CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM: RATIONALE AND BACKGROUND
Background of the Study
Department of Education in the Division of Quezon implemented Teaching Required Dance in all public elementary schools. It was under the supervision of the former superintendent Gloria P. Potes since school year 2012-2013 and has been implemented in the present under the supervision of Tolentino G. Aquino, the Public Schools Division Superintendent of Quezon. The TRD focused in teaching Local Folk Dance to elementary pupils to pay tribute to Philippine dance culture because dancing is considered as co-curricular activity and it is taught in tandem with the MSEP curriculum.
On the other hand, as a researcher/as a science teacher, dancing is also the researcher’s specialization. The love for dancing gave the researcher the idea to integrate TRD in teaching Science, It is one way on how to improve the teaching-learning process in the field of education. The researcher has been triggered by the current trend in the education which is going out-of-the-box. The main reason why this study is being conducted is to make some changes in teaching classroom subjects through the integration of dance which is under the required dance in a science lesson plan.
Integrating the Arts with other subjects works because pupils are able to use different strategies and learning styles to explore a variety of subject areas. Pupils who have problems in science might enjoy the content more if it is presented through incorporation of arts activity, eventually aggregating their aspiration to learn. Giving pupils opportunities to dance, act, draw, paint, or play music draws on their strengths and broadens their learning experience across the curriculum (WGBH Educational Foundation, 2009).
School district has the ability to organize the lives of teachers same with organizing the lives of the pupils. Teachers carry on dwelling within the realm of their respected departments and subject areas. In the past years the educators are continuously rethinking to their existing school structure through recognizing some of the dissatisfaction and documenting it. It showed that there are no problems for the teachers in many cases in accepting change and most of them are interested in issues concerning reforms. This shows that hopes of creating curriculum that meets the needs of the informational overload can be achieved. A foundation such as this has allowed integrated curriculum to emerge with a considerable amount of support (Contardi, 2000).
Educators are constantly looking for different way in helping pupils to learn and experience life by applying various methods of teaching which is out-of-the-box and away from the traditional departmentalized curriculum. Pupils today continue to move from one discipline to the next forcing the information to be disconnected to anything that resembles real life situations. To alleviate some of the disintegration pupils and teachers experience, holistic and integrated curriculums are being proposed and adopted by many school districts. The belief that when subjects, themes, or projects are joint together with students they begin to see meaningful connections between the lessons and it served them as driving force. Material then serves as a way for learning rather than simply broken information. In addition to this, repetition of material from one subject to the next is essentially eliminated (Fall, 2000).
Art is seen as a very useful tool to promote creativity and critical thinking, among other skills. Arts education protagonists recommended that studying the arts delivers a different kinds of academic and social benefits to youths and can boost ability of the pupils to learn other subjects, including the development of skills in reading, language development, and math (Robelen, 2010).
Instructional practices in dance support and are enhanced by learning not only in other arts disciplines, but in core content areas such as mathematics, science, social studies, and English language arts (MSDE, 2006).
Teaching Required Dance can play a great role in the field of education. It has to enhance the learning of the pupils. Therefore Teaching Required Dance can be considered as Dance Education. Individually, each word, dance and education, offers an opportunity for endless interpretation, and the combination of terms fails to provide any additional simplicity. The diverse perceptions of dance education and what it can or should be, have led to a trend of narrowing definitions of dance education as an attempt to focus on, and thus clarify, the benefits of individual forms. How has this trend affected the successful integration of dance into the public school curriculum, and what has it meant for the understanding of dance education as a whole.
Teaching Required Dance is composed of various Philippine Folk Dances. One of these folk dances is Tiklos. According to the google translator that Tiklos (also called ‘pintakasi’) is the Waray equivalent to the ‘bayanihan. Groups of people work odd jobs like clearing forests, digging the earth for wells, moving a nipa hut to a new location or even building a house! In all these for free. They work for somebody without hoping for anything in return. Of course grateful benefactors would offer drinks and food; but it is not always expected. The peasants cooperate for the social and economic progress of their community.
Ba-Ingles is another folk dance under TRD and it is derived from the words ‘Baile’ and ‘Ingles’ meaning English dance. This dance was supposedly brought to the Philippines in the early days by English tradesmen. It has the nature and characteristics of some English dances except for the last figure, which is typical of the dances of the Ilocanos from Cabugao, on the island of Luzon, Ba-Ingles was presented by Mrs. Francisca Reyes Aquino in 1962 at Standford University and again recently by Bernardo Pedere at the University of the Pacific Folk Dance Camp at Stockton (Miller, 1979).
Dance and Education (Burnaford, 2003) gives chance for endless interpretation and the amalgamation of terms fails to deliver any additional ease. The varied perceptions of dance education and what it can or should be, have led into narrowing definitions of dance education as an attempt to focus on, and thus clarify, the benefits of individual forms. This trend affected the successful integration of dance specifically Tiklos and Ba Ingles into the selected lesson in Science 4 in Don Gregorio C. Yumul Sr. Elementary School.
The researcher specifically puts an emphasis on the way that creative movement has been operated to support integration of dance into the public school curriculum, resistance that has been credited to insecurities of the teachers with dance and the misconception that its use in the classroom requires an understanding of its organized vocabulary and base of knowledge. The pairing of the terms, creative and movement, is recognized for its ability to reduce discomfort for the teacher by discharging a necessity for content knowledge of dance and focusing on the experimental aspects of movement instead. This focus on the exploratory benefits of dance is indispensable to its full acceptance into the public school curriculum, insofar as all teachers will be able to use dance; otherwise, this would raise concerns about teacher quality and credentials to teach a categorized version of dance. (Bickford, 2008)
Teachers will feel contented using dance in the classroom once they appreciate that the argument for dance education infers use of dance that is restricted to creative movement. The development of this realization, however, has led to the recognition of dance in the classroom but would be further improved by highlighting the benefits of creative movement to student self-awareness. Artistic movement, however, is more than just the assessment of one’s own self, insofar as almost all concepts can be explored kinesthetically, thus possibly supporting the comprehension of the students of an endless number of subject areas through a kinesthetic approach. And so a possible, and important, advantage of using dance in the classroom is lost in the attempt to modify the definition of dance education in such a way as to respond to conflict. Insofar as there are bound to be many diverse and even contradictory forms of resistance to dance education, the full vision of use of dance in the classroom will be lost unless dance education takes possession of its many definitions. (Bickford, 2008)