Teaching the Whole Child Through Dance: Moving Beyond Mind Supremacy

Conferences & Seminars

Teaching the Whole Child Through Dance: Moving Beyond Mind Supremacy


Location:
Virtual
Contact:
Open to:
Alumni, General Public, TC Community

International Symposium

Wednesday – Friday, October 12-14, 2022 (NYC)
Thursday – Saturday, October 13-15 (Seoul)

Co-Hosted by:
Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership
Korean Society of Dance

Co-Sponsored:
Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, USA
 

This symposium places the mind and identity of the dancing child at the core of inquiry on teaching. Our premise is that the primary felt experience of dance ⏤ as an inextricable intertwinement of body, culture, environment, (e)motion, history, intelligence, personality, relationships ⏤ is largely fragmented in PK-12 educational policy and fractured in education research. The mind is studied in social science research, motion and the body are studied in natural science research, and culture and dancemaking are studied in arts and humanities research. Though there is value in this kind of separation of experience, there is something lost when you take apart a whole and try to put it back together. This is especially problematic when the activity of the mind is not only separated from the activities of body and culture but given higher value in the allocation of time and resources.

What if, instead of trying to better understand the phenomenon of dance education through the lenses of others we bring them to us, to place the dancing child at the center of the inquiry and proceed from there?

The Teaching the Whole Child through Dance Symposium marks a growing re-examination of Western, “mind-supremacist” notions of the purpose and practice of education in light of more inclusive and pluralistic views. This re-examination demands an approach to education that includes the whole child. The Symposium’s aim is threefold: to invite speakers to unpack our assumptions about the experience of dance; to encourage dialogues that challenge commonly held beliefs about dancing; and to demonstrate through a movement session how dance education can offer a unique pathway for balancing the symbolic and the practiced, the abstract and the embodied.


To request disability-related accommodations, contact OASID at oasid@tc.edu, (212) 678-3689, as early as possible.

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