Abstract

Standardised curricula and the movement away from practical, hands-on learning has permeated Australian education over the past few years. The Arts have become even more marginalized, and Arts areas such as dance are almost non-existent. In their places, we see the domination of static, desk-bound, technology-mediated, instructivist teaching and learning. The researchers aimed to create an antidote to this teaching model. This research examined student and teacher experiences of dance to develop an easy to follow, engaging program that can be implemented not only by specialist Arts teachers, but also by generalist classroom teachers. The Dance ANYway framework is based on a “socio-kin-aesthetic approach,” which integrates collaborative, embodied, and creative learning and teaching to provide teachers with easy-to-follow, practical strategies for integrating dance into the curriculum.