Using Student Field Observations in Dance Pedagogy Coursework: Learner and Teacher Perspectives

ABSTRACTWhat happens when undergraduate dance pedagogy students observe dance educators’ teaching practices in diverse dance education sectors? Traditional field observation focuses primarily on the teacher, teaching methods, and classroom management. Comparatively, critical field observations examine teacher and learner action equally through rich description of relationships between teacher and student, student and student, and the whole group, including communication patterns and equity, engagement, and pedagogical values and priorities. The authors, a recent undergraduate student and a dance professor, discuss their respective experiences and insights on immersive, experiential learning gained from conducting critical field observations. Discussion also covers informed understanding of pedagogical theory and practice through a social foundations lens. Insights from the critical field observation project are shared from student peers in the dance pedagogy course (n = 18), complementing and expanding the authors’ perspectives in conversation with the diverse range of learning outcomes and deepened classroom-based knowledge.KEYWORDS: Dance pedagogyexperiential learningsocial foundationsteaching methodsfield observations Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Supplementary MaterialSupplemental materials for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2023.2214558.Supplementary MaterialAppendix 1 of this article can be accessed under “Supplemental Material” on the publisher’s website.Notes1. Barr and Risner importantly note, “Today’s dance educators enter classrooms populated by increasingly diverse students in which teachers’ pedagogical knowledge necessitates heightened understandings of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality. Uncovering taken-for-granted assumptions, dominant stereotypes, and educational structures that reproduce social inequalities in schools requires teacher preparation in social foundations of education” (Citation2014, 136).2. Various pedagogical frameworks in Module Three of the course include banking method of education (Freire Citation1970), engaged pedagogy and connected teaching (hooks Citation2006), critical feminist dance pedagogies (Shapiro Citation1998; Stinson Citation1998, Citation2005), culturally relevant dance pedagogy (McCarthy-Brown Citation2009), and humanizing dance pedagogy and immersive learning in practice (Risner Citation2021).