Confidence in the Classroom: A Guide For Teaching Dance to Exceptional Learners
Abstract
This study focuses on highlighting the need for proper training for dance educators faced with teaching classes that include students with exceptional needs. Few dance classes will openly welcome or properly accommodate exceptional learners, which means that these learners are presented with minimal opportunities to participate in this extracurricular activity that promotes self-expression and socialization with their peers. Wanting to create more opportunities for exceptional learners to participate in dance, the researcher sought to find a solution that could be applied to multiple programs or organizations. The researcher realized that teaching exceptional learners can be viewed as daunting or uncomfortable to teachers who may not have had prior experience or exposure to interacting with these learners and recruited one volunteer participant who did not have prior training in teaching students with exceptional needs. Using qualitative methods of research, including administering pre- and post-surveys and conducting classroom observations, the researcher observed and recorded data on one participant and was able to answer the question of whether providing dance teachers with guidelines would be beneficial and raise their confidence when teaching exceptional learners. These findings will provide information that dance teacher of all experience levels can apply to their own teaching methods.