Dance Education and Problems with Teacher Training Programs in North America:A Case Study

Case Study from the year 2014 in the subject Pedagogy - The Teacher, Educational Leadership, grade: 1, University of Hawai i at Mānoa, course: Research in Dance, language: English, abstract: Currently, in education, there is a movement towards the necessity of a greater representation of highly qualified teachers in schools. Why is there a lack of representation of dance education in the certification of educators for K-12 students? I propose that many states will not allow these programs to exist for fear of lack of enrollment (which is a real problem), and for the fact that governments tend to focus on what is wrong with the inclusion of dance education in training programs, and ignore what is already working. It is much easier, for example, to say that there are not enough schools which offer dance to justify a dance teacher training program than to admit that teacher training programs in dance could, possibly, help raise the number of schools who have dance programs. There is a shift in the idea of educational reforms which exist within this context, and these shift are spearheaded by a few educators that truly care about the state of education today. My research explores what sort of reforms can happen when the United States, as a nation, push towards finding an exemplar example of what works in the teacher training programs (in dance, in particular), and examine the philosophical and curricular viewpoints that are working. To do this, I will be conducting a close case study on a successful BEd dance program that thrives in Toronto: York University - the only accrediting dance education program in Canada, and certainly one of the most successful in North America. I will focus on what sort of practices York uses to be so successful - including curriculum uniqueness, contact with students, holistic relationships and the creative approaches they take towards dance teacher education. I will then take these concepts and see how other teacher training and BEd progr