Exploring Philosophical Underpinnings of Ghanaian Dance Education and Their Implication for Teaching

Abstract

There is global importance of dance education. Dance contributes to the overall development of a person (Gilbert, 2018; Pickard & Risner, 2016). Amans (2017) maintains that dance helps to communicate a person’s values, thoughts and worldview. Nonetheless, since the introduction of dance education into the curriculum during the 20th century, the focus has been on pedagogy. In Ghana, the predominant body of literature is silent on the philosophy of dance education. Yet there is evidence to the effect that the philosophy of education informs how to formulate educational ideals and policies and provide guidance for interpreting the curriculum and instructional materials (Combs, 2010). Thus, using the interpretive paradigm mainly through interviews, focus group discussion and other relevant documents such as course outlines and handbooks, this study sought to explore the philosophical basis of dance education programmes in Ghanaian public universities and their implications for teaching and learning method. A total of 12 and 17 teachers and students respectively were sampled using the purposive sampling techniques. In the main, the study found a synergistic philosophy employed in the dance programmes at the three public universities studied. The teaching method was predominantly teacher-centred. Consequently, in order to help students have a strong foundational basis for the dance programme, teachers should be knowledgeable about the philosophies and make them explicit in their delivery and encourage co-creative input to improve creative autonomy of dance students.