Dance divergently in physical education: teaching using open-ended questions, metaphors, and models

TLDR

The study investigates which teacher instructions—descriptive, metaphoric, or model‑based—best promote divergent motor actions to enhance motor creativity in dance education. The authors observed 120 physical‑education undergraduates over 24 lessons of body expression, using video recordings of 12 participants and student journals to analyze motor responses with T‑pattern analysis. Results show that while students partly imitate the teacher’s model, descriptive and metaphoric instructions increase motor creativity, producing more varied responses in timing, posture, and gesture. The study was supported by Catalan and Spanish government grants, with acknowledgements to the Universitat de Barcelona’s innovation department.

Abstract

Abstract This study analyzed what kind of teacher instructions (descriptive, metaphoric, or with model) can help generate more divergent motor actions in order to stimulate motor creativity in dance education. Participants were 120 physical education undergraduates (35 women and 85 men; 20 ± 1, eight years old) without experience in dance and who were observed during 24 lessons of body expression, a discipline based on creative dance, mime dance, and improvisation. Analysis of video recordings of 12 of the participants (five women and seven men; 21,1 ± 1, seven years old), by means of an ad hoc observation instrument and analysis of T-patterns was chosen as the observation method, while 120 student journals notes were used as qualitative research tool. The results show that: (1) participants try to generate their own motor responses but copy some fundamental components of the model proposed by the teacher, (2) descriptive and metaphoric instructions seem to stimulate motor creativity generating more varied responses and (3) using the three types of instructions, major response variations occur in the categories of time and body posture and gesture. Keywords: creativitymotor patternsobservational methodologyimprovizationcreative danceinstruction Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Catalan government project Innovacions en l'avaluació de contextos naturals: observació de les respostes motrius en l'expressió corporal i la dansa (INEFC). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Catalan government project Grup de recerca i innovació en dissenys (GRID). Tecnologia i aplicacioó multimedia i digital als dissenys observacionals. "Departament d'Innovació, Universitats i Empresa, Generalitat de Catalunya (Grant number 2009 SGR829). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Spanish government project Avances tecnológicos y metodológicos en la automatización de estudios observacionales en deporte (Dirección General de Investigación, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) [Grant number PSI2008-01179].