Indetermination in creative dance. On creative dance teaching in physical education teacher education

Abstract in English

The overall aim of this thesis is to explore how creative dance in Swedish physical education teacher education (PETE) can be taught and experienced. PETE holds a responsibility to extend preservice teachers’ movement repertoires and plays a crucial role to provide opportunities for the future physical education (PE) teachers to gain experience and knowledge of dance teaching. Creative dance is part of the teaching area of dance in PE and often a new experience for students when entering PETE programs. The research literature is scarce, in a Scandinavian context as well as internationally, about creative dance teaching in PETE.

This doctoral project, guided by Deleuzian scholarship, includes three studies, a literature review, an interview study and a pedagogical intervention study. These three studies resulted in one article in the form of an unpublished manuscript and three published articles. The first article, the manuscript, explores how theoretical approaches are used in studies of creative dance teaching in PE and PETE. The second article explores how PE teacher educators describe their teaching of creative aspects of dance in PETE. The third article explores what PETE students express and experience when participating in mirror assignments during creative dance lessons and what insights can be made regarding creative dance teaching. The fourth article explores how human and non-human materialities play a part in movement exploration in creative dance in PETE and pedagogical implications in creative dance teaching.

The thesis offers four key insights. The first insight is that PE teacher educators have specific ideas about creative aspects of dance and about teaching creative dance. The second insight is that inspiration from Deleuze’s philosophy can support and extend ideas about teaching mirror assignments in creative dance lessons in PETE. The third insight is that teaching mirror assignments in creative dance lessons in PETE can make students’ expressions and experiences involve indetermination. The fourth insight is that a post-anthropocentric and Deleuzian approach can be seen to extend notions of creative dance teaching in PETE. My thesis shows various ways how teaching can encourage PETE students to engage with a teaching area that can be unfamiliar to them. The pedagogical insights presented in this thesis can support PE teacher educators and PE teachers when considering teaching creative dance.