Alison E. Leonard

Dancing alice: exploring embodied pedagogical strategies for learning computational thinking

n this paper, we introduce an embodied pedagogical approach for learning computational concepts, utilizing computational practices, and developing computational perspectives. During a five-week pilot, a group of students spent after-school time learning the basic elements of dance and then using them to program three-dimensional characters that could perform. Throughout the pilot, we found students consistently standing up in front of their computers and using their bodies to think through the actuation of their characters. Preliminary results suggest that designing a virtual-physical dance performance is a motivating and engaging social context in which to introduce students, especially girls, to alternative applications in computing.

Embodying Computational Thinking: Initial Design of an Emerging Technological Learning Tool

This emerging technology report describes virtual environment interactions an approach for blending movement and computer programming as an embodied way to support girls in building computational thinking skills. The authors seek to understand how body syntonicity might enable young learners to bootstrap their intuitive knowledge in order to program a three-dimensional character to perform movements. We have gained insight into the desire for character realism. The lessons learned to date, as well as the challenges to integrating the physical and virtual and keeping the interactions rich are discussed.

Democratic Bodies: Exemplary Practice and Democratic Education in a K–5 Dance Residency

This research highlights a K–5 dance artist-in-residence as a form of democratic and exemplary dance education that ignited collaboration, promoted equity, fostered student autonomy, and demonstrated rigor in school curriculum. Through examining observation, interview, and performance-based data and calling upon critical, democratic education literature, the author found that the whole-school dance pedagogy and residency design nurtured and exemplified eight democratic signatures: access, participation, multiplicity, movement/change, space, process, conflict, and possibility. The author provides examples from the residency of how these signatures theoretically align with the data, demonstrating how these students engaged with curricular and dance content through embodied democratic practices. Ultimately, this model of best practices in dance education gives insight into how this whole-school dance residency model can help us to continue to bring dance to schools, exploring movement as a way of thinking, knowing, and communicating while creating artistic, democratic learning communities in schools.

“I Am Artistic”: Mixed Method Case Study Research of Preservice Generalists’ Perceptions of Arts in Education

Teacher education students not involved in the arts often claim to have negative assumptions about their arts abilities and a lack of experience when teaching in the arts. These negative perspectives contribute to their apprehension about engaging in arts practices with future students. This article presents mixed methods case study findings exploring changes in student perceptions throughout an arts in education course for education majors. This study considers the influences of space, pedagogy, modes of engagement, and content on changes in perceptions. Data collection involved Likert questionnaires, along with course portfolios. Utilizing the emergent qualitative analytical lens of crystallization to illuminate a complex picture of experiences within this specific arts in education context, students’ perceptions of the role of the arts in education and their own artistic abilities were seen to increase, also noting positive perceptions of the physical classroom space in which the course takes place.

Dancing literacy: Expanding children’s and teachers’ literacy repertoires through embodied knowing

This paper explores dance as literacy. Specifically, it examines qualitative case study research findings and student examples from a dance artist-in-residence that explored curricular content using dance as its primary mode of enquiry and expression. Throughout the residency, students constructed meaning through their dance experiences in dynamic and autonomous ways, exhibiting complex literacy practices of enquiry and communication. Focusing on the kindergarten student participants’ experiences, the authors highlight three themes in their dance literacy practices: (a) artistic autonomy, (b) embodied knowledge and (c) multimodality. As embodied knowledge, dance innately allowed for integrative literacy possibilities in the dance residency. The dance experiences observed and referenced in this research illustrate the complexities of dance as literacy, as both a unique literacy and in meaning making across literacies. Drawing on the findings of this study, the authors seek to inspire teachers to foster similar experiences to develop transformative literacy practices individually in their classrooms and collaboratively in their schools.

Hybrid Lives of Teaching Artists in Dance and Theatre Arts: A Critical Reader

maps” (213) as they are called, allow anyone to situate themselves in a somatic context and deepen into an experience through body–mind practice and reflection. Finally, there is a glossary of terms, an index, and biographical sketches of the authors. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in somatics, consciousness studies, performing arts, or virtually any other discipline that seeks to understand the transformational capacity of human life. Brava to all the contributors for a great read!

Leading by Design: A Collaborative and Creative Leadership Framework for Dance Integration in P–12 Schools

ABSTRACT This article presents the Mentorship, Integrated Curriculum, Collaboration, and Scholarship (MICCS) framework as an applicable model for transformative, creative, and curriculum-based K–12 dance education and arts integration. Developed and practiced by the authors—an artist/educator, a classroom teacher, and an arts education scholar and former dance practitioner—this framework provides replicable guidelines for educators, professional and community partners, and administrative leaders. The MICCS framework encompasses (1) professional mentorship with artist/teacher collaborators, student teachers, and arts education scholars, (2) a framework for dance integration at K–12 schools involving curricular and pedagogical design for a range of contexts, from whole-school to individual classroom practice, (3) collaborative strategies, and (4) research and scholarship partnerships. The practice and presentation of this framework, along with past examples of residencies and research, stand as a form of creative leadership, merging creative arts and educational pursuits through dance.

Picturing a Classroom Community: Student Drawings as a Pedagogical Tool to Assess Features of Community in the Classroom

ABSTRACT Community in the classroom remains critical for a successful classroom climate. However, assessing classroom community features can be challenging, and P-12 students’ voices are often left out of the discussion. One way to examine student perceptions of classroom community is through the use of student drawings. In this Pedagogical Implications article, the authors provide (1) a discussion of research on classroom community and the use of P-12 student drawings, (2) a framework teachers and teacher educators can use to investigate community features in their classrooms with student drawings, (3) the Picturing Impressions of Classroom Community Tool to interpret student drawings, and (4) a framework to use student drawings to create change within the classroom. The authors aim to demonstrate how student drawings can act as a pedagogical tool, providing insight into student perspectives on classroom community. The authors provide examples of elementary student drawings collected to illustrate how teachers and teacher educators can implement the process.

Using Children’s Drawings to Examine Student Perspectives of Classroom Climate in a School-within-a-School Elementary School

This study examines student perceptions of classroom climate at a school-within-a-school (SWAS) elementary school located in the southeastern United States. The elementary school contains a school for students identified as highly gifted within a neighborhood school. Researchers utilized drawings to determine students’ perceptions of their classrooms using an intentionally open-ended prompt that allowed students to focus on the aspects of their classroom they found most compelling. Classrooms with a climate that fostered community proved to be important to students, and they made connections between community and active engagement in academic tasks. Students in the 2 SWAS programs perceived the nature of a community-focused classroom climate differently; in the gifted program, collaboration and group work were privileged, whereas those in the neighborhood program expressed like-mindedness and/or a notion of group connectedness.

Moving people and minds: Dance as a vehicle of democratic education

Engaging today’s youth in civil discussions of contentious issues remains both a crucial element in democratically oriented education and extremely challenging to facilitate. The purpose of this article, which documents and presents pilot study findings from a dance workshop that engaged practicing teachers surrounding the issue of immigration, is to understand how dance can be integrated into the curriculum to prepare students to engage in democratic deliberation. Data collection consisted of pre- and post-workshop interviews with participants and was analyzed based on common principles of democracy and democratic education found in the literature. Findings point to the important role that dance could have in developing the trust, empathy, and reflectiveness necessary to engage in civil dialogue that is the essential foundation of a democratic society.