Perceptions toward Dance and Dance Instruction among Male Junior High School Teachers of Health and Physical Education

Qualitative Examination of their Interviews

Abstract

Within the field of physical education in Japan, dance has long been considered a subject for female students, in the same way that martial arts have been considered for male students. As a consequence, traditionally there has been an overwhelmingly high chance that dance classes are taught by female teachers. In 2012, however, dance became a compulsory subject in physical education for all junior high school students, and therefore more support is needed to avoid bias against male dance teachers. To achieve this, the fundamental awareness of dance among male teachers needs to be comprehensively investigated as a first step. With a primary goal of determining the future direction of education for male dance teachers, this study ascertained the perceptions of dance and dance instruction, in particular the difficulties associated with teaching dance, among male junior high school teachers who had teaching dance experience. Thirteen concepts relating to four categories were extracted from the interview data: dance images, roles expected of dance teachers, roles expected of physical education teachers, and difficulties associated with dance education. This study focused on the latter category, difficulties associated with dance education. The first extracted concept, “role conflict”, reflected the contradiction between the role expected of physical education teachers and that expected of dance teachers (i.e., regulation versus liberation), indicating that this is a problem related to teachers’ dance instruction. The second concept, “confusion about being goal-free”, arose from the opposing characteristics of having goal-free expression in dance and rule-based physical education skills. The third concept, “anxiety about dance skills”, reflected the fact that physical education teachers are expected to demonstrate exceptional physical skills. Therefore, the passiveness of male teachers toward dance cannot be easily or simply explained by the feminine images connected to dance, as having been pointed out in the precedent studies.