It is my belief that a prevailing colonial mentality in higher education dance spaces, as it relates to jazz dance, is responsible for the lack of serious engagement and appropriate regard. This article makes the argument for the decolonization of higher education spaces, advocating for fuller engagement with the jazz genre and positioning it to…

Dance Education and Music Education are not the same, but are often considered together as Arts Education along with Theatre Education and Art Education. The history of Dance Education as a discipline is much shorter than Music Education, so Dance Education often looks to music education for leadership as well as scholarship. Remixing the…

This paper argues that Liz Lerman's and Larry Lavender's approaches to mentoring student choreographers denote a shift in the philosophy of choreographic mentorship in higher education, because they reflect current concerns in critical pedagogy. My particular interest is in the relationship established between student artist and educator when a…

This article revisits ideas put forward at the beginning of an academic career and discusses the ways in which time and experience within academe has shifted the author's perspective. Specifically, focusing on the balance of artistic thinking with the widely perceived need to justify the arts in higher education, the author explores questions…

This is a viewpoint that discusses the criteria applied for an objective, academic assessment of dance education and comments upon the status of dance education both in secondary education schools and professional dance schools in Greece today. The viewpoint concludes by proposing the need for an independent undergraduate dance degree to be…

This essay reflects a pedagogical qualitative action research study conducted in my university contemporary technique courses that explored constructivist, emancipatory, and transformative learning perspectives. The study offered me the opportunity to critically reflect upon my teaching practices and values in light of student perceptions of…

Western aesthetics tends to maintain its long-standing preoccupation with the visual arts, music and literature. The dance, along with the arts of radio and television drama, has not yet received the attention that would seem commensurate with the cultural importance of these forms and the widespread influence they undoubtedly exert. To come upon…

In the popular media, American cultural, educational, and political life is portrayed as ideologically split down the middle. The split is often framed in terms of opposites by using the ideas and labels addressed by the author in this paper--traditional versus nontraditional, experiment versus the status quo, diversity versus homogeneity, change…

Given the present economic and political climate, how can dance programs in colleges and universities continue to thrive? Recently there has been a national movement to return to the roots of the original altruistic mission of the public university and the land grant legacy. In other words, a movement toward, engagement. Engagement involves a…

Performing arts courses at research institutions such as Harvard University are often seen as extracurricular with only tangential or imperceptible effect on students' academic interests. Yet, when this author interviewed biology, math, or neuroscience concentrators who took Claire Mallardi's "Movement for Actors and Directors" course at Harvard…

Ongoing arts education issues for dance educators concern the role of elementary school classroom teachers as dance facilitators in their classrooms, the parameters of such a role, and whether or not university dance departments can prepare them to fill it. This article presents both the author's perspectives on meeting this challenge and the…

There is often a resistance to verbal language in the nonverbal arts. Within educational establishments, language does not simply serve the art work or its making; it serves other extraneous goals of legitimation. The link between language and legitimation is striking. Dance education in Great Britain, for example, has recently moved from…

The intersections of dance and sexuality and sexual identity are part of the critical discourse important to teaching dance appreciation and dance history. This essay presents aspects of my teaching practice, informed by current writings in queer studies, dance studies, education, and sociology. Awareness of potential classroom diversity helps…

This paper is a reflection on the process of dance choreography, an assignment for pedagogical evaluation at postgraduate level in an Indian university. It is also a recapitulation and reconstruction of my experiences while undergoing a Master's course in Bharatanatyam (a style of classical dance) in the Centre for Performing Arts (CPA),…

This volume is the second in a set of two published as the 2008 Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Planning for the volumes began more than five years ago, when the Society's Board of Directors expressed an interest in taking steps to encourage a more expansive, penetrating dialogue about education in democratic…