Bashaw, Barbara (bjb24)

Dr. Barbara Bashaw, Arnhold Professor of Practice, is the Program Director of the Ed.D. Dance Education Program, and the co-founder and Executive Director of the Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership. She is a recognized expert in dance teacher education with extensive teaching and leadership experience in university settings as a graduate director, program director, and department chair. 

As the founding faculty member and Program Director of the EdD Program, her leadership responsibilities include daily administration, operations, artistic direction, as well as degree advisement and dissertation advisement. She is also responsible for developing partnerships, including the existing partnership MOUs with Ballet Hispanico and Kookmin University in South Korea. Furthermore, she led the recent capital projects, including the renovation of program office space (est. 2022) and the dedicated studios, The Arnhold Dance Education Research Studios (est. 2024). As the co-founder and Executive Director of the Arnhold Institute, she leads a team, including professional research associates, staff members, and student research assistants, to accomplish multiple research, scholarly projects, and Institute symposia (2021, 2022) dedicated to moving research into transformative policy with a particular focus on forging new paths in PK-12 public education. Under the auspices of the Arnhold Institute, her latest leadership effort is to re-establish Morningside DanceWorX, a recreational community dance program and teaching laboratory led by students. Her accomplishments include helping to develop over $11 million in funding for the program and institute between 2018-2024. 

TC Positions Held:

• • Arnhold Professor of Practice [Full Professor] 
    
  • Program Director 
  • Major Degree Advisor 
  • Dissertation Advisor 
  • Co-Founder & Executive Director, Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Leadership & Policy 

TC Courses:

• • A&HD 8900 Dissertation Advisement 
  • A&HD 7501 Dance Education Dissertation Seminar 1 (3 pt) 
  • A&HD 7502 Dance Education Dissertation Seminar 2 (3 pt) 
  • A&HD 6049 Introduction to Doctoral Inquiry in Dance Ed (3 pt) 
  • A&HD 5046 Historical Foundations and Contemporary Contexts in Dance Education (3 pt) 
  • A&HD 4903 Independent Study (1-4 pt) 

Dr. Bashaw's research seeks to foreground the perspectives and experiences of children, PK-12 dance educators, and dance teacher educators whose voices and contributions have often been marginalized within dance and education. With the belief that teachers, practitioners, and children have profound worldviews and important insights to contribute to a broad spectrum of dance artistry within education, Dr. Bashaw is committed to advancing equity and access to dance education and challenging historical prejudices in the field. As a researcher and post-secondary educator, Dr. Bashaw's interests include artistic development, cognition, dance leadership, embodied dance meaning-making, educational history, teacher education, and interdisciplinary practice. Thus, her research and pedagogical work are situated within the shared experience of cultivating artistry to transform, expand, make meaning, and interconnect to a wide array of transdisciplinary epistemologies, living within the intersections of constructivism, advocacy-liberatory, and pragmatist frames. Dr. Bashaw actively engages in various qualitative research approaches, including ethnographic, focus group, interview, embodied, and historical. She has examined the perspectives of choreographers, dance leaders, dance educators, university dancers, children, and adolescent dance learners.

Dr. Bashaw has published articles and book chapters, serves on the editorial boards of Dance Education in Practice journal and the Korean Journal of Dance Studies, has been a keynote speaker, and has presented her scholarship at over 50 conferences nationally and internationally.  She has been sought out to lead dance education residencies and professional development workshops. Actively involved in public scholarship, she has served on national and NEA-funded projects, including the NCAS National Dance Standards writing team; the NDEO Dance Entry Level Teacher Assessment; the New Jersey VPA Dance Standards writing team; the New Jersey State Teacher Preparation Standards VPA committee; the NJDOE CTE Dance and Theater High School Exam; the NYSED Dance Content Specialty Certification Exam; and the NYCDOE Blueprint for Dance advisory committee, amongst other projects. As a board member, Bashaw was instrumental in re-constituting NYSDEA and has served as president of Dance New Jersey.

Prior to her work at TC, she founded and pioneered leading graduate programs in dance education at Rutgers University (2009-2018) and NYU Steinhardt (2002-2009):

At Rutgers University, she pioneered the first graduate degree in dance in the state of New Jersey, which was also the first graduate-level dance teacher certification program in the state. This program included a five-year BFA/MA track and she further established several two-year MA tracks for pre-service and in-service dance educators. Bashaw developed effective networks with the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, the NJDOE, and the NYC DOE while effectively leading the transformation of DanceNJ, a hub of professional dance companies, as a NDEO affiliate to bring together a constellation of community support for pre-service, in-service, cooperating dance educators and students in public schools. As Dance Department chair, she also led a top-ranked conservatory department within Mason Gross School of the Arts, which awards B.A., B.F.A., Ed.M., and M.F.A. dance degrees. She also served on the faculty of the Graduate School of Education at (2010-2017). Dr. Bashaw directed the Rutgers Summer Dance Conservatory (2010-2017), which integrated university faculty, PK-12 faculty, and graduate students to provide pre-college dance education opportunities and outstanding scholarship funding to underserved middle school and high school youth.

Rutgers Positions Held:

• • Acting Chair & Artistic Director, Dance Department 
  • Graduate Director of Dance Education and PK-12 Dance Teacher Certification 
  • Co-Adjunct, Graduate School of Education 
  • Director, Rutgers Pre-College Summer Dance Conservatory 

Rutgers Courses:

• • 08:207:500 Introduction to Research in Dance Education (3 cr) 
  • 08:207:510 Professional Issues in Dance Education (3 cr) 
  • 08:207:557 Graduate Independent Study (1 – 3 cr)
  • 08:207:595 Special Topics in Dance Education (1 – 3 cr) 
  • 15:255:534 Classroom Organization for Dance Education (1 cr) 
  • 15:255:536 Teaching Internship Seminar in Dance Education (3 cr) 
  • 15:255:539 The Teaching Professional: Kinetic Connections (3 cr) (Co-Instructed) 
  • 07:206:352 Dance for Children: Teaching as an Artist (3 cr) 
  • 07:207:400 Foundations of Dance Education (3 cr) 
  • 07:207:403 Teaching Concepts of Dance 2: Instructional Design (3 cr) 

At NYU Steinhardt, she pioneered the newly accredited MA degree with PK-12 dance teacher certification, establishing networks within the Steinhardt School of Education and the NYC DOE, while instigating the re-establishment of NYSDA as NYSDEA to bring together a community support for pre-service, in-service, and cooperating dance educators in public schools. As Program Director, Bashaw also oversaw the MA dance professions degree and co-founded and pioneered the ABT Ballet Pedagogy master’s degree in collaboration with American Ballet Theatre’s Mary Jo Zeisel, Raymond Lukens, and Franco De Vita.

NYU Positions Held:

• • Program Director 
  • Assistant Director and Coordinator of PK-12 Dance Teacher Certification 

NYU Courses:

• • 2012 Dance Origins: Historical Inquiry in Dance (3 cr)
  • 2044 Laban Movement Analysis (3 cr)
  • 2265 Methods & Materials for Teaching Dance (3 cr)
  • 2276 Fieldwork in Dance Education: PK-12 (3 cr)
  • 2277 Fieldwork in Dance Education: Higher Education (3 cr)
  • 2300 Independent Study (3 cr)
  • 2452 Teaching Creative Dance (3 cr)
  • 2454 Teaching Performance of Dance (3 cr)
  • 2607 Supervised Student Teaching Seminar: Elementary (3 cr)
  • 2608 Supervised Student Teaching Seminar: Secondary (3 cr)

Dr. Bashaw also worked with children and adolescents within community settings and private studios and was co-founder of Bridge for Dance studio in NYC. Early in her career, Dr. Bashaw was a certified, tenured, PK-12 dance educator and recognized for her work using creative dance methods to guide young choreographers using a fusion of interdisciplinary methods, social justice dialogue, movement analysis approaches, and interconnections with STEAM approaches to literacy, science, math, and social studies. She began her PK-12 career as a teaching artist and master teacher-of-teachers for the Creative Arts Laboratory at TC, ArtsConnection, and the 92Y School Partners program, where she collaborated with and learned from hundreds of classroom and arts teachers. Throughout her PK-12 career, she has worked in a wide variety of urban school contexts, including zoned, SURR, magnet, and gifted elementary, middle, and high schools and founded the dance program at PS295, The Studio School for the Arts in Brooklyn, NY. 

Dr. Bashaw has choreographed professionally for theater companies, PK-12 programs, and college programs, where she has also served as Artistic Director for numerous productions. She is a Laban Certified Movement Analyst and has engaged in a wide range of dance and somatic studies, including Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Haitian, Bartenieff Fundamentals, ballet, ballroom, jazz, modern (focus on Limon and Humphrey-Weidman) Raks Sharki, and tap. Some of her notable dance teachers have included Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Alan Danielson, Jaqueline Davis, Robert Ellis Dunn, Garth Fagan, Sandra Fraleigh, Julio Jean, Carol Mezzacappa, Clyde Morgan, Djoniba Mouflet, Susanna Newman, Jim Payton, Janice Pforsich, and Jacqueline Villamil. Dr. Bashaw’s life partner is the lauded choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow Doug Elkins, and she is the proud parent of two children.