Freedom, Transformation, and Community: Student Meanings of Engagement in a Dance-Based General Education Course

Abstract

My interest in student engagement stems from my own experiences as a student and educator. Desire to better understand student experiences of engagement, to develop my own pedagogical practices, and to contribute to theory of dance pedagogy has motivated this work. Stemming from the traditions of Husserl and Heidegger, specifically their studies of lived human experience, this study is grounded in hermeneutic and educational phenomenological approaches such as those suggested by van Manen (1990a, 1990b, 1997, 2002). This qualitative inquiry seeks to illuminate student experiential meanings and develop broader understanding of engagement by recognizing underrepresented voices of general education dance students in a dance-based course exploring pluralism in America (see also Bond & Etwaroo, 2005). Participants were enrolled in five separate sections of dance pluralism courses fulfilling the Race and Diversity Studies requirement for undergraduate students at Temple University. Data were collected from 64 students enrolled in dance pluralism between fall 2007 and fall 2008. Written assignments, movement reflections, and mid-semester and end-of-semester course reflections were all data sources. Additionally, 4 of these students were interviewed between 12 and 18 months after completion of the course. Lived experience descriptions, as per van Manen (1990a), were extracted from students' written work and interview transcriptions for detailed analysis. Illumination of dance student engagement was achieved in this study through a rigorous qualitative research process in which I endeavored to suspend preexisting assumptions in order to openly engage with data. More than four cycles of data analysis and a writing process that embraced a model of knowing through writing (Richardson, 1994) generated three culminating themes pertaining to student experiences of engagement: freedom, transformation, and community. Data suggest that these themes have to do with authentic ways of being: experiencing, expressing, relating, and evolving. Acknowledging a connection between these themes and values of critical pedagogy, I theorized this relationship. Immersion in critical and other transformative pedagogical literatures suggested that overarching principles of critical discourse are the very ways in which students in this study experience engagement. I concluded this study by reflecting on findings and making suggestions for educators and future research.