Guest Post: Watching Versus Doing in Dance Education

Today’s guest post is by Lauren Warnecke, a fellow blogger and dance teacher. With a BA in Dance and an MS in Kinesiology, Lauren is a unique voice in the online dance community. Her website, Art Intercepts is “bridging the gap between experience and evidence” with a look into how science overlaps, meets, influences, compares, and even contrasts with dance training. With the goals of improving dance education, teaching practices, and overall health and wellness, Lauren is providing a reliable resource for dancers and dance teachers.

Dance is a craft that is largely passed down from teacher to student. This is something that I personally find to be a both blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s an indescribable feeling to know that as a teacher, I play a small part in creating the rich history of dance and sit on a teacher-pupil lineage leading back to the greatest of ballet masters. However, it is a history comprised largely of anecdotal and subjective information passed down through an oral tradition that is rarely corroborated by members of the scientific community.

Most teachers likely agree that demonstration and practice are critical to the success of dance students, but to what extent should the instructor encourage doing over watching or vice-versa?

Watching

Two research studies (5, 12) involving young children learning complex dance movements support every dance teacher’s belief that modeling as an instructional tool is especially important in learning motor skills, especially with younger children. Furthermore, it’s a good idea to demonstrate as fully as possible, especially with beginners and young children, if you want them to get the most out of your demonstration (13). Kids have a natural tendency to imitate anyway (6), so what better way to get them to learn the basics of dance then to give them something (that is, you) to follow!?

So what happens when I get old and can’t demonstrate? An instructor who can no longer demonstrate may find it helpful to bring an assistant into the class who can model the exercises full out. The use of a model appears to be especially important in mastering the qualitative form of movement, which is of obvious important in dance education.

What about pre-professional and professional dancers? As the students grow older and their movement vocabularies grow broader, accurate demonstrations are not nearly as essential to higher-level dance students. Indeed, most dancers have stories about their old, strict instructors who sit in an armchair barking out exercises and pounding out the beat on the floor with a cane….. I digress. Because more experienced dancers have already programmed the necessary vocabulary, it is simply a matter of rearranging them in different patterns (1). Instruction in the case of older or more advanced students can therefore be accomplished through vocal instructions and “marked” exercises. It’s important to note once again, however, that demonstrations are the best way to communicate the qualitative aspects of movement, so marking should not be a casual or sloppy endeavor. You should mark it how you want it to look!

Doing

Photo by John Jelinek

Young dancers can watch you all day long, but in the end, they must be given the opportunity to practice. Watching a demonstration before practicing a motor skill may be most beneficial for long-term learning (5, 12). Furthermore, children require more practice than adults to master a skill (10).

Should you be saying anything to them while they practice? Should they? To really maximize the effects of practice, it can be very helpful to ask your students to “say and do” a skill at the same time, in other words, using self-instruction. In one study, three to five year old dance students learned a gross motor pattern more quickly through modeling, praise and self-instruction than by modeling and praise alone (11). However, it should be noted that in this study the use self-instruction tended to drop over time. So eventually the incessant “tombe, pas de bouree, glissade, saut de chats” that your kids say over, and over, and over, should eventually (and thankfully) internalize!

When in doubt, call on our old friend the metaphor. Another tool all dance teachers are intimately familiar with is imagery. Imagery has been shown to enhance dance performance and, likewise, previous dance experience and familiarity with a skill facilitates the dancer’s ability to accurately picture the movement in their minds (2). Using metaphors and imagery are invaluable tools to utilize both during practice and in corrections.

In A Nutshell

Courtesy the Menomonee Club

Given the dualistic nature of dance, in which both accuracy and aesthetic quality are both essential to success, watching and doing appear to play equally important roles. A former teacher of mine once wrote, “A strict tradition governs the structure of a ballet class. It is a tradition based on logic, trial and error, and natural evolution” (7). Indeed, dance is steeped in traditions passed down from student to teacher. Modeling, verbal feedback, and practice are essential components of an effective dance education, but it is not always understood why they work or in what combination they should be used. Here are some general suggestions to beef up your teaching skills and maximize the potential of your students:

1. Demonstrate, and demonstrate correctly especially with young students.

2. If you mark, they’ll mark, so bring in an assistant if necessary to provide full-out demonstration. Marking is okay for advanced students, but be sure to maintain the correct qualitative components of the music in your demonstration

3. Practice. Give your kids enough dedicated time for them to practice and master the skill!

4. Use self-instruction, metaphor and imagery. Have the dancers say the steps while they are doing them, and give them enough mental images and metaphors so they know exactly how to perform the steps correctly.

Lauren Warnecke trained at Barat College and holds a BA in Dance from Columbia College Chicago and an MS in Kinesiology from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She has more than ten years of teaching experience, and is currently seeking a teacher’s certification through the Cecchetti Council of America. She is the Performing Arts Coordinator at the Menomonee Club. For more of Lauren’s work, visit Art Intercepts.

1. Calvo-Merino, B., Glaser, D. E., Grezes, J., Passingham, R. E., & Haggard, P. (2005). Action observation and acquired motor skills: An FMRI study with expert dancers. Cereb Cortex, 15, 1243-1249.
2. Cross, E. S., Hamilton, A. F. de C. & Grafton, S. T. (2005). Building a motor simulation de novo: observation of dance by dancers. NeuroImage 31, 1257-1267.
3. Fox, P.W., Hershberger, S. L. & Bouchard, T. J. Jr. (1996) .Genetic and environmental contributions to the acquisition of a motor skill. Nature 384, 356-358.
4. Hagendoorn, I. (2004). Some speculative hypothesis about the nature and perception of dance and choreography. Journal of Consciousness Studies 11, 79-110.
5. McCullagh, P., Stiehl, J. & Weiss, M. R. (1990). Developmental modeling effects on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of motor performance. Res Q Exerc Sport 61, 344-350.
6. Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 75-78.
7. Paskevska, A. (1992). Both sides of the mirror: the science and art of ballet (rev. ed.). Hightstown, NJ: Princeton Book Company.
8. Pineda, J. A. (2008). Sensorimotor cortex as a critical component of an ‘extended’ mirror neuron system: does it solve the development, correspondence, and control problems in mirroring? Behavioral and Brain Functions 4, 47-63.
9. Stevens, C., & McKechnie, S. (2005). Thinking in action: thought made visible in contemporary dance. Cogn Process 6, 243-252.
10. Sullivan, K. J., Kantak, S. S. & Burtner, P. A. (2008). Motor learning in children: feedback effects on skill acquisition. Physical Therapy 88, 720-732.
11. Vintere, P., Hemmes, N. S., Brown, B. L. & Poulson, C. L. (2004). Gross-motor skill acquisition by preschool dance students under self-instruction procedures. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 37, 305-322.
12. Weiss, M. R., Ebbeck, V. & Rose, D. J. (1992). “Show and tell” in the gymnasium revisited: developmental differences in modeling and verbal rehearsal on motor skill learning and performance. Res Q Exerc Sport 63, 292-301.
13. Williamson, R. A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Markman, E. M. (2008). Prior experiences and perceived efficacy influence 3-year-olds’ imitation. Developmental Psychology, 44, 275-285.

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Month by Month: January — Setting Goals

January classes are probably well under way. However, there is no time like the present for you and your students to set goals for the coming months. January is a great time to take a little time out to guide students in setting goals and planning how they’ll achieve them.

If you are midway through your season, now may be a good time to meet individually with older students about their progress and goals for the year.

Short or long-term goals could be set for an entire class as well. Have the students work together on planning some group objectives.

Even very young students could learn an important lesson on planning and reaching goals.

Talk about January being a month when many people think ahead and decide how they’ll get from one place to another.

• Practice with each exercise, selecting a goal such as remembering to point their toes on each sauté.
• Practice setting goals and sticking to them. For instance, the goal may be staying quiet as students wait their turn to go across the floor. Ask for suggestions on what they will do instead (watch closely) and then have them choose a method to make sure they are watching (each dancer strikes a pose when they finish their progression and it is the job of everyone else to copy their body shape).
• Literally practice pathways that start at A and end at B, then allow each individual dancer to choose the movements, rhythms, or methods to get there. Discuss how there are many ways to reach the same goal and have them explore which choices worked best, or fastest, or were the most fun.

Image by M Kuhn via Flickr

I know time in the studio is always precious but with older students, take time out of class to discuss how to set realistic goals for technique, flexibility, or performance. The time spent will be worth it if each student stays focused with clear steps on how they’ll hit their target. Students could try coming up with both a short-term goal (one month) and a long-term one (6 months or a year).

Below is a one-page form that can help students plan their strategy.

Setting Goals, Planning, and Reflection -- Click this image to download the pdf.

The top half of the page asks the student to set a goal. For example, the dancer may want to be able to do a triple pirouette.

Then, it has the student list specific steps they’ll take to reach this goal. For instance, the dancer may do Theraband exercises at home to strengthen weak or wobbly ankles, spend the moments before class on warming up with core exercises instead of chatting or stretching, test and challenge her balance throughout class (at the end of each exercise, by taking the hand off the barre occasionally, etc.). Help your students break down their goal into these manageable pieces.

Then the form helps them prepare for the inevitable moment when they lose their focus or motivation. This backup plan could be asking a classmate to join her in the warm-up, or watching an inspiring video of professionals turning, or picking one favorite television program during which she’ll sit and do the exercises.

The bottom half of the form is to be completed when the desired window of time has closed. Six months later, has your student been able to consistently do a triple pirouette? You could collect all of your student’s worksheets in a notebook until it is time to revisit them. When you do, the form offers some questions of reflection that work even if the goal was not attained.

Remember, your students will probably need some help with this exercise. Encourage thoughtful planning and creativity, offer examples, and suggestions if they need them. Good Luck!

What are some other ways you could put goal-setting into practice in your classroom?

Class Planning Part One: Developing a Curriculum Outline

When I visit forums or other areas online where dance teachers congregate, I find many questions regarding how to plan lessons and design curriculum. There are certainly a variety of methods for doing both and many teachers work from a codified syllabus. For those of you who may be searching for new ideas or needing some pointers in outlining your own lessons or program of study, I am sharing my methods for doing so.

Lesson Plans will be discussed in Part Two of this series.

Designing Curriculum

Approach for Young Children

There are many approaches to teaching young children, in all methods the objectives are generally the same: To introduce and practice age-appropriate movement skills, to prepare students for working and functioning within a classroom environment, and to instill a love of dance. Though it can vary, young children generally reach similar levels of motor skill, muscular, and cognitive development at or around the same time. If you are planning a curriculum for these younger age groups it is essential that you have some familiarity with childhood development. Pushing students to perform skills that are beyond their muscular control can damage their bodies.

Mastery Approach

After age six or seven, age-appropriateness on many levels is no longer as crucial (exceptions would be pointe work or other extreme physical activities prior to growth maturity, appropriateness of choreography and music subject matter). Instead, development is better measured through prerequisite skill mastery. Though advancement may occur at different speeds, a new student at 15 begins and progresses in much the same way a seven-year-old who is new to dance does. Designing a curriculum, then, becomes more about appropriate sequence of learning.

Moving Backward

When designing short-term curriculum, I generally work backward. In other words, I begin with the goal, the endpoint, the ideal, and then decide how to get there. If I am designing curriculum for a workshop the aims may be fewer and less grand than if I’m planning curriculum for a full year of study.

Let’s say one of my final goals is to present a dance, I try to decide which skills I’d like to include or which performance qualities I’d like to see, and give special attention to these in the classes leading up to the performance. In fact, for ease in preparation, I often create entire phrases or combinations of movement for class with the intent that these (or something very similar) will go directly into a final performance work. I do the same in lesson planning, making sure to include exercises featuring movements found in the final combination.

This backward method of planning is not that original. After all it is difficult to figure out how to get somewhere until you know where you are going. The whole idea may even seem obvious but it is a process that I’ve neglected myself at times (regretfully). If you’ve ever found yourself trying to pound a skill into your students and wondering why they are not improving, this is a good time to reassess your goals and determine if perhaps they’ve missed some key building blocks along the way!

To build curriculum for a class or course of study, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do I want the students to be able to do by the end of the year(s)/month/semester/session?
2. What skills are necessary to reach each of the above goals? (List them all, even obvious ones)
3. What skills must the students have familiarity with (if not mastery of) to accomplish these goals?

Click on image to view larger*

The above image contains samples of various goals. Your opinions and experiences may often dictate what is considered necessary, though some skills have inherent prerequisites.

Moving Forward

When I’m working on curriculum that spans multiple years of training, I often work in a more progressive manner, though the end goals are always in the back of my mind:

1. I list skills in the order I think they should be learned (including variations like facing barre, then one-hand on barre, then from 5th position, then in center, etc.)
2. Then, I place these skills in two columns, according to level: Essential and Overlap. Essential Skills are those requiring mastery in order to move on to the next level. Overlap Skills are those of which students are developing a working knowledge. Overlap usually appear in the Essential column of subsequent levels.

Click image to view larger*

Abstract Skills

Some skills are more abstract than others (for instance musicality, performance quality, etc.) but I like to consider these when focusing on curriculum planning – setting a few goals in these areas which I will strive to incorporate into daily/weekly classes. I do this simply because I don’t want to forget them. They may seem obvious to me but not to a less experienced dancer. “They” say that certain things can’t be taught – but I believe even these less tangible skills can be improved through thoughtful practice and encouragement.

*These tables are not intended to be used as curriculum. They are just rough examples of how a chart might look. Your curriculum would be more thoroughly planned and would probably make more sense!

Have you ever designed your own curriculum? How did you go about it? Can you think of other methods or tips to share with readers?