Links between Children’s Use of Critical Thinking and an Expert Teacher’s Teaching in Creative Dance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe how children’s use of critical thinking skills in their movement actions was inspired and elicited by an “expert” teacher’s task design, task presentation, and instructional strategies during children’s creative dance lessons. The data sources included videotaping 16 creative dance lessons and written anecdotal descriptions. The findings indicated that by presenting sequential open-ended tasks and learning cues and providing instructional scaffolding, the teachers helped the students generate divergent and original movement responses and refinement of dance quality and expression, which are critical thinking elements.