Dancing with teachers in classrooms: an exploration of what it means to teach.

Abstract

This paper explores `dance' as a metaphor to rethink what teaching means. It builds on comments offered by four elementary teachers who were asked about their experience with students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. In the literature, teachers appear cut off from their own experience. Quotes from these teachers are used to illustrate `dance as practice.' In viewing teaching as dancing, the teaching experience is recontextualized.

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In this paper, as teacher educators, we are dancing with dancing. The metaphor of `dance' was offered by teachers participating in a study about the experience of elementary teachers working with students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). We were intrigued. What might be possible to see and understand using such a metaphor? What might it uncover or shadow? We hope to answer the question `why bother using this particular metaphor?' We invite the reader to join us, to dance with us.

Metaphorical Dancing

In constructivist learning, forming new relationships with knowledge is as important as forming new representations (Kafai & Resnick, 1996). The use of metaphors involves seeing things in new ways and generating new frames of reference (Schon, 1979). What needs to be remembered is that focusing on aspects, a metaphor can keep the focus from other aspects (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). However evocative, any metaphor restricts the growth of knowledge if taken too literally. Teaching is similar to story, to dance, to painting and to song--but it is also dissimilar. Metaphors highlight, but they do not and cannot exhaust possibilities for understanding. This exploration looks at dance from the everyday to the classroom. While it may be compelling to proceed immediately to discussions of practice, by exploring dance in other contexts, it is possible to better understand what happens in teaching and learning. This exploration is not meant to be exhaustive but, rather, to be suggestive. Questions are posed to stimulate thought, to play with colors and boundaries of the metaphor, to help us, as teachers, to see more clearly the taken for granted.

Dance as Everyday

Dance is a familiar phenomenon. Many readers have been in a teaching situation, typically a school. So can dancing be applied to teaching? More thoughtfully, in the teaching experience, who is the choreographer? Who is leading, who is following? Do the partners know when one is leading and when one is following? How frequently do the partners, and music, change? What part does the orchestra, the music, or the setting play? The nature of teaching is that it can exist in isolation--within the confines of the four-walled classroom. These dance partners do not necessarily learn from others' experience since they are not able to look around at other dancers. Instead, they concentrate on their own partners. With every new partner, the dance changes--it has to do so. Dance steps change as each new partner learns from the other.

In teaching, who are these dancers or dance partners? Teachers, students, parents, administrators. Are these dancers born with rhythm or can it be learned? Is it enough to dance because one has to or should dance lessons be offered, direct instruction even? Good intentions are not enough; knowledge and practice are essential both in teaching and dancing.

One resource teacher interviewed talked about not wanting to step on other teachers' toes and gingerly being careful. Are there only finite ways of assisting on the dance floor? If teachers receive or ask for help with their dancing, are they seen or do they fear being seen as not being competent? Despite their isolation, do they think that everyone else will know they are getting help? It is not unusual to think that they should already know how to dance and be skilled dancers or that administrators, teachers, students and parents are naturals. When they are asked to change some of their dance steps, are they being asked to reflect on past dance steps and admit they may not have been "in time" or in rhythm with the music? Are they given any guarantee that these new dance steps will work with their new partner(s)? No. They are asked to change their dancing, often with little practice, because after all, they should be able to dance to any music, any tempo, with any partner, and still be graceful. Would imposed, regular dance lessons throughout their careers be a viable solution? As the music and partners change, so, too, do expectations. These expectations are not always clear and this lack of clarity leads to improvisation, not dancing at all and becoming a wallflower. The intention here has been to introduce `dance' as a metaphor for teaching. This introduction raises more questions than it answers, inviting the reader to dance with us.

Dance as Discipline

Within the discipline of dance, there are the dancers or the people. There is the space or the setting. Most important is the floor. Without a smooth surface to walk, run or spin on, dancing becomes arduous. A wooden floor helps a dancer find a much needed support to move. Then there are choreographic elements or the range of possible movements a dancer might use, whether for a waltz, a line dance, a ballet pas de deux, a jazz chorus line, or a modern dance solo. Dance, or movement, is at once natural and contrived, visceral and symbolic, personal and social, ever present and constantly disappearing. It has a ubiquitous yet forgettable quality that further complicates its already paradoxical presence in experience. It is often tuned out. Indeed, one of movement's most interesting characteristics is its ability to appear and disappear from awareness. It most seems to dominate attention when a person is most halting, clumsy, and effortful because this is when the realization of intentions is less than ideal.

There are movements when one's intention is translated into action with seamless fluency, when individuals are at their most refined, articulate and effortless. At these times, movement almost vanishes from human awareness. These moments of grace or "sweet spots in time" (Jerome, 1980) are occasions when the difficult task is easy (these happen far more frequently than most people recognize). Most experience ongoing oscillation between moments of self-conscious awkwardness and moments of grace. At its very heart, movement, and by extension dance, is a process of change. Commonly, this change may be understood as a change of position or place but it is more. It is a fluid, dynamic and active use of space, time and energy. Lest this sound chaotic, human beings move to satisfy needs and so movements are guided and purposeful and the intentions of the mover are made clear by the way in which the one moves, while the uses of space and of the body reveal the mover's purpose.

A reading of the work of Rudolf Laban, a seminal thinker and teacher in dance and movement, offers "a new approach to the understanding of the mastery of doing and dancing" (Laban, 1984, p. 121). Laban believed in multiple levels of analysis with the observer not only paying attention to what the movement is made of but also how it is put together. In other words, attention needs to be paid not just to the action but also to the sequence and pattern of which it is a part. Discussions here of Laban's work cannot be comprehensive but suggestive, touching on selected concepts in his descriptive-analytical look at movement.

Dance as Teaching

Considering the central place of movement in all human activities, opportunities to explore and apply what is known about and from movement (and dance, in particular) to teaching are opportunities to enrich understandings of classroom life. Instances of dancing occurring when teaching students with attention difficulties were presented during conversations with four elementary teachers. Pseudonyms for the four teachers interviewed are Marlene, Angie, Catherine, and Martha. Martha spoke of `teaching as dancing' when she said "We do a lot of dancing with the kids in our room." When viewed again, the other teachers' conversations also lent themselves to be understood using the metaphor of `dancing.' The dancers are the students, themselves (those with ADHD), the setting is the relationship among various stakeholders, and movement is the act of teaching. The metaphor `teaching as dancing' recontextualizes the teaching experience. These teachers talked about trying to negotiate the space between regular and Special Education. Questions were raised about educators being involved in a grand dance. If educators begin to talk about teaching in this way, the process of teaching may become clearer. The shared, negotiated space between dancers in the education system has rarely been discussed but now, in a time of financial restraints, the time for this conversation has never been so. In the next section, we explore more of what `dance' adds to the conversation. We cannot and purposefully do not want to `nail down' the metaphor, leaving it to the reader to build understandings based on their own experience. "As opposed to literal meaning, the meaning a recipient finds in nonliteral mediating symbols may not be the exact meaning its user intended. The very situation allows meaning to be constructed on the basis of individual experience" (Feinstein, 1982, p. 47). We present these dimensions as possibilities, recognizing there are other possibilities.

Dance as Practice

The dancers, the setting and movement are revisited, exploring how these components relate to practice. Each discussion starts with quotes from the four teachers.

The Dancers--The Dance Within the Student

* You have to be aware of the fact that their attention goes in little blocks, sort of thing, and you have to be willing and able to change the activity ... You do need to keep it upbeat, keep it moving.: Marlene

* Some people think `Well, we've fixed them.' And it's a real big fight to try and explain to people that you don't fix a child. You help them learn to do things differently, but they are not there to be repaired ... you give them some skills and you hope that they learn how to use them properly. But their condition is part of who they are.: Martha

* All year long, for every art lesson we ever had, or for anything in which he was required to draw, he always drew a truck. And he drew the most beautiful semis I have ever seen in my life, complete with all the detail, the grillwork, the chrome, all the fancy things on the side.: Angie

Students with ADHD are typically considered hyperactive, inattentive, low achieving, disruptive, to take longer to complete tasks (if tasks get completed at all), to procrastinate, and to have behaviour problems. This tendency to see these students as without attention defines them by deficits. Focus as understood in dance involves two contrasting ways of attending to the environment and orienting one's actions in space-directing or indirecting. Focus then reveals that teachers and students as not dealing with a lack of attention or concentration so much as an ability to scan multiple points of interest. Interestingly, this ability to scan multiple points of interest has a new popular face--`multi-tasking'. In thinking that attention is always specific, straight, and aimed or direct, there is an inclination to see this kind of multiple scanning as problematic. Using Laban's ideas about `indirecting' (1975) is another way of understanding the strengths that these children bring to the act of attention, of concentrating. Understanding and acknowledging that these students are paying attention might lead to exploring, more closely, what they are paying attention to and what is actually happening for them. Of course, if educators do not ask students, who they want to help, what is occurring for them, the resulting intervention may complicate, rather than assist, the teaching-learning process. The key to further understanding becomes, then, dancing together and that is not possible unless the partners know to what each is paying attention.

Setting--The Dance Between Stakeholders

* A lot of teachers were very receptive and would ask for suggestions and would do some small things in their classroom, even where they sat the child [with ADHD] ... Some of the teachers just needed a break ... And they weren't ready to open up to suggestions, they weren't open for me to make suggestions to them yet. So I think that was hard. That was hard for myself.: Catherine.

* We start with positive phone calls ... The first phone call I make I like to be a positive one ... So we are trying to draw them in a little bit. It takes longer for some ... I have one mom now, after two years, she's in the classroom probably once a week stopping in and just saying `hi.': Martha.

At the heart of any working together is time ... time to listen, time to speak, time to be in each other's company, time to understand each other, time to pay attention to the taken for granted. This concern about the need for time is common both in the research literature and in speaking with parents, teachers, administrators, and students. It is the thing that makes working together so difficult--this lack of time. Educational partnerships are not exempt from the ever-increasing acceleration within society. This acceleration results in sudden, abrupt, quick, and instantaneous responses which, by their nature, are of short duration. When administrators, teachers and parents are trying to establish long-term solutions, which are in the best interest of a student, deceleration becomes a critical factor, a type of `slow knowledge' (Orr, 1996). Dance makes visible the need for all parties to be clear in what instances acceleration is appropriate and in what instances deceleration is more appropriate. The challenge to teachers and parents is to differentiate between these instances--between relationships, which always take time, and crises, which demand quick responses.

Movement--The Act of Teaching

* I've found all the primary teachers I've worked with were flexible in some ways and inflexible in other ways. The primary teachers were very, very structured and some of them has set expectations about kids, behavioural expectations ... and [some] ... seemed to be able to change their approach for these students and they would all try to implement the plans that were proposed for these children: Angie

* I guess what we did for the whole year, now that I look back on it, I [was] just very structured, very firm. I was never aggressive with him or came at him loud or threatening. I tried to come very calmly, speak to him in a calm voice but unaccepting of the behaviours. I think just by the whole year of repetition and structure ... really paid off in the end because we have just seen an amazing turnaround in this child.: Marlene

Within these quotations, there is a great concern with doing the `right' thing, with the right way to be present for the student. It is easy to be too present, to have too much control over the student and over the situation so that the student is not present. Some teachers will see the needs of students with ADHD best addressed if they are firm, strong, and forceful. So, teachers talk about having greater structure in the classroom, and often their attention focuses on discipline policies and procedures. From this perspective, the student becomes a discipline problem. It is also possible for teachers to see the need to be gentle and thoughtful and more child-centered in what happens in the classroom as a way to best address the needs of the ADHD child. Taken to extreme, this effort to be considerate can result in a lack of presence, creating tension between being too present and not present enough. In dance, varying presence is addressed through the idea of `weight' or pressure and the key to what is appropriate is intention.

Within teaching, there is a need for precision and fluency. To be precise and to be fluent requires being careful and seemingly careless. What dance gives is room for both rather than placing teachers and students in a forced choice. Perhaps teachers and parents can make space for students to be careful and careless in their approach to classroom work. It may not be going too far to suggest that making such a space might make life in classrooms for students with ADHD more productive. Dance reinforces what all effective teachers and parents know, there are times to take control and there are times to `let it go.' In dance, this readiness to stop, or to let things stop of their own accord, is called `flow.'

Summary

"Making sense of experience ... comes about as we interact with our environment in our attempts to comprehend, construct, and convey literal and metaphoric meaning. The core of those attempts is the fundamental act of symbolic transformation" (Feinstein, 1982, p. 45). Teachers pay attention to students, parents, and administrators but not always to how they and their partners shape the space or setting. They pay attention to the setting but not always to the importance of the floor, to the contextual ground necessary to support good teaching and to the different ways dancers and dances take up that space. They pay attention to movement or choreographic elements but not always to the nuances, similarities and differences, of these elements. Dance pays attention to process. It is, after all, a focus on moving through and crossing space. It also focuses attention on the relational. It can help identify old and strained patterns in new ways, perhaps finding new grace in partners, teachers have long since called awkward and undesirable, as names on their dance cards.

References

Feinstein, H. (1982). Meaning and visual metaphor. Studies in Art Education, 23(2), 45-55.

Jerome, J. (1980). The sweet spot in time. New York: Summit Books.

Kafai, Y., & Resnick, M. (1996). Introduction. In Y. Kafai & M. Resnick (Eds.), Constructionism in practice: Designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world (pp. 1-8). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.

Laban, R. (1975). Modern educational dance. London: MacDonald & Evans.

Laban, R. (1984). A vision of dynamic space. London: The Falmer Press.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Orr, D. (1996). Slow knowledge. Conservation Biology, 10, 699-702.

Dr. Patterson, associate professor of educational psychology, co-ordinates Special Education in the Faculty of Education. Dr. Corbin Dwyer is assistant professor of educational psychology. Both authors have an evolving research interest in teaching as a creative enterprise.