Dancing Mind, Minding Dance encompasses a collection of pivotal texts published by scholar and researcher Doug Risner, whose work over the past three decades has emphasized the significance of social relevance and personal resonance in dance education. Drawing upon Risner’s breakthrough research and visionary scholarship, the book contextualizes critical issues of dance making in the rehearsal process, dance curriculum and pedagogy in 21st-century postsecondary dance education, th...

The first of its kind, this volume presents research-based fictionalized case studies from experts in the field of dance education, examining theory and practice developed from real-world scenarios that call for ethical decision-making. Dilemmas faced by dance educators in the studio, on stage, in recreation centers and correctional facilities, and on social media are explored, accompanied by activities for humanizing dance pedagogy.These challenges converge from educational polici...

This book critically examines matters of age and aging in relation to dance. As a novel collection of diverse authors’ voices, this edited book traverses the human lifespan from early childhood to death as it negotiates a breadth of dance experiences and contexts. The conversations ignited within each chapter invite readers to interrogate current disciplinary attitudes and dominant assumptions and serve as catalysts for changing and evolving long entrenched views among dancers regarding ma...

This unparalleled collection, international and innovative in scope, analyzes the dynamic tensions between masculinity and dance. Introducing a lens of intersectionality, the book’s content examines why, despite burgeoning popular and contemporary representations of a normalization of dancing masculinities, some boys don’t dance and why many of those who do struggle to stay involved. Prominent themes of identity, masculinity, and intersectionality weave throughout the book’s conceptual fra...

Sexuality is a difficult topic for all educators. Dance teachers and educators are not immune to these educational challenges, especially given the large number of children, adolescents, and young adults who pursue dance study and performance. Most troubling is the lack of serious discourse in dance education and the development of educative strategies to promote healthy sexuality and empowered gender identities in proactive ways.This volume, focused on sexuality, gender, and ident...

Originally published as a special issue of Research in Dance Education, now with an added chapter, this text acknowledges and celebrates the increasingly diverse careers and employment networks in which dance professionals and dance educators are engaged.Addressing issues and developments relating to the workplace of dance, the text explores what it means to transcend the boundary between dance as passion, and dance as employment. Chapters explore challenges of professiona...

Driven by exacting methods and hard data, this volume reveals gender dynamics within the dance world in the twenty-first century. It provides concrete evidence about how gender impacts the daily lives of dancers, choreographers, directors, educators, and students through surveys, interviews, analyses of data from institutional sources, and action research studies. Dancers, dance artists, and dance scholars from the United States, Australia, and Canada discuss equity in three areas: concert...

This book details how bias affects the brain, perception and decision-making--and identifies how these factors affect the field of dance. It applies social psychology to the events, communities, and teaching strategies in dance classrooms of all sizes and age ranges.Using critical theory as a framework, chapters define implicit biases and explore the power dynamics on and off the dance floor. Various examples of bias in dance education are examined in detail, as are the ramificatio...

Multiple-award-winner Geneva Gay has updated her foundational text for culturally responsive teaching to keep it relevant for today’s diverse students. This perennial favorite is the go-to resource for teacher professional learning and education courses.Geneva Gay is renowned for her contributions to multicultural education, particularly as it relates to curriculum design, professional learning, and classroom instruction. ...

In the last 50 years, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have increasingly turned to studying creativity, so we now know more about it than ever before. However, until about a decade ago, creativity researchers focused only on highly valued activities, such as creating masterpieces in art and making highly significant discoveries in science. In Explaining Creativity, R. Keith Sawyer extends the study of creativity by examining not only these endeavors, but also movie...

Since its inception, action research has been the subject of confusion and controversy. Can something be research if it doesn’t «prove» anything? Can something be action research if it’s a project run by an expert who does not consider participants co-researchers? Questions multiply when the general term is limited to critical action research. What makes critical action research different from action research generally?Can the action research project of a classroom teacher intended ...

This book provides a blueprint for using the arts—performing, visual, and multimedia—to rethink what good learning, teaching, and curriculum can be. The author presents a bold plan for saving education with an arts-based approach to teaching that focuses on risk-taking as the most important aspect of a successful classroom. Halverson offers new models for learning that embrace the social, cultural, and historical assets that kids bring to the classroom, with guidance for designing engaging...