Children's Dance-Making: An Autoethnographic Path Towards Transformative Critical Pedagogy

My dissertation, a self-reflective autoethnography, examines, analyzes, andinterprets children’s dances created by seventeen nine- 11 year olds attending aMidwestern, urban elementary school. The significance of this longitudinal study is in the offering of a fresh perspective on children’s dance-making as a mode of embodied understanding and as a process for personal transformation in life. As a reflective practitioner, I observe and write data reflexively using dance narratives. I describe instances where child dance-makers construct personally relevant meanings that embody personal transformations not dependent solely on outside events or codified dance portraitures.Children negotiate inner experience with multifaceted sensory-play, feelings,ideas, themes, images, and structures through personally relevant dances that are created and interpreted within particular learning communities. This transformative act is at the center of why and how each dance made is an embodied act of knowledge-making and a result of preparation that is cultivated and defended privately by each person. It calls for pedagogical change in elementary school dance education practice to insure that spaces for this multimodal educational endeavor are embedded into educational policy, curriculum, and instructional practice.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Arts Administration, Education and Policy

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Bucek, Loren Elizabeth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ballengee Morris, Christine

• Dance
• Curriculum Development
• Art Education
• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Education
• Education Philosophy
• Educational Sociology
• Elementary Education
• Pedagogy
• Performing Arts
• Children's dance-making
• autoethnography
• cognition
• feministic methodology
• socio-cultural inquiry
• critical pedagogy

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1366147483

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1366147483