In developed economies, such as Australia, schooling is heavily impacted by neo-liberal and neo-conservative agendas. Policies suggest a homogeneity in students that fails to reflect regional contexts of inequality. For the new Australian Curriculum, which includes Health and Physical Education (AC: HPE), this logic prioritises consistency in…

This study was carried out within the context of a requirement for every Australian Capital Territory Education and Training Directorate (ACT ETD) high school to include Indigenous perspectives across all areas of the curriculum. For the first time ever in the case study school reported in this article, two Torres Strait Island dances were taught…

Why would boys want to dance? Why would anyone want to dance? The argument prosecuted in this paper is that dance educators have tended to see dance as a self-evidently good thing with self-evident benefits for children who learn to dance. In other words, dance educators tend to concern themselves with why students should dance rather than why…

This paper examines the meaning of ability in the context of dance education, in part, via the lens of aesthetic education, a reasonably well-developed body of ideas, and asks what it means to be "aesthetically able". While aesthetic education tends to focus on aesthetic appreciation, it does also deal with a person's capacity to respond…

Seven articles present gender issues from a variety of perspectives, discussing a gender fair dance education program in Australia, gender issues in dance history pedagogy, women and dance performance, encouraging male participation in dance, using West African dance to combat gender issues, and gender issues across the curriculum. (SM)