been reviewed by a state and territory national panel, and we joined other professional associations last week to review the drafts. We'd been invited to ask four teachers from across Australia to provide feedback, and Dr Katrina Rank, education and training manager for Ausdance Victoria, collated their feedback and led the discussion for dance.
We also represented the National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) in the teleconference, which was chaired by the general manager (curriculum) of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), Robert Randall.
We'll be calling for further dance commentary in the coming weeks as the drafts are developed by the writers, and ACARA will make the curriculum available for public comment in May. In the meantime, you can sign up for regular ACARA updates.