Teaching Dance As Art in Education

Teaching Dance as Art in Education is a comprehensive introductory textbook that helps dance education majors and dance specialists understand and incorporate the aesthetic foundations of educational dance in grades K-12. Unlike other models of teaching dance, this book delineates what a standards-oriented, aesthetically driven program should encompass for both the dance specialist and his or her K-12 students.

Teaching Dance as Art in Education fosters an understanding of dance as arts education and defines the dance specialist's roles and responsibilities, including how the national arts initiatives and student-centered inquiry affect the teaching of dance. It explains how to advance student growth in the areas most critical to teaching dance: the physical, mental, artistic, and social. Content is delineated through four cornerstones of dance as art in education:

-Dancing and performing

-Creating and composing

-Knowing history, culture, and context

-Analyzing and critiquing
These cornerstones are subsequently integrated into the K-12 Dance Cornerstone Curriculum Framework, which enables dance specialists to develop substantive and sequential dance experiences for students as they progress from kindergarten through grade 12. The framework distills all the skills and concepts that dance specialists need, including developmental expectations for different ages.

Teaching Dance as Art in Education also presents a new instructional approach, the Eight-Step Plan, that facilities integration of all four dance education cornerstones into each unit to make the lessons more coherent. Further, the many features in the textbook help dance specialists become aware of not only their unique roles and responsibilities when teaching educational dance but also how to develop an arts-oriented, professional teaching portfolio.

The following user-friendly features are interwoven throughout the book:

-Reflect and Respond: Case studies, or scenarios, invite the reader to consider an issue or situation and develop a response.

-Questions to Ponder: Thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter help readers extend and apply chapter concepts.

-Rich Resources: Suggested resources, such as books, videos, and Web sites, supplement the topics covered in the chapter.

-Notebook or Portfolio: Practical exercises to complete, record, and compile into an arts-oriented teaching portfolio are useful for future job interviews.

-Inspirational Quotes: Selected quotes from famous dancers, choreographers, and teachers support the topics covered.
Teaching Dance as Art in Education reveals how to meet the National Standards in Dance Education without being driven by them, and it goes one step further—it marries dance with arts education in a way that makes teaching educational dance clear and distinct.

Brenda Pugh McCutchen, MFA, is a dance education consultant for Dance Curriculum Designs (Columbia, South Carolina) and gives teacher workshops throughout the US using resources she creates for K-12 and university dance classrooms. She was an associate professor of dance at Columbia College, where in 1994 she created and directed South Carolina’s first undergraduate teacher certification program in dance education. This program was accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) and National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

During her 40-year career in arts and education, McCutchen's roles have included professor of dance education, classroom teacher, and K-12 dance specialist. McCutchen's perspective of dance as art in education is also shaped through her experience as a performer, choreographer, artistic director, arts administrator, and dance artist in residence for students in kindergarten through high school. As a leading dance curriculum consultant, McCutchen now helps clients design standards-oriented curricula for college and K-12 dance programs. She leads teacher workshops and institutes across the country.

McCutchen tirelessly works to see that dance plays a significant role in K-12 education and that dance specialists are prepared to realize the potential of dance in that setting. From 1989 to 1994, McCutchen was arts education program director for the South Carolina Arts Commission. She also coauthored the South Carolina Framework for Dance Education K-12, adopted by the state board of education in 1990 as a basis for South Carolina's curriculum development in dance education. She was a committee member for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) INTASC Teaching Standards in the Arts. She is currently on the board of directors for the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). She serves NDEO as vice president for programs and services as well as director of publications and resources. She helped draft Professional Teaching Standards for Dance as well as Model Program Guidelines for dance education in the United States.

McCutchen holds an MFA in dance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC-G) and has received awards for her contributions to the fields of dance and dance education from the South Carolina Dance Association, the National Dance Week Commission (SC Chapter), and UNC-G's School of Health and Human Performance.