Moving Social Justice: Challenges, Fears and Possibilities in Dance Education

This essay explores social justice commitments in dance pedagogy and dance education teacher preparation in the USA as developed through a series of conversations between two dance educators and former administrators in higher education. The authors examine the history of multiculturalism, multicultural practices in postsecondary dance, their influences on dance teacher education, and the limitations of the multiculturalism movement that emerge from misperceptions about, or disregard for differences in culture, gender, ability, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. Dominant arguments for maintaining status quo perspectives such as scarcity of resources, accreditation standards, and tenured faculty compositions are examined in conversation with a number of prophetic voices for social justice teaching and learning. Examples of pedagogical approaches and project assignments that aim to bring social justice learning to the dance education classroom in concrete ways are presented.