Abstract:
This study critically explores dance teacher education in China, particularly concentrating on the construction of Chinese trainee dance teachers’ abilities to teach. The main research question is: How do students construct their understandings of pedagogical knowledge within tertiary dance teacher education in China? Through qualitative and narrative inquiry, this research question focuses on investigating learning and teaching experiences of six dance teachers in China, who have been given the pseudonyms of Di, Hui, Lu, Min, Wen, and Yang, to explore how they constructed their knowledge of teaching dance as students of dance pedagogy at university. This leads into further questions, such as how else did they construct their pedagogical knowledge, what does pedagogical knowledge mean to them, and what do they consider to be gaps within their own pedagogic knowledge? Previous research focusing on dance teacher education in China has generally contrasted current teacher education against particular models of teacher education, from within China and abroad. By contrast, this master’s thesis explores teaching and learning in dance teacher education at tertiary level from graduates’ perspectives, to allow new knowledge to emerge from their reflections and insights. One way to discover and understand these students’ voices is through understanding how they construct meanings from their learning at university. From a constructivist perspective, through analysing six dance graduates’ personal narratives, this research explores various learning experiences in dance teacher education in China and reflects on pedagogical issues. These discussions provide an insight into pedagogical knowledge in dance, and how such knowledge is taught at a tertiary level in China. This may prompt tertiary dance educators to consider how to design programmes for future dance teachers, and how to help trainee teachers construct their understandings of pedagogical knowledge.