Multiple Intelligences and Dance Education for Young Children
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Date
2014-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The goal of this project is to become more informed about how young children learn dance and how to better prepare and conduct movement classes to serve diverse styles of learning. When children partake in recreational dance classes, particularly at an early age, they are taught specific dance steps and movements. The format in which this artistic and technical information is given, however, is not always accessible to children who learn in various ways. I designed a series of seven creative movement dance classes for this study, each based around a different way of learning and around my inquiries surrounding the learning methods of children. Each mode of learning represents one of the “Seven Intelligences,” as described Howard Gardner’s research on multiple intelligences (Gardner, 2006): visual/spatial intelligence, body/kinesthetic intelligence, verbal/linguistic intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, musical/rhythmic intelligence, and mathematical/logical intelligence. Conducting this study provided insight on how the youth responded to each lesson, and how that could affect how other students would respond as well. Compiling these results and the lesson plans utilized for this study into a journal informs dance educators how young children learn in a dance class and how those classes can be better catered toward different ways of learning.
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Keywords
intelligences, dance, education, children