Building an authentic cultural curriculum through tertiary cultural dance

Abstract

This study identified a range of pedagogies developed to promote global citizenship within a university Latin American dance unit. It implemented changes to teaching and learning approaches in the unit using the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) 5E Instructional Model, supporting learning that privileges transcultural connections to Latin America. The action research used a range of dance teaching pedagogies that were adapted, and evaluated, using the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO)Taxonomy, to support a culturally enriched student learning experience. The findings challenge traditional dance teaching pedagogies through meaningful engagements with the local Latin American dance community and a range of student and teacher reflective approaches.

Keywords

Authentic cultural curriculum Biological Sciences Curriculum Study 5E Instructional Model community of practice dance Latin America pedagogy reflective practice Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) Taxonomy tertiary education transcultural connection

Tertiary dance programs provide opportunities to unfold cultural knowing that supports global connections. Previously, a tertiary dance open elective unit, Latin Dance Party, as part of an Australian undergraduate Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, explored the Latin American dance techniques of bossa nova, salsa rueda, and merengue in a studio-style teaching approach, almost in isolation from their cultural context. Reflection on this teaching approach led to the research question: How do we support tertiary students in understanding about culturally significant dances? To support the development of authentic cultural connections, this action research project explored a layered approach to cultural dance pedagogy. Through a range of reflective and critical data collection methods, which included student questionnaires, field notes, and teacher self-reflective journals, dance teaching pedagogies were investigated, adapted, and evaluated to support a more culturally enriched learning experience. The research was supported by a range of education and lesson planning theories, and challenged traditional dance teaching pedagogies as a means of a meaningful engagement with cultural dance knowing.

Dance and cultural education

In the teaching of cultural Latin American dances, much of the structure of the dance class, as is typical in Western traditions of dance, is not always relevant. In a social context, dance is often learned as a part of a social event with family or friends. The transmission of knowledge is largely unstructured.

The traditional dance class structure, however, of warm-up, small movements, larger whole body movements and jumping, followed by a connected series of steps, is largely irrelevant in a cultural teaching context (Giguere, 2014; Kassing, 2013). In these dance forms, the teacher demonstrates and explains particular exercises and the students “absorb the information, try it out, clarify the timing and then perform the exercise; the instructor observes, corrects individuals, clarifies anatomical or stylistic information, perhaps provides some imagery to help the student experience, and repeats the exercise” (Butterworth, 2012: 15–16). The objective is to duplicate and improve the technical execution of the movement through repetition.

In a Latin American cultural dance context, this attention to the detail of the technique is equally important. The complexity of body isolation through fluid, flexible, and connected movement that is required for Latin American dance, for example, the hip movement, necessitates an emphasis on isolation in the warm-up (Pedro, 2018). The deconstruction of the movement, although linked to the unfolding of dance technique in the Western tradition, is an important part of understanding Latin American dance technique, and, in the past, has been the focus of Latin American dance teaching in an Australian tertiary setting (Pedro, 2018). This emphasis on technique has resulted in the cultural connections between the dance and Latin America and its people being overlooked in the teaching of Latin American dance styles in Australian tertiary education contexts (Pedro, 2018).

Framework for pedagogical changes

Rather than adopt a traditional dance approach to teaching cultural dances, the researchers explored alternate pedagogies that support the development of a deeper understanding of Latin American culture for the students. The current design of Latin Dance Party was explored through two research projects using critical review. The first project, Team-building activities in dance classes and discoveries from reflective essays, involved embedding team-building activities within the unit (Hanrahan and Pedro, 2017). This element was important because the dance styles taught in the unit are social dances and are, therefore, executed with a partner or in a group. Because the students in this open-elective unit are typically from a range of courses, not only dance courses, they do not necessarily know each other, making the team-building activities even more crucial (Hanrahan and Pedro, 2017). The second research project, Creating a cultural dance community of practice: Building authentic Latin American dance experiences, further examined the structure of the curriculum as a way of supporting an exploration of dance pedagogy though cultural knowing. Using Bybee et al.’s Biological Sciences Curriculum Study 5E Instructional Model (herein referred to as the BSCS 5E Instructional Model) as an organizing framework and Biggs and Collis’ Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes taxonomy (herein referred to as the SOLO Taxonomy) as a guideline for the review of learning activities, a multi-layered and culturally supported pedagogical approach to teaching Latin American dance in a tertiary dance setting was developed (Biggs and Collis, 1981; Bybee et al., 2006).

The results of the first research project in 2014 revealed the efficacy of using team-building activities within a university Latin American dance unit to enhance cohesion (Hanrahan and Pedro, 2017: 65).

The results suggest that including team-building activities within a university dance class is useful for helping to promote feelings of closeness, similarity, and bonding as they relate to dance, and improving students’ individual interpersonal skills, dance skills, and mental and personal skills.

Like the community relationships developed through the team-building activities, the social dance aspect within Latin American communities develops, through a sharing of a mutual love of music and movement, a communal cohesion. It is the building of this community that formed the ethos around the development of the curriculum that was explored in the second dance research project. An authentic cultural curriculum is one that provides a “real-world” cultural context as the learning environment (Herrington and Herrington, 2006: xi). In the second research project, the students were immersed in a community consisting of various people involved in the local Latin American dance community. The majority of these people had prior first-hand experience of Latin dance in its country of origin and could also share their understanding of the altered form of the dance due to its translation into the Australian context – creating a different kind of authenticity wrought by the hybridity that is inherent in globalization (Kraidy, 2005).

To more thoroughly understand the results of the second research project, several papers have explored the multi-layered findings that have come as a result of the connection between cultural studies and dance practice and teaching. The first paper, Cultural connection: Approaches to cultural education through Latin American dance, explores team-building and cultural authenticity in a dance teaching context (Pedro et al., 2017). The second paper, Creating a cultural dance community of practice: Building authentic Latin American dance experiences, describes in more detail the cultural dance implementation in a university setting and describes the range of dance and cultural activities actioned during the research (Pedro et al., 2018). In the present, third, paper, the theoretical underpinnings of the pedagogical considerations are identified and future suggestions for the development of teaching theory that may have implications for broader cultural teaching contexts.

Methodology: Reflection and action

The participants in the second research project included the student cohort from Latin Dance Party, members of the university’s Latin American Student Guild Club (LASGC), a Latin American community dance artist and one of his academy’s dance teachers, and a local Cuban band. Clearance was obtained from the University’s ethics committee.

The dance classes were taught by a university teaching artist. She is not Latina however, was a professional performer and teacher of Latin American dance and continues to be closely connected with the Latin American community locally and internationally. She has travelled to Brazil and Argentina to study dance.

Through a series of action research cycles implemented within the semester-long unit, the project involved two researchers who had distinct roles: one as the person teaching the classes (the teaching artist), and the other as an observer of the action within the class. Reflective discussions took place between the researchers at the conclusion of each lesson. The reflective discussions centered around four main criteria to measure the success of lesson content: student understanding, student engagement, teaching performance of artist/guest, and appropriateness of cultural content.

The results of these discussions were analyzed (see Data analysis section), and the success of the changes was assessed each week. The problem was then re-assessed and another cycle was enacted at the next lesson. At the completion, the unit was reassessed and adjusted accordingly for future implementation when its success will be reassessed again.

The cyclical form of action research allowed a process of reflection and reassessment to occur over time. Action research does not assume that the researcher is a neutral participant within the research, but rather sees the researcher as being invested in resolving the problem within the site (O’Brien, 1998). This paradigm of praxis became central to not only the action research design but also to the data collection methods that valued all participants’ perspectives.

The collection instruments included student pre- and post-unit questionnaires, field notes taken by the observing researcher that included transcripts of student discussions throughout classes, and the teaching artist’s self-reflective journal. These data provided the basis for the reflective discussions between the researchers in the weekly sessions of review. The structure guiding the interventions that occurred each week (described later in this paper) was based on consideration of long-term goals for student learning and development, both culturally and from a dance technique perspective.

Creating curriculum

When developing the curriculum for Latin Dance Party, there was an imperative to draw from education theory, namely the BSCS 5E Instructional Model, to enhance and adapt the traditional dance teaching structure. This model has been used to develop curriculum since the 1980s (Bybee et al., 2006). Based on research on student learning, the model assists students in “developing competence” in not only the learning of basic skills and information, but also through “defining goals,” allows them to examine their “preconceptions about how the world works” (Bybee et al., 2006: 4).

The BSCS 5E Instructional Model consists of five phases: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation (Bybee et al., 2006: 2). The engagement phase gives the teacher access to knowledge about the students’ prior learning and begins to promote student curiosity about the subject area. It is in this phase that the student has opportunities to begin to develop a picture of their learning outcomes and to articulate already established cultural views (Bybee et al., 2006). In the exploration phase, students are provided with activities that build skills and understandings that create a “common base” within the cohort (Bybee et al., 2006: 2). They begin to investigate new learnings and broaden their views of the particular culture (Bybee et al., 2006). “The explanation phase focuses students’ attention on a particular aspect of their engagement and exploration experiences” (Bybee et al., 2006: 2). They may be required to demonstrate a skill or understanding that is either supported, questioned, or expanded by the teacher (Bybee et al., 2006). The elaboration phase is concerned with challenging the students, either with new knowledge or by asking them to apply that knowledge in a different context (Bybee et al., 2006). The evaluation phase is about reflection on, and assessment of, their understanding of the new information and its application (Bybee et al., 2006).

The researchers used this instructional model as a framework for the unfolding of the unit, naming the phases: engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. This nomenclature is therefore used for the remainder of this paper. The instructional model allowed the researchers, in the process of the action research, to follow a structure based on clear objectives whilst simultaneously having the flexibility to make changes as opportunities for improvements in the design arose. This setting and re-setting of goals within the structure allowed reflection “on action” but, more importantly, “for action” (Schön, 1995; Thompson and Pascal, 2012). By implementing a reflective pedagogy within the lessons, the research process encouraged the articulation of the teaching artist’s tacit knowledge, enacted her links between the university and the local Latin American community as a source of knowledge, and developed resources and approaches that promoted student cultural engagement.

Data analysis

In previous iterations of this unit, there was limited engagement with cultural content other than dance and music, resulting in the teaching of Latin American dance from a largely technical viewpoint. To embed authentic cultural engagement throughout the unit, a range of activities were designed and enacted using the BSCS 5E Instructional Model as a framework. These activities were then reviewed using the SOLO Taxonomy as a way of analyzing the learning outcomes of each phase of the curriculum (Biggs and Collis, 1981), enabling the researchers to make changes for action.

The SOLO Taxonomy explains five levels of “increasing structural complexity” in a learner’s performance (Biggs, 2011: 87). The five levels are prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational, and extended abstract (Biggs, 2011: 88–90, 124; Biggs and Collis, 1981: 24–25). Throughout the research process, it became increasingly evident that each of these levels corresponded to each of the phases of the BSCS 5E Instructional Model. Subsequent changes to the pedagogy were informed by analyzing and reflecting on each lesson of the various phases and determining the level of complexity through observations of student focus within each learning activity, exploring students’ class reflection and feedback from artists teaching within the unit.

The prestructural learning outcome identified unconnected information which, in the engage phase, involved students gaining the underlying information that would inform the unit. This information, although unconnected specifically to dance technique, provided opportunities for the students to establish their external knowledge of the culture; including basic information such as recognition of the flag of a particular Latin American country or recognition and differentiation of the languages spoken (Pedro et al., 2018). It served to promote a broader interest in the countries of origin of each of the dances being studied and supported the students’ interactions with the Australian Latin American community later in the unit (Biggs and Collis, 1981; Bybee et al., 2006).

The unistructural learning outcomes signified the beginning of the connections between this external information because the explore phase activities initiated focus on mutual understandings between members of the cohort and the guest teachers. Although these connections were often obvious and simple, they allowed the students to begin to develop a community of inquiry (Biggs and Collis, 1981; Bybee et al., 2006).

The multistructural learning outcomes further developed this synergy between cultural and dance information; however, the meta-connections that signal deep knowledge of a culture had not yet been established. Therefore, the explain phase provided the conceptual understanding that could develop a discourse between the participants, both students and teachers, which raised questions that would assist in furthering the connections (Biggs and Collis, 1981; Bybee et al., 2006).

The relational learning outcomes, where the students were able to appreciate the significance of seemingly unrelated knowledge to the culture as a whole, were a part of the elaborate phase. The extended abstract learning outcomes were where students began to transfer the knowledge and cultural understandings to a broader range of contexts within their future views. It allowed them, as a part of the evaluate phase, to reflect and assess how they may use their new knowledge (Biggs and Collis, 1981; Bybee et al., 2006).

Results: The five Es in action

Engage

In the initial iterations of the unit, a large proportion of time was spent teaching the dance steps. In the adapted curriculum, from a dance teaching perspective, the lack of time to teach the actual dance steps was concerning. However, to keep true to the rationales for the engage phase, there had to be a balance of dance teaching and dissemination of cultural information. In reflection, throughout this phase, the researchers focused on designing activities that allowed students to see themselves as having a travel experience. This information comprised language phrases that included greetings and names of dance steps, and the teaching artist’s anecdotes about travel experiences in Latin America. These activities were less about deep cultural knowledge than about setting a scene for the cultural and dance learning that would follow.

The use of Spanish and Portuguese language as a part of the teaching approach, from salutations for beginning and ending the class through to dance step names, laid a foundation for comprehending Latin America as a collection of individual countries rather than one conglomerate culture. This was further illustrated in the teaching of the individual dance styles from each country; each with their own nuances and underlying significance. It was more difficult to duplicate the interactions that naturally take place in each Latin American community in the classroom setting. Because the student cohort included some individuals who were strangers to each other, they did not have the familiarity and trust that would be inherent within a specific Latin American community that would support the risk-taking necessary for learning dance styles that are sensual.

In tertiary education settings, there is often limited knowledge on the part of the dance teacher about the communities from which the students are drawn and, therefore, to establish a feeling of community within this class, commonalities between the students had to be established. Some of the cohort were international students, which emphasized the need within the engage phase of the unit to uncover the commonalities between these students, from often vastly different backgrounds, in order to begin to develop the trust that is innate within cultural communities and that supports students’ transformational learning. These commonalities also needed to be developed between the student cohort and the guest Latin American participants throughout the next phase of the unit.

The students’ inquiry into the culture took precedent in this early phase where they were encouraged to conduct their own research into the three Latin American countries that would be the focus of the three dance techniques throughout the teaching period. This student research included investigating information, not just about dance, but about a wider range of arts and cultural practices within each of these countries. In class, they had opportunities to engage with Latin American artifacts (photos, Brazilian Indian artifacts, Lonely Planet Guide to Brazil, books, posters and postcards, maps and flags of South America and Central America, musical instruments) that had significance for the teaching artist. This engagement led to the unfolding of travel narratives by the teaching artist that created an atmosphere of curiosity and excitement among the students and teaching artist alike.

The use of Latin American music as background stimulus, through these initial lessons, whether as an accompaniment to the teacher’s anecdotes or as a way to transmit the atmosphere of a particular event (for example, carnaval in Rio de Janeiro), served to build a sensory engagement with the subject matter. This “setting of the scene” for the students acted as an orientation to the unit as they began to understand that what they had envisaged as “just a dance class” was going to be a far richer learning experience. It put in place expectations around their active learning, in that they would not just be vessels for dance steps but co-creators of knowledge with the teaching artist.

Supporting this view, in this orientating phase, the students engaged in discussion and reflection, and the teaching of dance steps became a lesser priority. The narrative style of teaching, implemented by the teaching artist as a result of the first week’s reflective analysis of classes, enabled an easy flow of ideas and questions to emerge within the classroom. As a result of the reflective reviews, the teaching artist was encouraged to become the risk-taker as she divulged parts of her lived experience through these narratives, which included sharing photographs of a range of her dance experiences. This aspect of the teaching approach became a focus rather than a less significant part of the activity’s design. The contributions of the teaching artist from a more personal perspective established a community-focused relationship between the teaching artist and the students, opening doors for the growth of the trust that would need to be established as the students became unsettled as their values and beliefs were challenged and reassessed throughout the unit.

Explore

Although the first phase of the unit, from a dance teaching perspective, was about recall and reproduction in the learning of individual steps within each dance style, the explore phase of the unit began to develop skills and concepts involving working with a partner; for example, different embraces, and changing partners in the course of a dance. These physically connected dance skills may be confronting for some students and require the dancer to trust the partner and in return to make the partner feel secure. This development of partnering skills became an important process by which the students could break down the barriers of issues around personal space and non-verbal communication, though a sharing of emotional intimacy as a part of the dance.

From a cultural perspective, learning the spoken languages continued to develop through a range of team-building activities that were investigated as a part of the first research project associated with Latin Dance Party (Hanrahan and Pedro, 2017). By using the language in context, the students giving instructions to each other about which direction to travel in the space, they begin to make tentative connections between their previously disconnected language skills and dance. It also enabled a further development of trusting relationships within the classroom through small risk-taking activities. These risks may be as simple as a willingness to be wrong or to make mistakes with language.

In this phase of learning, there were indications by the students of disconnect between the dance and the cultural information they had absorbed. Many of the more experienced dancers in the group, once they had mastered the mechanics of the steps through leg and arm action, were unmotivated to continue exploring. They viewed the dance through a superficial lens, reducing it to a series of steps, rather than continuing to explore the movement and imbue it with a culturally appropriate style. When reflecting on this phenomenon, the researchers resolved to use the students’ prior experiences as an initial frame of reference. Small choreographic tasks were developed to entice the students to engage with the playful, improvisational character of the dance styles that is a reflection of the social aspect of the Latin American culture. The ways in which the students engaged with these tasks indicated to the researchers the particular foci within the students’ knowledge that were still isolated from each other and provided direction for the discourse that would develop across the unit.

This phase was also the beginning of an investigation into the teaching artist’s tacit knowledge that identified both a view of dance based on her European heritage and Western worldview and her experience of traditional cultural Latin American dance technique. The investigation highlighted the bicultural pedagogy that was being enacted in the classroom without devaluing either approach. This reflective inquiry into the teaching artist’s own practice was supported by reflection on her internal dialogues about dance and was supported by the articulation of philosophies about teaching cultural dance. It established a deep educative experience for the teaching artist that was then transmitted to her students as the unit unfolded.

Explain

Throughout the explain phase of the unit, the focus was placed on offering multiple opportunities for the students to connect with members of the broader Latin American community; through a dance community artist and members of the university’s LASGC. These interactions were designed to illustrate a more culturally connected performance of the dance in its social function, but to establish the possibility of future connections between the students and members of the local Latin American community. In the original unit plans, these weeks were also designed to act as an acceleration for the students’ development of specific dance techniques they would need to interact, physically, with these guests. However, the reflective analysis revealed that the students, to achieve multistructural learning outcomes, would also need a cultural transition to welcoming these outside participants to their class.

With these learning outcomes in mind, the teaching artist gave a gift of Brazilian wish ribbons to the students. These ribbons are tied around the wrist with a knot for each wish, and when the ribbon breaks the wishes come true (Swift, 2012). The students surprised the teaching artist with their heartfelt response to this gift and, rather than dismiss it as mere superstition or gimmickry, asked multiple, in-depth questions, not only about the tradition but about their enactment of it. This cultural gesture introduced the guest community artist to the students in a culturally appropriate manner.

The opportunity for one-on-one interaction with the dance community artist elicited many questions regarding comparisons between Australian and Latin American cultures. An improvised demonstration, by the teaching artist and the community artist, prompted a student comment on the physical intimacy of the dance. The student was not sure how her boyfriend would feel about her dancing with other men “like that.” This observation can be “counter-intuitive” to the acceptance of another’s culture and create a barrier to expanding one’s cultural perspectives (Zepke, 2013: 99). The community artist explained how in Latin America it is natural to dance with anyone body-to-body (your partner, friends, and family members). The view of Latin American culture as tactile was elucidated and discussion unfolded around the willingness of people within these communities to embrace and to be embraced as a part of the everyday.

Conversely, the demonstrations by both guests (community artist and members of the LASGC) to the classroom demanded that the students use strategic thinking and reasoning to improvise with a range of partners and to explore this new realm of movement creativity. Whilst the first half of the unit had been about reproduction of skills and knowledge, the second half emerged as being about production. The interaction model of the latter was focused on creating knowledge rather than just regurgitating information (Atkin, 1994). Because action cannot be separated from thought, this creating process resulted in the students beginning to synthesize complex cultural understandings, and throughout the reflective conversations in the classroom, they articulated their changing values and beliefs.

The classroom guests from the university LASGC were instrumental in demonstrating the social nature of dance in Latin American society. However, the deep learning for the students came from personal conversations about the place of dance in everyday life and touched on issues to do with diversity among the peoples of Latin America. All questions were answered by the Latin Americans with a sense of national pride, helping to cement a sense of community among all the participants present.

Given the geographical isolation of Australia from many other parts of the world, there is a need to rely on Australian-based Latin American communities to provide deeper connection with this culture than is possible by observation from afar. Through dialogue, both oral and physical, between the students and community members, channels for future engagement and growth of cultural connectedness were established. This nurtures cultural knowings to develop over time rather than in the confines of the university timetabling. Total cultural immersion in a short period of time is not possible given the geographical constraints, but can begin with cultural appreciation.

From a dance perspective, the students viewed a style variation of the salsa that they had been learning from the teaching artist, developing the students’ understanding that Latin American culture is not mono-cultural, but is a rich tapestry that is highly internally differentiated. This focus on the diversity of both the Latin American people and their dance allowed the students to question and expand their understandings.

Elaborate

In this elaborate phase of the unit, the researchers had planned to explore further the music associated with the particular dance styles. The students not only established their preference for particular musical interpretations, but began to choose and collect their own music within those rhythmic structures. The introduction of a four piece professional Cuban band playing live in the classroom and a traditional Brazilian barbeque served from a street vendor reinvigorated the excitement and feeling of really “being there.” The students contributed to this building of atmosphere by wearing street clothing rather than dancewear. The senses were stimulated through the combined sights, sounds, and smells of Latin America.

As the unit progressed, the researchers needed to balance the need for the students to achieve technical dance competency with a sense of fun in the classroom and eliciting a joyous interpretation of the dances. The tension between these elements was challenging for the researchers and reflective analysis often focused around questions of balancing the two aspects of the learning outcomes, for students to begin to see the culture as a whole picture. Some adaption to the proportion of time spent on these two aspects was changed throughout this phase to reflect this discourse.

However, the presence of musicians playing in the classroom necessitated a focus on the technical aspects of the dances. Although the rhythmic structures of each dance style were acknowledged throughout the classes, there was a certain amount of preparation that was needed to precede the presence of the musicians in the classroom. The students needed confidence with their own movement to adapt to the nuances of live music and to be able to dance freely with the guest community dance artist. This confidence then resulted in them having ability to improvise and make the dance their own, improvisation being an intrinsic part of Latin American dance in a social context.

The experiences with the musicians started in light conversation but developed to in-depth discourse around music as it relates to the dances. Interestingly, the band leader, who is a highly experienced musician in the local Latin American community, made a comment about the students achieving a culturally appropriate style to their movement. The band leader was referring to stylistic elements such as the close embrace adopted by some dancers and the sense of connection or flow between the body parts and in transition from one action to another. The band leader’s comment indicated a growing authentic connection in the students between the culture and the dance, and showed their emerging perspective on the dance and its role in the culture.

Evaluate

From both a dance skills and cultural competency perspective, the final phase of this unit, the evaluate phase, concerned students having opportunities to extend their thinking. Whether by constructing their own salsa rueda steps or by making links between the dance, the music, the artifacts, and seeing it in connection with the people they interacted with throughout the unit, they demonstrated that the knowledge they had accumulated was deeply connected to the Latin American cultural context. The students evaluated their learnings and, through a series of reflective discussions with the teaching artist, they elaborated on their values and beliefs that were, in part, formed through this unit.

This new knowledge, although comprehensive, was acknowledged by students to be just a beginning of their ongoing commitment to learning about Latin American dance and its associated cultures. The students also acknowledged Latin American dance as a living choreography that changes in response to those who are dancing it and the community within which it resides. This acknowledgement of the transience of Latin American dance is significant because it mirrored the design of the assessment that took place within this unit. The assessment was designed to honor the social nature of the dance; the order of the steps was improvised and the exam was assessed by a member of the Latin American dance community who was familiar with the particular versions of bossa nova, salsa rueda, and merengue that were taught. This teaching and learning process goes beyond the acquisition of dance competencies and sees the dancer embed the culture in the dancing. It promotes the dance as expressive, as an embodiment of the engagement with your partner through enjoyment, whilst maintaining fluidity of movement and a playful experimentation with choreographic and stylistic elements.

The evaluate phase presented many opportunities for the researchers to reflect on the learnings of the students, further identifying changes that may be made to future iterations of the unit. Many of these reflections centered on the view of the diversity of the culture itself and how learning experiences could further reveal these contrasts. One aspect of this reflective analysis included an observation that the students were experiencing difficulty in seeing how they would transition from a university learning environment into a real-world Latin American dance context. They were beginning to attempt to make this transition themselves by performing these dances at their own social events (e.g. at a 21st birthday party).

In the final weeks of the unit, one of the students was heard singing the words to one of the warm-up songs in Portuguese. Although unaware of the translation, there was a familiarity of the sounds of the words and the rhythmic structure of the music that indicated a level of connection to some of the aspects of the culture: language, music, and dance. Such behaviors form the beginnings of taking on a new language and go further to indicating the students’ desire to make this transition from their university learning to their own lives.

Reflections by the students identified the immersion in the local Latin American culture as a way of promoting cultural appreciation on more than a superficial level. They expressed that the learning within the unit dispelled notions of pre-conceived stereotypes through first-hand communication with people from the Latin American community. The students identified respect for the culture and an acknowledgement of the humility of the Latin American guests that were a part of the unit, and their changing perceptions of, and interest in, Latin America. They described the unit as a journey where each time they stepped into the class the students felt as if they had travelled to Latin America and how it opened their eyes to the many avenues they had yet to explore. The diversity of experiences allowed students to glimpse another culture and, in the process, allowed them to compare and contrast their own culture and re-assess their views about themselves within that culture.

Discussion

To reiterate from the introduction to this paper, the research question for the present project is: How do we support tertiary students in understanding about culturally significant dances? This question is directly addressed in the following discussion.

Keep it simple

The gathering of specific country of origin information as a launch pad for new cultural learning is essential because it allows the learner to establish a link between their prior knowledge and a view of what will come. Within this research project, the students needed the space and time to be able to absorb the initial information that would form the foundation of their cultural experiences in the trajectory of this unit. The design of the initial phase of this cultural dance unit needs to unravel the web of previously held ideas and perspectives of the students about a culture they may have only observed from a distance. The simplicity of the initial information, although seemingly at times too simplistic, gave the students space to imagine and to re-build their visions of what Latin American culture is. Accordingly, one student in the unit commented: “I didn’t know anything about it so it [the unit] helped me find an appreciation for the culture” (Student, post-questionnaire).

This time and space also allowed the students to grasp the “threshold concepts” that are central to students’ abilities “to enter a subject community” (Zepke, 2013: 100). Time to pause and reflect provided the vehicle by which they could, via dialogue between teachers and students, become active participants in the learning process. This discourse gave them permission to make assumptions and then to change those assumptions through weaving together many, at times dissimilar, concepts. The transitions between the concepts within the learning process becomes as important as the concepts themselves (Bybee et al., 2006). Making the connection between these concepts, in their own time and through their own thought processes, makes the threshold concept difficult to unlearn.

Question everything

The design of the curriculum must focus the students’ motivation to analyze the many aspects of their journey throughout the cultural dance learning experience. Through questioning, they come to visualize how their learning outcomes for the unit may serve them in their future endeavors, the broader community, and indeed the global community. One student, reflecting on her newfound openness to other cultures, wrote: “I feel that now I understand the culture I am less oblivious to the other multi-cultural groups throughout Australia and am more willing to explore and immerse myself in those cultures” (Student, post-questionnaire). The reflective processes within this unit allowed them to learn internally through their kinesthetic knowing and externally through discourse between the multiple participants of the unit.

Dewey (2001, 2004) argued that education should unify the internal and external worlds and that there is a clear difference between information and knowledge. Within this teaching context, through reflective practice, contact with members of the local Latin American community, and through the development of a community of inquiry, the students have multiple entry points for experiencing, questioning, and synthesizing the diversity of Latin American culture. This process empowers them to translate seemingly disconnected pieces of information into a deep educative knowledge that has multiple applications.

We also acknowledge that each student learns differently in terms of the amount of time and inquiry needed to process classroom experiences. Sharing their experiences, through reflection and discussion, creates the building of a community within a classroom and draws the students closer together, unified by their mutual goals within the unit.

This process is not unique to the students; the teaching artist is equally involved with looking within. As the teaching artist observes and responds to the students’ learning journey, she becomes a researcher of her own practice through a succession of reflective actions. She, in turn, models a way of approaching cultural dance pedagogy that is observed and may be duplicated by the students. The students observe how to be life-long learners with an adaptive practice that values ongoing inquiry.

Empower students

The research project illustrated the power of providing multiple opportunities for students to synthesize cultural knowledge throughout the unit. It further illuminated the value of inquiry and its ability to enable students to independently make connections among a range of cultural experiences. Because they were interested and invested in both the process and the outcomes of the unit, they were motivated to expand beyond their existing cultural knowledge. This motivation gave the students a sense of confidence and empowerment and resulted in them having a view of this cultural connection beyond the boundaries of the university unit. This forward thinking further supports a deeper sense of humanity within the students.

Numerous students provided responses in the post-questionnaire that illustrated the value in empowering students to synthesize cultural knowledge through multiple experiences. One student wrote: “It [the unit] has exceeded my expectations of cultural connections; the opportunity to engage with… [the Latin American dance academy participating in the study], authentic band, food and hear first person accounts of cultural customs and experiences truly enriched the unit.” A further example is the following comment: “I am more open-minded about their culture in regards to music, food, traditions and religions, because I have learnt about these aspects and even experienced some of them.” A particularly insightful comment read:

It [the unit] has exceeded my expectations. I thoroughly enjoyed the range of interactive activities the unit provided – live bands, Brazilian food stall and industry professionals….An authentic learning experience allows the participants to become fully immersed in the culture in as many ways as possible. I believe that Latin Dance Party has given me an authentic cultural learning experience….I believe that because I have more understanding about the cultural groups as a whole, I am now more open and understanding towards the groups. I feel that I now value these cultures a lot more.

Encourage looking beyond

The students within the unit need to be able to clearly identify the future applications for the unit knowledge; the ways they might apply this knowledge beyond the teacher’s view. An understanding of this encourages entrepreneurship and further investigation and places the student in an ongoing relationship with the culture, rather than as a visiting tourist. For the students to see themselves engaged on a long-term basis with this culture, they need to be invested in it, not only from a serious academic cultural perspective, but also in their enjoyment in participation.

The tension between the two elements of dance skills and social engagement is essential to the transmission of the cultural context. Without this tension, both elements are unable to exist because they are interdependent. Competent dance skills will never portray the real nature of Latin dance and to demote it to just a bit of fun fails to acknowledge the deep cultural significance of dance within the Latin American communities and neglects to value the level of skill required to execute the dances fully. Enjoyment, fun, and social interaction are integral to the performance of the dance and to the functioning of the dance within the communities. It brings people together and, in a teaching context, this learning outcome has to remain of high priority if students are to be committed to further connection to the Latin American community.

Writing about future applications of the unit knowledge in an ongoing relationship with the culture, one student’s post-questionnaire stated: “We have been exposed to people like… [the Latin American community dance artist] so if we liked to we could get involved with his studio.” In response to the post-questionnaire item “In the future would you like to travel to a Central or South American country? (Yes/No) Why?” a student responded: “Carnival! I’ve been wanting to go for so long! And now I know some dance moves so I can join in.”

Prioritize knowledge

Flexibility in curriculum design results in teachers, through reflection and dialogue with students, being able to articulate and then develop their tacit knowledge (Schön, 1995; Thompson and Pascal, 2012). The articulation of reflection as a teaching pedagogy supports the constructed knowledge that occurs throughout the unit between the teaching artist and students. The exploration phase of the unit also highlights the importance of the structure of the curriculum in a constructivist teaching environment. Social constructivism in the classroom brings together the lived experience of both the teacher and the student. It emphasizes the knowledge, beliefs, and skills of the individual within the learning environment. This preferencing of prior learning and the merging with knowledge enables the individual student to make choices about new ideas and their place in their already established worldview. Although creating a social constructivist learning environment brings together the knowledge of the students, teaching artist, and Latin American guests, this is not an improvised sharing of ideas but, rather, a planned series of unfolding of knowledge (Daniels, 2008; Daniels and Edwards, 2004; Piaget and Mays, 1972; Vygotsky, 1980). One student described the freedom to prioritize the unfolding information in the unit as a “journey” in which there were options for exploring the culture.

Recommendation for a sixth phase

The structure of Bybee et al.’s BSCS 5E Instructional Model provides a flexible yet supportive framework for designing curriculum that will support tertiary students in understanding culturally significant dances. Through a gradual unfolding of knowledge deeply embedded in the authentic, students have opportunities to discover Latin American culture through this dance experience. The unit does, however, present only an introductory glimpse of this cultural experience and the diversity of the cultures. It sees the dances of Latin America carefully translated into an Australian context by the Latin American participants and teaching artist.

What may enhance the quality of the teaching and learning experience is the introduction of a sixth phase, which the researchers will refer to as the embrace phase – or the embracement phase, in keeping with the Bybee et al. (2006) nomenclature of engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. In this phase, students need the opportunity to experience the culture as part of a global community complete with authentic experiences – that of immersion within the culture itself in situ (i.e. in Latin America). Immersion would present opportunities for the students to take their foundational learning and extend their cultural knowledge in a truly authentic environment, supported by a link to their previous learning experience, namely the teaching artist.

In their post-questionnaire, a number of students mentioned their desire to take their knowledge to Latin America. Comments included: “I have learnt about the culture from others’ experiences and now I wish to learn from my direct experiences within the culture,” and, “since learning about the culture I would really like to experience it in the country that it’s from.”

In this embrace phase, the students are empowered to become entrepreneurial in their approach to the Latin American culture, as they gain independence and a broadened understanding of how to apply their dance skills, not only in the future but in the present. Students engage in the development of their own approaches, and the structure of activities enables the students to become their own teachers. For this phase to be successful, the students need a diverse range of opportunities to teach each other which necessitates advanced levels of observation, reflection, and proposed actions, and further demands that the students investigate their own practice. The protocols about adopting a dance from another culture are central to this teaching and learning process and duplicate, to a small extent, the journey of the teaching artist through this unit.

The extent to which this phase may be included as a part of this cultural dance unit may be limited due to the logistics of time and resources. However, the inclusion of an honors program within the university that supports this final phase of students’ cultural learning could be implemented and include a future extension into applying the students’ overseas knowledge once again in an Australian teaching and learning context. This extension may take the form of a series of schools projects where the students lead “artist in residence” workshops in primary and secondary schools. The cyclical nature of the teaching and learning would then be complete.

Conclusion

Although this research is somewhat limited by its scope, the applications of this framework could be varied to encompass a broad range of teaching contexts. Cultural learning is applicable across many teaching and learning contexts, therefore many of these teaching approaches could be incorporated into other tertiary teaching environments. The findings of the research support not only the development of cultural dance teaching approaches to benefit student learning outcomes, but also the broadening of teachers’ reflective processes as a part of their teaching pedagogy.

Although the focus of the research was on cultural learning through dance practice, it is important to acknowledge that the use of the SOLO Taxonomy provided a useful framework for investigating the learning outcomes within the unit. The reflective practice of both researchers was supported and substantiated by the use of this framework. It allowed observations of students’ learning outcomes to be focused and scaffolded through the identifiable unfolding of the complexity of the learning environment. It focused the reflective cycles in a way that allowed flexibility for change while reconfirming our focus.

It is also significant to reflect on the value of using Bybee et al.’s BSCS 5E Instructional Model as a framework for designing the curriculum and the action research cycles. Using this framework ensured that the learning was sequential, both in content and complexity. The structural elements also supported the reflective aspects of the research project for the researchers and students. This shared relationship was indicative of the whole nature of the project that was steeped in the notions of community of practice.

The importance of developing a community of practice that includes the building of genuine collaborative relationships between teachers and students is supported by the research findings and, furthermore, highlights the relationship between how we respond to our own culture and to others’ cultures in a teaching environment. The teacher’s responses, in turn, create a shift in students’ ideals in and around cultural understandings and the building of empathy for people from different cultures. The building of a community of practice is central to student empowerment, which encourages an ongoing atmosphere of inquiry within the classroom and beyond, extending the learning beyond the conclusion of the unit and allowing students to continue the action research as they reflect on their own cultural understandings throughout their future practice. This cyclical reflective practice applies also to the teachers within the unit as they continually reflect on, analyze, and make changes to their ongoing teaching practice.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Queensland University of Technology in the form of a teaching and learning grant (AU$2500).

Author biographies

Kym Stevens is an independent dance teaching artist based in South East Queensland, Australia. She has been a Lecturer in Dance Education at Queensland University of Technology and worked as a dance teacher artist in Primary and Secondary schools. She was employed as the Dance consultant for The Arts Year 1 - 10 Syllabus while working as a project officer for Ausdance QLD. Kym has developed many community youth dance projects throughout Australia. Her research areas include Dance curriculum implementation and Arts teacher training pedagogies. Her qualifications include a Masters of Education (Research), Bachelor of Business Communications and a Graduate Certificate in Dance in Education.

Rachel A Pedro is a Lecturer in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, where she teaches dance history and analysis, and Latin dance. Postgraduate projects Rachel has supervised include the professional/ educational interface in the choreographic process, dance and equine facilitated learning to improve corporate leadership skills, and dance as a tool for youth peacebuilding. Rachel’s research focusses on Latin dance, following an extensive early career teaching Central and South American dance styles. Her publications include research about the use of self-reflection when learning Latin dance. Rachel is currently undertaking a PhD pertaining to hybridity in the transculturation of samba de gafieira.

Stephanie J Hanrahan is the convenor of the sport and exercise psychology program in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences and the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland. Stephanie has published 13 books, 36 book chapters, and over 100 articles. She has made hundreds of presentations at professional meetings and to community organisations. Currently Stephanie’s main research focus is using games and mental skills training to enhance the life satisfaction and self worth of marginalised youth. Excluding conference-related activities, she has run workshops in 11 countries. Stephanie is a fellow of the Australian Sports Medicine Federation and the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. As a registered psychologist she has worked with individuals and teams from all levels of sport (able-bodied and disabled), Aboriginal performing artists, Mexican orphans, teenagers living in poverty (e.g. in the slums of Buenos Aires), and former gang members. She enjoys having a go at Latin and African dance.

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