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Abstract

Children’s drawings powerfully illuminate their views and opinions about movement experiences in a range of environments. For younger children it is more pertinent to seek their ideas via their drawings. Using the voices and images of primary school age girls, we examine their understandings of movement and dance. Using an intrinsic case study method, two classes of eight-to-ten-year-old girls in a suburban primary school in Melbourne Australia were asked to produce a drawing of “me dancing.” Each child was invited to expand on their drawing in a short open-ended interview. The drawings were analysed in different ways and compared with the children’s explanations. We probed the oral and visual viewpoints of child-dancers. The findings reveal many different interpretations of the meaning of movement and dance in young girls’ lives. There are implications for future dance education which may improve dance teaching and learning within this age group.

Keywords

primary school girls’ movement and dance; drawings as data; dance in children’s lives; intrinsic case study; creative expression; dance in Australian schools

Author Bio(s)

Rosemary Bennett is an expert dance educator and researcher currently completing her doctorate at Monash University. Please direct correspondence to bennettrosemary21@gmail.com

Jane Southcott is a Professor at Monash University. She researches arts education in formal and informal settings across the lifespan using autoethnography and phenomenology. Please direct correspondence to jane.southcott@monash.edu

Acknowledgements

Jane Southcott

Publication Date

1-13-2025

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2025.5907

ORCID ID

0000-0002-3250-1699

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