MOVING LANGUAGE: AN EXPLORATION OF BODIES AND SPACE IN THE 

CLASSROOM 

 
By 
 

Kaitlin Glause 

A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to 

Michigan State University 

in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of 

Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education—Doctor of Philosophy 

2020 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 
 
 

ABSTRACT 

MOVING LANGUAGE: AN EXPLORATION OF BODIES AND SPACE IN THE 

CLASSROOM 

By 

Kaitlin Glause 

This project stemmed from a collaborative effort in curriculum development and 

 

 

 

 
 

instruction between me and a fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Page (pseudonym). During the fall of 

2018, Ms. Page and I facilitated a process-drama curricular unit (Kao & O’Neill, 1998), which 

introduced fifth graders to the overarching themes for science, social studies, and language arts. 

The purpose of the process-drama was to build a collaborative foundation of understanding for 

content-area and social learning goals that Ms. Page and her students could return to over the 

course of the school year. The structure of the process drama, adapted from earlier renditions, 

broke the class into four islands, each with its own natural resources and cultural identity. The 

drama lead students through a series of dramatic exchanges and creative collaboration. I 

participated as a researcher, collaborator, and teacher-in-role (Kao & O’Neill, 1998) in the 

classroom for the purpose of exploring students’ language use in a collaborative, arts-based 

setting as the students were asked to embody their learning in new ways. As students became 

more autonomous in their collaborative and creative efforts, it became clear that not only were 

students using verbal language in interesting and iterative ways, but they were also using their 

bodies and physical space to articulate, negotiate, and build new meaning. This project builds 

upon theories of embodiment in collaborative meaning making to be understand the role of the 

body in critical, creative, and collaborative efforts. In order to do so, this dissertation is 

organized into five parts: (1) an introduction to my own embodied identity as a 

researcher/teacher/artist; (2) a reconceptualization of the imbricate and embodied nature of 

language, cognition, and bodies; (3) a methodological examination of arts-based research as a 

performative technique for examining bodies and space in the classroom; (4) an empirical 

discussion of the findings and significance of meaning-making bodies during critical 

collaboration; and (5) a poetic and improvisational imagining of the potential of arts-based 

research in embodied studies. Findings from this project suggest that students critically and 

flexibly negotiate the space of the classroom, the space collaborative group, and the ways in 

which they use their bodies, energy, time, and action to articulate, deliberate, and come to 

consensus of new meaning. The findings from this project are significant for researchers and 

teachers because they highlight the importance of supporting students in developing autonomous 

bodies and space in order to meet a range of material and affective needs, rather than continuing 

to treat bodies and space as highly routinized and controlled instruments of learning. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright by 
KAITLIN GLAUSE 
2020

 

 

 

 

This dissertation is dedicated to Adam, Isaac, and Ruby. 

You are the best of everything I’ve ever made. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

v 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 

  A project as extensive as a dissertation should never be undertaken alone. Any success I 

have achieved, anything I have created or shared, was accomplished because I have a human 

network that is both broad and deep. My human network has bolstered me when I felt 

overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. They have empathized and problem-solved 

with me when I needed a new perspective. They have listened and leaned in when I needed to 

share frustrations and roadblocks. They have risen to the occasion when I needed resources and 

materials. They have celebrated successes and accomplishments when I had no energy to 

celebrate myself. To that end, I have an extensive, though hardly comprehensive, list of family, 

friends, colleagues and scholars to thank for their ever-present love and support. 

I would like to start by thanking my fabulous collaborating teacher and students for 

allowing me to come to school to learn. Talking, laughing, learning and playing with you were 

the highlight of my graduate career. My favorite days were spent in your classroom. I would also 

like to thank Terry Edwards for her compassionate care and advocacy for me and my children 

over the course of my graduate career. Terry, thank you for making my wellbeing a priority and 

for caring for my children as though they were your own. My kids were always welcome, and 

they will remember your kindness fondly for years to come. And especially to Joni Starr, whose 

mentoring and leadership over the last five years have been second to none. Thank you for 

bringing out the best in me and my work. 

Additionally, I would like to thank the outstanding scholars who have mentored and 

supported me over the last five years. The four women on my dissertation committee have been 

exceptional. I would like to thank Dr. Carrie Symons, my advisor, for her tireless efforts to 

 

vi 

 

support, encourage, challenge, and motivate me across my entire graduate career. Thank you for 

constantly asking what I need and then listening when I tell you. Thank you to Dr. Janine Certo, 

my dissertation chair, for supporting any and all of my efforts to ask and answer questions in 

ways that are meaningful to me and useful to my communities. Thank you for your patience and 

support in my continued efforts to harmonize occasionally discordant identities. To Dr. Lynn 

Fendler, thank you for your wisdom, criticality, and refusal to tolerate the status quo. Thank you 

for your candid feedback that sends me on revelatory journeys I might not have taken on my 

own. To Dr. Joanna Bosse, I am thrilled that the stars aligned to cross our paths, though I wish it 

had happened years sooner. Thank you for welcoming me into your space without hesitation and 

for making me feel at home in scholarly communities outside the College of Education. 

 

While my time at Michigan State University has been critical in my development as a 

scholar, I would not have made it thus far without the mentorship Dr. Rebekah Kowal, who took 

an interest in my undergraduate career at the University of Iowa. I very clearly remember the 

angle of the sun streaming through the office window as you listened to my graduation plans and 

suggested I complete the application that ultimately launched my career in education. Thank you 

for seeing and articulating a vision of what I could become. Thank you, also, to the women who 

lead me through graduate school as peers, colleagues, and mentors. To Dr. Mandie Dunn, Dr. 

Lindsay Wexler, and Dr. Julie Bell, you all illuminated the paths I could take and modeled 

exceptional scholarship and exceptional collegiality, which I will continue to emulate as best I 

can. 

 

Additionally, I must send a very heartfelt thank you to the 2015-2016 CITE cohort, a 

collection of colleagues, who, from the very beginning of our program made me feel both 

welcome and seen while simultaneously challenging me daily to be a better version of myself. 

 

vii 

 

Thank you especially to my ongoing thought-partners: Dr. Karenanna Creps and Dr. Vivek 

Vellanki for all of your support on my journey as an arts-based researcher and teacher; Christina 

Ponzio, for supporting my efforts in linguistics and language learning; Dr. Scott Jarvie, Cait 

Bergeon, Julie Brehmer, and Alecia Beymer for patiently workshopping countless poems; and to 

my very first writing group, Dr. Katie Schenkel and Dr. Blythe Anderson, who not only 

answered what must have felt like endless questions about writing, but who have also become 

lifelong friends. Thank you for tolerating my constant phone calls, text messages, emails, and 

video chats with kindness, sincerity, and genuine affection. 

 

Most importantly, and probably insufficiently, thank you to my partner, Mark Glause, for 

coming with me on an adventure that neither of us quite understood at the outset. Thank you to 

Adam, Isaac, and Ruby for making me a mother and for loving me unconditionally. The four of 

you have seen me at my best and my worst and you make every day, even the hardest days, 

joyful. Thank you to Sheri Glause, my mother-in-law, who texted me days before her passing to 

let me know she loved me and was thinking about me. Thank you to Galen Glause, my father-in-

law, who watched my dissertation defense and then kneeled directly in front of the camera to tell 

me unequivocally that he was proud of me and Sheri was, too. Thank you to Dr. Brian Schutte, 

my dad, for the daily debates about my work, which helped me hone, clarify, and articulate my 

stances as a scholar and educator. 

 

And finally, to Dr. Deb Schutte, my mom, for being a life-long role model and the 

kindest human I’ve ever met. I remember watching you work your way through graduate school 

when I was a child. I remember cheering you as you were hooded and walked across the stage at 

graduation. I remember you cooking me dinner and helping me with my homework. I remember 

you reading my essays and highlighting whole sentences with the comment, “This doesn’t make 

 

viii 

 

sense to anyone but you.”  Even as I transitioned into adulthood, you have been a constant source 

of support across personal and professional decisions, from preparing conference presentations 

and sending emails to vetting appliances and discussing the best ways to peel tape after painting 

a room. Thank you, Mom, for showing me, very explicitly, all the things that I can be. 

2020 has not been the year that any of us expected, and without my village, I would never 

have made it this far. Thank you, all, for caring for me.  

 

 

 

ix 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 
LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... xiii 

LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... xiv 

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................... xv 

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 
Epistemology .............................................................................................................................. 1 
Positioning .................................................................................................................................. 2 
A Living System ..................................................................................................................... 2 
Arts as a Way of Knowing ...................................................................................................... 3 
Embodied Research ................................................................................................................ 4 
Seams .................................................................................................................................. 4 
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 7 

CONCEPTUALIZING BODIES: LITERATURE AND THEORY OF BODIES AND 
MEANING MAKING IN CLASSROOM CONTEXTS ................................................................ 9 
Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 9 
What is the Body? ..................................................................................................................... 14 
What is Meaning Making? ........................................................................................................ 20 
Sharing Meaning in Classroom Contexts ................................................................................. 22 
Reconceptualizing Body in the Meaning-Making Process ....................................................... 26 
Conceptualization of Ideas .................................................................................................... 30 
Enactment of Ideas ................................................................................................................ 31 
Meaningful Sharing of Ideas and Generated Text ................................................................ 33 
Body, Cognition, and Language in the Classroom Context .................................................. 34 
The Meaningful Body ............................................................................................................... 34 
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 37 
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 41 

LIVING ROOM: THE AFFORDANCES AND CHALLENGES OF DANCE AS AN 
ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE FOR EXPLORING CLASSROOMS .............................................. 46 
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 46 
Building Background ................................................................................................................ 48 
Body and Space in Classrooms ............................................................................................. 48 
Arts-Based Education Research ............................................................................................ 51 
Dance as Inquiry ................................................................................................................... 54 
Making Connections ................................................................................................................. 57 
Reimagining Educational Spaces through Dance ................................................................. 57 
Aims and Questions .............................................................................................................. 59 
Researcher-Dancer ................................................................................................................ 60 
Dance as ABER Exemplar ........................................................................................................ 61 
Question and Context ............................................................................................................ 61 

 

x 

 

Data Generation and Preparation .......................................................................................... 63 
Data Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 64 
Viewing the Data .............................................................................................................. 65 
Describing and Naming .................................................................................................... 65 
Building Phrases ............................................................................................................... 67 
Organizing Ideas ............................................................................................................... 69 
Experimenting, Building, Drafting, Revising, Adapting, and Moving ............................. 71 
Documenting and Rehearsing ........................................................................................... 72 
Responding to Feedback ................................................................................................... 74 
Reflecting and Finding the Whole .................................................................................... 76 
Analytic Challenges, Affordances, and Ways to Rethink ................................................. 78 
Sharing and Evaluating Dance as ABER .................................................................................. 80 
Sharing the Work .................................................................................................................. 80 
Opportunities for Performance ......................................................................................... 80 
Opportunities for Publication ............................................................................................ 81 
Responsible Sharing .......................................................................................................... 82 
Evaluating the Work ............................................................................................................. 83 
Defining Analytic Quality ................................................................................................. 84 
Defining Aesthetic Quality ............................................................................................... 84 
Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 86 
Challenges and Affordances of Dance as ABER Methodology ........................................... 86 
Opportunities for Investigating Classroom Bodies and Space ............................................. 86 
APPENDICES .......................................................................................................................... 88 
APPENDIX A. Next steps for dance as arts-based education research ................................ 89 
APPENDIX B. Additional reading and models for dance as arts-based education research 90 
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 91 

MOVING LANGUAGE: THE ROLE OF CLASSROOM BODIES AND SPACE IN 
NEGOTIATING COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATIONS ...................................................... 96 
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 96 
Collective Effort .................................................................................................................... 96 
The Role of the Arts .............................................................................................................. 98 
Literature Review ...................................................................................................................... 99 
Theoretical Frame ................................................................................................................... 101 
Methods................................................................................................................................... 104 
Phase 1: The Process Drama ................................................................................................... 106 
Setting the Stage ................................................................................................................. 106 
The Actors ........................................................................................................................... 108 
Data Sources ....................................................................................................................... 109 
Observation ..................................................................................................................... 109 
Memos............................................................................................................................. 109 
Video and Audio ............................................................................................................. 110 
Interviews ........................................................................................................................ 110 
Artifacts ........................................................................................................................... 110 
Phase 2: A Dance Methodology ............................................................................................. 111 
The Context for Data Analysis ........................................................................................... 111 
Choreographer/Dancer .................................................................................................... 111 

 

xi 

 

Rehearsal Space .............................................................................................................. 111 
Memos............................................................................................................................. 112 
Video Recordings ............................................................................................................ 112 
Data Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 112 
Step 1 .............................................................................................................................. 114 
Step 2 .............................................................................................................................. 115 
Step 3 .............................................................................................................................. 117 
Step 4 .............................................................................................................................. 118 
Special Considerations for Dance ................................................................................... 120 
Findings .................................................................................................................................. 120 
Space ................................................................................................................................... 121 
Energy ................................................................................................................................. 126 
Level ................................................................................................................................... 128 
Action and Time ................................................................................................................. 130 
Gesture and Materials ......................................................................................................... 133 
Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 134 
Significance and Next Steps ................................................................................................... 136 
APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................. 139 
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 143 

I’M HERE: A DANCE PERFORMANCE ................................................................................ 148 
Accessing Dance Performance ............................................................................................... 148 
Responding to Dance Performance ......................................................................................... 148 
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 150 

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 152 
A Body’s Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................ 152 

 
 

 

 

xii 

 

LIST OF TABLES 

 
 
 
Table 1 Example of descriptive language from video re-observation .......................................... 66 

Table 2 Performance narrative ...................................................................................................... 70 

Table 3 Overview of Ms. Page's process drama ......................................................................... 107 

Table 4 Overview of data analysis procedure ............................................................................. 113 

Table 5 Overview of video data for Greynel analysis ................................................................ 114 

Table 6 Overview of critical collaborative meaning-making episodes (CCMME), discourse 
segments, and pivotal moments (PM) for video samples ........................................................... 116 
 
Table 7 Areas for reflection and guiding questions when responding to a dance performance . 149 

 
 

 

 

xiii 

 

LIST OF FIGURES 

 
 

 
Figure 1. Diagram of the meaning-making process through four phases. .................................... 29 

Figure 2. A body moves ................................................................................................................ 56 

Figure 3. Movement memo of building phrases ........................................................................... 69 

Figure 4. Movement memo of experimenting, building, drafting, revising, adapting, and moving
....................................................................................................................................................... 72 
 
Figure 5. Movement memo of documenting and rehearsing ........................................................ 74 

Figure 6. Movement memo of responding to feedback ................................................................ 76 

Figure 7. Movement memo of reflecting and finding the whole .................................................. 78 

Figure 8. Movement memo of analytic challenges, affordances, and ways to rethink ................. 79 

Figure 9. Island of Greynel created collaboratively by seven group members. ......................... 111 

Figure 10. QR code for "I'm Here: A Dance Performance." ...................................................... 121 

Figure 11. Center-point of collaborative groupwork during the articulation of CCMME 1. ..... 122 

Figure 12. QR code for “I’m Here: A Dance Performance” ....................................................... 148 

Figure 13. QR code for "A Body's Final Thoughts." .................................................................. 152 

 

 

 

xiv 

 

 
CCSS   

NGSS   

ABR 

 

ABER   

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS 

 
 

Common Core State Standards 

Next Generation Science Standards 

Arts-based Research 

Arts-based Education Research 

CCMME 

Critical collaborative meaning-making episodes 

PM 

 

Pivotal moment

 

xv 

 
 

I am not Science. 
Methods, the stone steps, 
propelling to the highest towers. 
  
There is a live tree. 
Right here, branches  
bright and cool. One 
should not hew steps into live wood. 
  
I understand. Stone steps  
are carved through systematic study  
and valid measures, each tower  
a monument of theory evidenced  
empirically. They are one way  
 
to tell one story. See those  
petals over there? They are worthy  
of our attention, too, I think. 
  
If I shimmy up this tree trunk, 
a dance of torso, limbs, and hands, 
will I not find silky medallions among 
this branch, that branch, this branch? 
  
Perhaps. 
Your methods may be better  
understood; may be more efficient; 
may show a wider range of qualities, 
quantities, descriptive detail, 
statistical significance that is True. 
  
Once I saw a tree curved 
as a question. Splintered hands 
and scraped knees realized my  
fragrant methods have a place as well.  
So do the leaves that surround them,  
and the stems that connect them 
to the branches that support them 
as the insects scrabble through the bark. 
 
 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

Epistemology 

1 
 
 

 

A Living System 

Positioning 

This research project was conceptualized collaboratively with a fifth-grade classroom 

teacher, Ms. Page (a pseudonym). Over the summer of 2018, Ms. Page and I worked together to 

expand upon an arts-integrated process drama, a social studies and literacy driven unit engaging 

students in a series of world-building scenarios, which we had piloted the previous fall. Ms. Page 

asked me to return to her classroom in the fall of 2018 to participate in the facilitation of the 

“Four Islands” process-drama in her classroom: a unit designed to introduce her students to the 

overarching themes of the fifth-grade classroom for science, social studies, and language arts. 

One of Ms. Page’s goals for the unit was to build a collaborative foundation of understanding for 

key ideas that she and her students could return to over the course of the school year. The 

structure of the process drama, which we adapted from earlier renditions, broke the class into 

four islands, each with its own natural resources and identity. The drama then lead students 

through a series of dramatic exchanges and creative collaboration. I participated as a researcher, 

as a collaborator, and as a teacher-in-role (Kao & O’Neill, 1998) in the classroom with the intent 

of exploring students’ language (verbal and non-verbal) in a collaborative, arts-based classroom 

setting. 

After initial observations, it became clear that not only were students using verbal 

language in interesting and iterative ways, but they were also using their bodies and physical 

space to tell a more multi-faceted story than oral and written language alone could provide. 

While oral language was students’ primary mode of communication and negotiation, I began to 

notice students’ embodied experience played a role, often implicit and overlooked, in their 

negotiations. It was then that I decided I would center this project on students’ bodies and the 

 

2 

 

diligent work being done within, through, and around them. In order to do so, I frame this 

dissertation around four distinct, though interconnected, sections (1) literature and theory to 

reconceptualize the body as meaning; (2) dance as an arts-based education research 

methodology; (3) empirical analysis and discussion of project data; and (4) a dance performance 

art piece. 

Arts as a Way of Knowing 

         The arts as a way of knowing play a critical role within this project, with the arts being 

broadly defined as any creative endeavor (often falling into categories such as visual art, dance, 

theater, music, poetry, etc.) (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018). Within this dissertation, 

the role of the arts is two-fold. First, the curriculum designed and implemented by Ms. Page with 

her fifth-grade students was a process-drama, which is a dramatic improvisational technique 

(Kao & O’Neill, 1998). Throughout the process drama, students engaged additionally in visual 

art through painting, sculpting, and drawing. They engaged in music and dance through the 

creation and presentation of musical island themes, as well as drama/theater practices through 

staged performances and in-role improvisation, including the development of social contracts 

and forms of government. The fifth-grade students in Ms. Page’s classroom engaged in extensive 

collaborative group work to create materials and to respond to the various scenarios presented by 

the teacher. The collaborative group work where students created arts-based materials is the 

focus of this project, not the arts-based materials themselves. 

          Second, this project includes dance as an analytic technique to examine the embodied 

experiences of the students in their collaborative group work. Using the language of students’ 

bodies and the language of their discussions, movement phrases were choreographed and 

arranged in a dance performance. This dance performance serves as the findings of the project, 

 

3 

 

which is then discussed in terms of its relationship to current understandings of collaborative 

classroom practices. While it may seem counterintuitive and unwieldy to focus attention on 

students’ bodies during collaborative work, as an arts-based researcher, it felt unethical to simply 

examine student oral and written language when, as a classroom observer, students’ bodies and 

spaces told a complex and nuanced story. Therefore, this project draws upon arts-based theories 

of meaning making and arts-based methodologies, but it does not study arts-based classroom 

content. In other words, this is not a study of students’ artmaking. This is an arts-based research 

study of students’ embodied meaning making during collaborative group work endeavors. 

Embodied Research 

Seams 
Bright water laps against the shore 
as children tread lightly in cool stasis. 
Cautiously, I approach, 
unwilling to startle. 
Toe first, 
the ripples lengthen and roll. 
The water rings push against 
the skin of the children. 
Faces, alerted, turn to see 
the impetus. 
Toe foot calf knee thigh. 
It laps around my waist 
as the displacement lifts the children, 
pushing them to the tips of their toes. 
I work my way around the edge, 
disruptive body conscious, 
watching the ripples wave 
as I lean down into the broken plane. 
The children return 
to their endeavors, 
unsteadied by the risen tide. 
 
 

Researchers hold a powerful embodied presence in classroom spaces, disguised by a 

widely accepted stance of neutrality or invisibility. Researchers partake in observations or even 

interventions, where the researcher’s body is intended to blend into the background, poised 

 

4 

 

behind a computer, clipboard, or notebook. Yet to dismiss a researcher’s body as neutral or 

invisible is an act of power (Ellingson, 2017). The body of a researcher entering a classroom 

space inherently shifts the tide of the space and bodies within. In order to undertake a project that 

closely examines the embodied experiences of my participants, it is critical I address my own 

body-being. As Ellingson (2017) suggests, to hide my own body in this project is to hide my 

privilege. I come to this project from an embodied position of power. I present and identify as a 

White, able-bodied, upper class woman. I am identified in classroom spaces as an expert and 

scholar worthy of attention and deference from teachers and students alike. I am allowed to enter 

and exit the classroom community and space as I see fit. I am allowed to ask questions and offer 

insights as I deem appropriate and necessary. 

 

When I enter a classroom, I do so quietly and assertively. I rarely knock on the door, but I 

look before I enter. I take three steps into the classroom and find a place to stand on the 

classroom periphery, hands at my sides or holding my bag, until I am greeted by the teacher. I 

am still and relaxed, using my head and eyes to survey the room and its occupants. As I wait, I 

smile at students as they catch my eye. After a verbal or non-verbal greeting by the teacher, I 

find my invited or agreed upon seat in the room. This is often a table or teacher’s desk where I 

can set my things and enter more completely into the classroom space. 

 

I rarely sit long. It is not in my nature nor experience to sit quietly in the classroom, and I 

recognize my presence is never innocuous. From the time I enter the classroom, my bodied 

presence has already begun to shift the embodied experience of teacher and students. Students sit 

a little taller or slouch a little lower. Their gaze flicks back and forth between teacher, researcher, 

and materials. As an outside presence entering into new space, I put my body to work. I prepare 

materials for teachers (i.e. cutting clay or finishing a poster). I answer questions for students (i.e. 

 

5 

 

directing them to a nearby bin or explaining who I am). I enter classroom instruction (i.e. as a 

collaborating or lead teacher). I support students (i.e. conferencing with groups or asking 

clarifying questions). My conversations with teachers begin early and often span the course of 

my time in the classroom. I exit the room as I entered, quietly and assertively. I say goodbye and 

thank you with words, smiles, gestures and tokens of appreciation. 

 

My body and my presence hold meaning for teachers and students, and I do not try to 

pretend otherwise. My body and presence are unsettling and foreign. My body and presence hold 

power and privilege. My body in the classroom takes space and shapes space. At the same time, I 

recognize that students’ bodies take space and shape space, though this reality is often 

overlooked by students, teachers, and researchers alike. This project is designed to articulate and 

reconceptualize what that embodied experience means for students, their teachers, and those who 

support learning in education spaces. 

 

 

 

6 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES 

 

7 

 
 
 
Cahnmann-Taylor, M., & Siegesmund, R. (Eds.). (2018). Arts-based research in education (2nd 

ed.). Routledge. 

REFERENCES 

 
Ellingson, L. L. (2017). Embodiment in qualitative research. Taylor & Francis. 
 
Kao, S. M., & O’Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through 

process drama. Greenwood Publishing Group. 

 

 
 
 

 

 

8 

 

 
 
 

 

CONCEPTUALIZING BODIES: LITERATURE AND THEORY OF BODIES AND 

MEANING MAKING IN CLASSROOM CONTEXTS 

Introduction 

Classrooms are embodied spaces. Within their walls, teachers and students work together 

to explore ideas and develop new meaning through the use of shared experience. Within 

classroom walls, space, time, bodies, language, and material are driven and manipulated toward 

learning goals. Classrooms are complex and nuanced spaces where students work to develop and 

share meaning over the course of the school year. Each day, students and teachers bring their 

bodies to the classroom to experience first-hand ongoing learning. However, what happens to a 

body once it crosses the classroom threshold? For many, the schooled body of the classroom 

becomes little more than managed (Alerby et al., 2014; Duncum, 1999; McLaren, 1999; Yuan, 

2017), disciplined (Banovcanova & Masarykova, 2014; Connor et al., 2004; Franklin-Phipps, 

2017; Niccolini, 2016; Stahl, 2019), an objective object of study (Andersson & Garrison, 2016; 

Orlander & Wickman, 2016), or an object of isolation and segregation (Erevelles, 2000; Snyder 

& Mitchell, 2001). 

 

These are particularly limiting perspectives because of the way they emphasize the body 

as an object or impediment to learning, rather than as a key component to lived meaning making 

(Hughes-Decatur, 2011). Indeed, in many cases, bodies are considered objects that must be 

managed in classroom spaces much as materials and tools are managed. To this end, desks, 

tables, and materials enact as “spatial confinements” for bodies, where students are required to 

sit or stand in particular designated spaces (Alerby et al., 2014; Spina, 1999). While I would not 

argue that management practices are entirely problematic (they play an important role in the 

development of functional learning environments for many students), they are often utilized to 

 

9 

 

regulate and control bodies as another classroom object, as if bodies were another piece of 

furniture designed only to transport and protect a person’s brain. The lack of explicit attention to 

the body and the role it plays in learning experiences becomes additionally problematic when 

classroom routines and structures become viscerally harmful, such as the physical anxiety 

students feel during management practices like round-robin reading (Jones, 2013). Additionally, 

curricular practices have also been utilized to manage and mitigate bodily experiences, especially 

the experiences of students of color, which are often stigmatized as needing more management 

and control (Yuan, 2017). In a traditional classroom setting, the development of a well-structured 

learning environment mandates controlling bodies in order to minimize their distraction of or 

interference with the learning taking place in the mind with little acknowledgement of the bodily 

harm those practices might cause. 

Similarly, part of the managing bodies in the classroom is the utilization of disciplinary 

practices. Bodily discipline in the classroom can take a range of forms. In some cases, the 

disciplining of classroom bodies takes the shape of convincing students to conform to particular 

routines and ritual practices. An example of this can be seen in the work of McLaren (1999) in 

his study of Catholic school practices, where a large part of schooling was asking students to 

conform to notions of the body as a servant of capitalism. Additionally, the body as an object of 

discipline can take the extreme form of physical contact between teachers and students, and 

between students and students, where one person exerts physical power or control over another 

through contact between bodies (Connor et al., 2004). While this is often surprising and 

unexpected to both the person in the position of power and the person being disciplined, it is still 

an enactment of discipline with bodies in classroom space. As Hughes-Decatur (2011) explains, 

“bodies have everything to do with education and teaching because we are disciplined by 

 

10 

 

discursive mechanisms in popular and educational culture to police and standardize our bodies, 

while we are simultaneously learning how to read bodies as normal or deficient visual texts” (p. 

73). In many cases, the burden of cultural standardization falls on Black and Brown bodies, 

which are overly disciplined, surveilled, or removed from classroom spaces because of the way 

that classroom disciplinary practices are enacted (Franklin-Phipps, 2017; Stahl, 2019). Like the 

management of bodies, discipline has been argued as a necessary part of minimizing the 

distraction or interference of the body. Often, extreme bodily discipline is justified as essential 

for creating a “safe” classroom environment where the mind is free to learn, grow, and make 

meaning. 

Another common understanding of the body in the classroom is related to the notion of 

experiential learning, where the body is the object of study. Examples include subjects such as 

physical education class, where embodied knowledge becomes critical for students' learning 

because their learning is about the body and how the body is used during physical education 

(Andersson & Garrison, 2016). Similarly, this sort of experiential learning of the body has also 

been studied in science classrooms, where once again, the body becomes an object of learning, 

whether that be the subject of biology or anatomy and human systems, but also in science 

classrooms where the body is required for enacting the science, such as during a lab which 

includes scientific routine (Almquist & Quennerstedt, 2015; Franks & Jewitt, 2001; Orlander & 

Wickman, 2010). In these cases, the body can be studied much as that of a tool used in a science 

laboratory. It becomes clear in physical education classrooms and in science classrooms that the 

learning would not happen if it were not for the body in the classroom. In all of these cases, the 

body, while capable of great meaning making, is identified as an object or material of the 

 

11 

 

classroom space, which can be moved, manipulated, or controlled as needed to reach particular 

learning outcomes.  

Finally, an often-overlooked area of classroom embodiment is the separation and 

isolation of disabled bodies from mainstream classrooms as exemplified through the theorizing 

and research of disability studies (Erevelles, 2000; Snyder & Mitchell, 2001). As disability 

scholars have argued, normative classroom practices that value and idealize “abled” bodies are 

often used as a bodily standard where bodies that are viewed as different are also viewed as 

limited or as needing too much support to justify inclusion with peers. Erevelles (2000) states 

that “because disabled students have historically been perceived as ‘unruly; subjects who have 

consistently disrupted the ordered functioning of schooling and consistently resisted the 

disciplining forces that are called into play, they have been banished to special education 

classrooms to be (re)habilitated in an effort to enable them to (re)turn to ‘normal’ life” (p. 42). 

Indeed, Snyder and Mitchell (2001) posit that the objectification of the biological body points to 

disability as deviance rather than positioning bodies as “interdependent social entities” (p. 370). 

The result of bodily objectification through science, and economics as well, is the segregation 

and isolation of disabled bodies from their peers in educational contexts.  

While research has gained insight about classroom spaces by observing the body as an 

enactment of discipline, management, isolation and object of study, I would argue that the 

classroom body can also be conceptualized as a significant contributor to the way meaning is 

imagined, developed, and shared throughout the learning process in classroom spaces (Mulcahy, 

2012; Perry & Medina, 2011). This requires a shift in the contemporary perspective from 

viewing the body as an object to conceptualizing the body as a critical component of meaning-

 

12 

 

making and learning spaces. To that end, this manuscript seeks to answer the question: What is 

the relationship between the student body and meaning making in the classroom context? 

In order to do so, I first share a discussion of what the body is, focusing on a brief history 

of the body as it has been socially and culturally understood in Western communities. I will then 

shift to the body in the classroom in order to think more carefully about the ways in which the 

body is engaged in the classroom through management and discipline, including what is known 

thus far about the body in learning and communication. Next, I will discuss current 

understandings of meaning making by first exploring how people make meaning through inquiry 

and social contexts. I will then discuss how meaning is made in classroom spaces, focusing on 

the role of the teacher and learning objectives geared towards explicit meaning making. 

Following, I will discuss sharing meaning in classroom contexts, focusing on how teachers and 

students currently share meaning with each other through a discussion of literacy and text 

practices. This section will explore how literacy and text play a role in sharing knowledge in 

classroom spaces. Afterwards, I will discuss the reconceptualization of the body in the meaning-

making process by explicitly exploring the role of the body in the conceptualization, enactment, 

and sharing of ideas throughout the meaning-making process. Then, I will discuss the 

meaningful body in order to think about what performance art and aesthetics can teach us about 

embodied meaning making and in thinking about the body as a critical component in meaning-

making contexts while also exploring how embodied meaning making can play a role in 

classroom spaces. Finally, I will conclude by sharing next steps for reconceptualizing the body in 

classroom spaces with particular emphasis on thinking about how to adjust thinking about bodies 

and meaning making in order to better support students' embodied learning in classroom spaces. 

 

 

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What is the Body? 

In order to best understand the relationship between the body and meaning making in 

classroom contexts, the body must be defined in terms of its historical contexts. Traditionally in 

Western culture, the body has been understood through the wide acceptance of the Cartesian 

mind/body split. In this theory, the mind is viewed as objective, rationale, and the holder of all 

higher order thinking while the body is seen as subjective, irrational, and emotional 

(Banovcanova & Masarykova, 2014). In this case, the mind and cognition hold prominence in 

any thinking about meaning making and learning, whereas the body is an irrational and 

emotional object that must be disciplined and managed in order for any real meaning making or 

higher order thinking to occur. This conceptualization of body dominates classroom contexts, 

where school settings see the body as a distraction from learning opportunities, which is where 

the development of management and disciplinary techniques that view the body as an object to 

be mitigated. 

Similar to theories of dualism and structuralism is the notion of representationalism, 

where theorists and researchers who explore ideas of body and culture and social practice think 

about the body as "an ethnographic other" (Csordas & Harwood, 1994, p. 10). In this case, the 

researcher or theorists position themselves from a point of privilege, where they use their own 

discourses to create a linguistic representation of another culture through the examination of 

bodies and embodied practices. Limiting understandings of the body to linguistic representation 

can other and marginalize communities dissimilar from the ethnographer’s own. As Perry and 

Medina (2011) argue, “the body is impenetrable by the means that we have at our disposal – 

words, ink, page, computer. And… the endeavor to talk about the body is also challenging if not 

futile, due to the discourses that we have at the ready, that is, the dominant discourse of the 

 

14 

 

mind” (p. 64). Csordas and Harwood (1994) suggest that rather than thinking about discussions 

of culture and social practice through representation, bodies should be considered for what they 

“evoke” rather than what they "represent" (p. 11). Given the limitations of language as a tool for 

understanding embodiment, language could be better utilized as a modality for “disclosing” 

rather than representing a being-in-the-world (Csordas & Hardwood, 1994, p. 11). This idea of 

“evoking” or “disclosing” rather than representing is an important distinction when thinking 

about bodies and what they do in studies of social and cultural practice. Rather than thinking 

about bodies as objects, the body can be understood instead as “a function of being-in-the 

world… for whom embodiment is the existential condition of possibility for culture and self” 

(Csordas & Harwood, 1994, p. 12). When bodies are described using binary discourses, as 

objects or as irrational selves, then the body has been merely represented, rather than understood 

for its capacity to evoke meaning. 

Theorists of embodiment, and embodied knowledge, have developed frameworks to more 

clearly articulate the role of the body in social and cultural practices. Embodied knowledge, 

which is rooted in theories of poststructuralism, critiques the linguistic, social, and cultural 

binaries that place bodies in opposition to cognitive processes (Ellingson, 2017). A key 

underpinning of embodied knowledge is the shift in theory that there is no direct separation 

between a body and mind, a direct rejection of a Cartesian understanding of mind/body dualism. 

Instead of viewing the body/mind as a dichotomy, embodied knowledge embraces the 

“recognition of the embeddedness of thought in experience as it emerges in our interactions with 

the natural and technical world” (Davidson, 2004, p. 198). In this case, the use of the mind is 

integrally connected to the use of the body, which places the body as “a critique of educational 

rationalism” which relies upon dualisms of mind over body, adult over child, rational over 

 

15 

 

irrational, and male over female (Peters, 2004, p. 26). For example, one common classroom 

practice is for teachers to attune to students’ bodies only when they think that students need a 

“brain break”. In this case, teachers ask students to move their bodies, through choreographed 

dance or exercise routines, as a way to “refocus” and “rest” their minds from the cognitive tasks 

of learning (Dinkel et al., 2017; Perera et al., 2015). Embodied knowledge and embodied 

learning suggest, on the other hand, that the basis of knowing is the body in interaction with its 

social and material environment (Davidson, 2004). 

          Particularly in classroom spaces, research has developed and strengthened understandings 

of cognitive and linguistic processes that support students in learning and making meaning. 

Often, in such research paradigms, the body is included implicitly, through secondary analysis, 

or as a tool for supporting language and cognition. However, conceptualizing classrooms as 

embodied spaces does not require discounting cognitive and linguistic traditions – as binary 

approaches often suggest we do. As Zembylas (2007) argues, “there is no body outside the 

discourses and representation systems in which it is impeded… discourses do not simply reflect 

or describe reality, knowledge experience, relationships, and practices; rather, discourses 

constitute the world and individuals” (p. 22). Rather than thinking about bodies, minds, and 

classroom space as working in opposition to each other, Ellingson (2017) describes them as 

“imbricate,” meaning that “participants’ bodies depend upon one another for meaning in a given 

space” (p. 21). This imbricate relationship also means that embodied knowledge relies upon 

language and expressive bodies to make meaning through bodies, lived space, time, and their 

relationship to others (Van Manen, 1990). Furthermore, Van Manen (1990) argued that an 

affordance of this interconnected understanding of knowledge is that “the experience of 

something that appears ineffable within the context of one type of discourse may be expressible 

 

16 

 

by means of another form of discourse” (p. 113). Because embodied knowledge foregrounds the 

body as a site of meaning making and learning, it can function as a reframing of educational 

spaces, which have often valued disembodied ways of knowing. 

In spite of this reframing potentiality, Spatz (2015) cautions that efforts to further the 

cause of embodied knowledge have been problematic in their lack of specificity and attention to 

the history and transformation of embodied understandings over time. To that end, Spatz (2015) 

includes helpful definitions of embodiment, specifically technique and practice, which make 

theories of embodiment more substantive and easier to discuss and understand. The central tenet 

of the text, “technique is knowledge that structures practice” (p. 1), provides a guiding principle 

through which complex notions of embodiment can be recognized and understood. According to 

Spatz (2015), technique “structures our actions and practices by offering a range of relatively 

reliable pathways through any given situation” (p. 26). In other words, dancing, walking, sitting, 

are all embodied techniques that, though they vary through person and context, are all 

recognizable, reliable, and repeatable.  Practice is defined as a set of actions and the patterns that 

link them together, which are bounded by person, space, and time, “concrete moments of 

practice are structured by knowledge in the form of technique” (Spatz, 2015, p. 40). For 

example, I as a dancer have learned the technique of ballet. Through processes of learning and 

acquisition I have developed relatively reliable pathways through which I can engage in 

practice. My ballet practice is bounded by my body, and the time and space in which I am 

dancing. Though I draw upon the same technical knowledge, each example of ballet practice is 

unique - never exactly replicated. For a classroom, a teacher may see the technique, the 

embodied knowledge of students entering and exiting the classroom. Though each practice is 

bounded by body, space, and time, never to be exactly replicated, the technique of entering and 

 

17 

 

exiting the classroom (i.e. quietly, single file, one at a time) is predictable and relies upon 

knowledge which is generally recognized and replicable. 

 

Utilizing technique and practice for examining embodied knowledge have particular 

affordances. For one, Spatz (2015) describes how “the concept of technique solves the dilemma 

(of magical performance versus mundane everyday) by conceiving of both specialized and 

everyday practices in terms of their knowledge content” (p. 10). By using technique and practice, 

a person can experience, discuss, and understand the embodied knowledge of any embodied 

experience, especially those in a specialized context like a classroom. Additionally, 

understanding embodiment as technique and practice affords us additional tools for meaning 

making. Often, bodies are reduced to signification or gesture, where the body stands in for 

language. Spatz (2015) argues: 

Even when the semiotic content of a practice seems paramount, we should not ignore or 

discount the embodied effort that makes it possible… When we “read” embodied practice 

in terms of signification alone, we ignore much of its meaning, which is located not in the 

relationship between signs but in the quantity and quality of embodied effort that goes 

into the enactment of technique. Signification, in this sense, is a surface phenomenon. It 

is important an important dimension of the meaning and effectiveness of embodied 

technique, but by no means the only one. (p. 50) 

Embodied knowledge as technique and practice provides analytic and reflective tools, which can 

examine the ephemeral experience of practice as well as the produced knowledge of technique. 

The technique and practice of the body in a classroom context can be discussed in a 

variety of ways. Though varying in practice, there are predictable and replicable techniques for 

sitting, standing, producing, sharing, and participating in the classroom space. By examining the 

 

18 

 

experience of classroom bodies as technique, embodied researchers can benefit from what Spatz 

(2015) calls transmissible knowledge. This is defined as technique that moves across national 

and cultural boundaries and holds power (p. 30). In fact, the transmissible knowledge of 

education techniques in Western cultures has become so pervasive that “in regulating their 

bodily and affective practices in teaching, teachers control themselves out of fear of being 

‘punished’ by society and its norms” (Zembylas, 2007 p. 20). In education research, 

transmissible knowledge is often seen as a problematic feature of embodied research because of 

the ‘ephemeral’ nature of practice, as in, it is bounded by the live experience and cannot be 

replicated. However, for teachers and students, the transmissible knowledge of classroom 

technique regulates the unseen yet governing forces of classroom bodies and action. Yet, in the 

case of a classroom context, transmissible knowledge does not have to be limited to the 

management of affect, but could be used to develop an understanding of students’ embodied 

meaning making as part of their learning practices. What is the knowledge that provides 

relatively reliable pathways for understanding student’s embodied knowledge in these meaning-

making endeavors?  

When considering this in relationship to the body in the classroom, evoking and 

disclosing the body through examination of technique and practice rather than representation 

allows a shift away from discipline and management towards notions of embodied learning and 

communication. The body in learning can be seen in a number of examples. First, this is seen in 

the study of science classrooms where the body is an implicit component of learning which 

serves to participate in and communicate meaning making (Almquist & Quennerstedt, 2015; 

Franks & Jewitt, 2001; Orlander & Wickman, 2010). In these cases, the learning that happens in 

the science classroom must include the body such that looking only at the language of the 

 

19 

 

students would be insufficient for understanding their learning and meaning making. Examples 

of embodied meaning making are also seen in the shop classroom where students are learning 

techniques for building with their hands, where bodies are acting polyrhythmically and bodies 

perform a range of critical communicative functions for meaning making (Andersson & Risberg, 

2018). For example, the teacher in the shop classroom might use their body to support their 

student in thinking through and modeling next steps for a classroom, where if you looked only at 

their oral language, you would miss critical components of the collaboration and meaning 

making. This can also be seen in classrooms that utilize performative inquiry where bodies are 

generating meaning through creative processes and where students are asked to enact multiple 

modalities as part of their learning (Buchholz, 2015) or when studying the assemblage of body, 

material, language, and affect for understanding how students and teachers engage in and interact 

with curriculum and learning (Yuan, 2017). 

What is Meaning Making? 

Part of the work reconceptualizing the body as an integral part of the meaning-making 

process is examining contemporary understandings of meaning making in classroom contexts. 

Social scientists have developed theory of meaning making as a social process that includes 

learning and growth as collaborative and communicative (Wenger, 1998). Learning as personal 

development and growth has been identified as a social process where a learner interacts in a 

group that is part of a larger community. Through the process of engaging with the interpersonal 

group, using the norms and expectations of the larger community, a learner grows and develops 

over time (Rogoff et al., 1995). Additionally, meaning making has been understood a 

communicative process where the learner is developing not only social practices, but also new 

and additional discourses, which they can use and expand upon in order to participate in their 

 

20 

 

social groups (Halliday, 1993). Within these social groups, meaning making is developed 

through the act of inquiry, where a learner asks and answers questions in order to make 

connections between what they know and what they are learning over time. Gee (1991) describes 

the different ways a learner develops meaning making over time by describing the processes of 

learning and acquisition. In the process of acquisition, skill and understanding are developed 

through the act of participating in the social, cultural, and literacy practices of a group. This 

continues over an extended period of time so that the learner can eventually take on the values, 

skills, and ways of knowing as a member of the community. The act of learning, on the other 

hand, is tied to the development of metacognitive understandings of the practices of the 

community, where the learner may not be an active participant or member of the community but 

has developed an understanding of that community's practices through study and observation. 

Acquisition of a discourse and community practice in a classroom context is often seen through 

an apprenticeship or trade school, where students acquire practices and crafts of the community 

by active participants within that community. On the other hand, traditional disciplinary 

classrooms are conducted to support students' learning about community practices through more 

explicit and metacognitive means. Meaning making is a complex and ongoing process over time 

where a learner interacts with and between communities to make connections, answer questions, 

and build knowledge. 

The curricular and instructional techniques developed to support learning and meaning 

making in classroom settings have been established using highly routinized structures and 

practices.  In a classroom setting, the development of meaning making over time is usually 

facilitated by a teacher through the use of learning goals and objectives. Examples of the kinds of 

learning goals and objectives utilized in a classroom context can be seen through the work of 

 

21 

 

such texts as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science 

Standards (NGSS). These objectives are broken down into developmentally appropriate parts 

through which teachers scaffold, slowly support students in building skills and knowledge over 

time in a series of pre-determined steps with expert modeling, in an effort to work towards the 

end-goal or product of the learning (Vygotsky, 1978). The scaffolds designed by teachers are 

meant to support students as building blocks toward the larger yearlong objectives provided by 

such tools as CCSS and NGSS (Common Core State Standards, 2020; Next Generation Science 

Standards, 2020). The objectives designed in schools also signal to students what meaning 

making is deemed valuable and important by the educational community. Meaning making in 

traditional classrooms is often a highly structured and routinized process, where teachers develop 

and monitor the context, learning goals, process, and ultimately, the product of learning 

experience. In this sense, meaning making in classroom contexts is carefully mediated by the 

school community so that every student is enacting the same learning as their peers. Often, the 

products and outcomes that constitute meaning making are tied to text-based artifacts, created 

through oral and written language. Rather than including the body as part of the meaning-making 

pedagogy, systems of education, as exemplified in highly routinized environments, “spend 

tremendous time, energy and resources on training teachers to enact a specific style of pedagogy 

which requires the frequent monitoring of students’ bodies,” justified as an effort to ensure 

highest levels of learning. 

Sharing Meaning in Classroom Contexts 

In order to determine if learning goals have been met, students in classrooms are asked to 

share their learning and meaning making using particular modes of assessment. During teacher 

preparation programs, teachers learn a range of formative and summative assessment strategies, 

 

22 

 

which seek to make explicit students’ meaning making in the classroom. Black and Wiliam 

(1998), in their highly influential literature review, state that the use of the term “formative 

assessment does not have a tightly defined and widely accepted meaning… it is to be interpreted 

as encompassing all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which 

provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in 

which they are engaged” (pp 7-8). While the review suggests that teachers utilizing formative 

assessment move away from “unitary notions of intelligence” (Black & Wiliam, 1998, p. 56), 

established formative assessment strategies are still predominantly tied to oral and text-based 

literacy practices, whether students are asked to report verbally on their learning, or through a 

text-based artifact, such as a written feedback loop or an end-of-class reflection. Oral and text-

based assessments of learning are certainly those taken most seriously in classroom spaces for 

tracking and scaffolding meaning-making experiences. Bodies are included in sharing by 

managing input and output (i.e. having students raise their hands to signal that they would like to 

answer a question) or by managing scaffolds and sequencings (i.e. having students put their 

finger on their nose to signal they are ready to move on to the next step; having students give a 

thumbs up or thumbs down to show how well they feel they are understanding a concept). As 

Black and Wiliam (1998) claim, “spaces in schools are designated for specified activities, and 

given the importance attached to ‘orderliness’ in most classrooms, teachers’ actions are as often 

concerned with establishing routines, order and student satisfaction as they are with developing 

the student’s capabilities” (p. 58). 

While assessment may be defined as a feedback cycle designed to inform the 

modification of teaching and learning activities, sharing meaning through those feedback cycles 

in classroom contexts is also highly dependent upon the literacies and texts valued by the 

 

23 

 

students and teacher. In its most limiting capacity, literacy has been defined as the ability to read 

and write text, where text is defined as the use of alphabetic writing to record knowledge. These 

original definitions of text as alphabetic writing were lauded as opening the doors “to write 

easily and read unambiguously about anything which the society can talk about” (Goody & Watt, 

1968, p. 39), which was seen as more sophisticated and advanced than societies that used oral 

traditions to maintain culture and tradition (Goody & Watt, 1968; Olson, 1977). However, 

definitions of literacy and text have shifted over time as we have begun to recognize the ways in 

which other cultural traditions continue to proliferate even against the colonizing literacy 

practices based on Western practices of alphabetic text (Collins & Blot, 2003). 

Over time, definitions of literacy have expanded beyond the reading and writing of text. 

Gee (2012) pioneered the understanding of literacy as Discourse practices, which he defined as: 

Distinctive ways of speaking/listening and often, too, writing/reading coupled with 

distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing with 

other people and with various objects, tools, and technologies, so as to enact specific 

socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities. (p. 

152) 

This was a seminal step in definitions of literacy that moved beyond reading and writing to 

include the values and ways of being that are critical components of any literacy practice. Other 

theorists have also worked to complicate and add nuance to understandings of literacy and text. 

Collins and Blot (2003) theorized relationships between power, identity, literacy, and text, where 

the enactment of literacy practices include deciding whose interpretation of text is right and 

whose is wrong - a critical practice steeped in power and identity. Collins and Blot have also 

theorized the rise in technology, examining how technology “enables a coordination of social 

 

24 

 

action in unprecedented precision and scale, thus enabling the development of unique and 

institutional complexity” (p. 17). This has been a drastic shift from early definitions of literacy 

and text, where alphabetic prose was seen as the height of sophistication and cultural progress. 

These new theories which explore value, power, and identity have shed light on the ways that 

literacy and text have acted as agents of colonizing and cultural reproduction. 

 

As definitions of literacy have expanded, so too have definitions of text. Rather than 

thinking about text solely as alphabetic prose, text has moved beyond print to the “skills, 

behaviors, and ways of thinking” associated with a text rather than just emphasizing the 

autonomy of its nature” (Gee, 2012, p. 173). When examining text as a work of communicative 

practice, the emphasis turns away from mode as primary importance (such as alphabetic prose) 

to communicative and meaning-making practice as primary importance, meaning that definitions 

of text could be expanded to include all sorts of communicative modes. This could include 

photography, graphic art, music, dance, and any range of multi-modal communications. Rather 

than thinking about text and language as separate from the body, embodiment theorists have 

begun to make connections between literacy and body, such that “the notion of affects and 

bodies as assemblages focus on the dynamic process of discursive practices and the materiality 

of the body in various modes of representation” (Zembylas, 2007, p. 29, original emphasis), 

suggesting that language, bodies, and the material world constantly creating new connections and 

affective experiences. 

 

In fact, shifts in technology, such as the prominence of audio and video recording, have 

provided much more visceral examples of “dynamic discourses” afforded through affective and 

material connections, including the varying ways oral traditions, such as storytelling and singing, 

and embodied traditions, such as folk dance and movement studies, act as communicative text. 

 

25 

 

These technologies have also become much more prominent in classroom spaces, where schools 

have worked hard to provide one-to-one technology packages for students to expand their own 

understandings of text into digital worlds (Buchholz, 2015). These shifts in value, behavior, and 

ways of thinking have opened up new opportunities for students interested in sharing their 

knowledge and learning beyond textual staples of alphabetic prose. Though it was certainly 

possible to share meaning through other means, such as oral and embodied traditions, before the 

introduction of advanced digital technology, certainly having such tools have cleared pathways 

for sharing and assessment in classroom spaces that acknowledges modes of communication 

beyond alphabetic prose. It is in fact this very shift toward valuing embodied knowledge that 

makes the body in the meaning-making process so exciting. 

Reconceptualizing Body in the Meaning-Making Process 

 

Though curricular and instructional techniques in classroom contexts often present 

learning as a relatively linear process of skill building and knowledge acquisition, the process of 

making new meaning is, in fact, a messy task. Models of meaning-making processes, such as the 

model of creative processes by Mace and Ward (2002) highlight the cyclical and iterative nature 

of any task where a new product or idea is generated. While models often make explicit the 

complex cognitive and linguistic tasks of meaning making, the body is notably absent. For 

example, in the Mace and Ward model, the only mention of the body is in “Activities of Idea 

Conception,” which includes “cognitive and behavioral, general and specific.” Even in this case, 

the body is only identifiable implicitly through understandings of what a person does. Though 

this model was developed through the examination of visual artists during the production of 

artwork, the body is mysteriously absent. While it is clear that the body plays a critical role in the 

process (hands sketch, eyes see, arms reach), it remains implicitly understood behind cognition 

 

26 

 

(structuring, evaluating, expanding). However, as embodied persons, a reader would recognize in 

this context that a body must act and do in order for new meaning to be made. Rarely does a 

body sit still and silent while the brain works. Therefore, it is important here to attempt to more 

clearly conceptualize how the body contributes to the meaning-making process. 

In order to do so, I have developed a diagram of the meaning-making process which 

attempts to implicit the role of the body while attending to context, goal, process, and outcome as 

typically understood in a classroom context (see Figure 1). In this diagram, I make special note 

of the “imbricate relationship” (Ellingson, 2017) between the body, cognition, and language, all 

of which play a critical role in the goal setting, development, and sharing of any meaning-

making endeavor.  Bodies, though often overlooked, are inseparable from cognitive and 

linguistic practices. Quite literally, cognition is housed inside the body, which is then 

instrumentalized in different ways to create language (vibrating vocal chords, hand gestures and 

signs, etc.). Bodies participate quite explicitly in the perception and experience of the physical 

world (eyes see, ears hear, mouths taste, etc.). Yet, the body also participates quite explicitly in 

the affective experience of social and cultural worlds. Bodies understand and resonate with social 

practices, such as an outstretched hand or a turned back. Bodies understand and resonate with 

cultural practices, such as how a person experiences color and texture in a woven rug or pitch 

and rhythm in a lullaby. Bodies also experience and resonate with linguistic practices, such as 

the way shoulders and necks tense during a heated argument or the way fingers flash furiously 

fast to compose an email. In any lived moment, bodies participate with minds and linguistic 

practices to make sense of the world - including the various ways that a person makes meaning 

in that world. In order to make the body more explicit in the meaning-making process, I will 

articulate my understanding of its role in the conceptualization of ideas (goal), the enactment of 

 

27 

 

ideas (process), and the meaningful sharing of ideas and generated text (outcome), recognizing 

that body, cognition, and language play an inseparable role in each. 

While the diagram below of the meaning-making process and the consequent discussion 

may look and sound linear in nature, meaning making is, in fact, a complicated, complex, and 

chaotic practice. Throughout the iterative and cyclical process, there is any range of entry and 

exit points. The study of ethology, which examines both material action of a body in addition to 

its ability to affect and be affective points to the infinite possibility of the body when engaged in 

speed, time, space, and action so much that “you do not know beforehand what a body or a mind 

can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination” (Deleuze, 1992, p. 627). 

While instructional practices in education settings often ask students to engage in meaning 

making through series of pre-determined and linear steps leading towards a particular product, 

embodied theory presents, rather, an unlimited range of possibility – an ongoing capacity to enter 

and exit meaning making based on the material and affective context. 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

28 

 

Figure 1.  
Diagram of the meaning-making process through four phases. 
 

 

 

29 

 

 

Conceptualization of Ideas 

 

Recognizing that an embodied process can be undertaken through infinite possibility, I 

will still endeavor to explicit the role of the body throughout varying potential stages of meaning 

making, beginning with the conceptualization of an idea. A critical step in the meaning-making 

process is setting a goal for what meaning is to be made and how that meaning will be 

communicated at the conclusion of the process. As an act of inquiry, a person might pose a 

question that they wish to explore, or they may decide upon an idea (based on a question or an 

experience) that they may wish to share. Similarly, goal setting is deeply tied to embodied 

knowledge. Ellingson (2017) describes embodied knowledge as the way that knowledge that is 

felt and understood through the overlapping sensation of bodies and minds. Inquiry and meaning 

making is an iterative act built upon the extension of a person’s current knowledge and 

understanding. Often, efforts to enact and communicate new meaning making are based upon an 

experience or question that is found to be thought provoking. Just as embodied knowledge 

suggests, that act of inquiry is developed through bodies as well as through minds.  

Whether explicitly understood or not, the experience of the body shapes the 

conceptualization of ideas and the goal setting of projects (i.e. How does my body feel? What 

does my body do? What signals does my body send?). For example, the aching of a lower back 

and limbs of a student sitting long hours may drive a project about the benefits of standing and 

moving during class time, or halting on a walk to observe an eye-catching display of street art 

may contribute to the conceptualization of a new visual art piece or short story. Bodies are also 

critical in the conceptualization of ideas because they play a tangible role in the enactment of 

those ideas (i.e. Will my body be able to do that? Does my body know how to do that?). For 

example, a novelist understands that preparing to write a new manuscript will entail hours of 

 

30 

 

sitting to write or speaking into an audio recorder with explicit attention to describing the lived 

experience of bodies. A dancer understands the extent of their training and whether or not that 

training will support them in undertaking a new role. Part of the task of setting goals for 

exploring new ideas is the understanding of whether or not bodies, minds, and language will be 

able to successfully develop and communicate the new idea. This is also a critical step in 

understanding what embodied skills and understandings must be developed in order to 

successfully communicate the new meaning at the conclusion of the project. 

Enactment of Ideas 

 

In addition to making decisions about which ideas will be explored and how, the meaning 

maker also takes initiative for how those ideas will be communicated, including the various ways 

in which the body participates in the iterative process of enacting meaning making. Recognizing, 

that meaning making is a socially embedded process, new ideas can be generated through 

conversation with others, which could include dialogue enacted face-to-face or through written 

exchanges, and which could also include the examination and exploration of models and mentor 

texts. In both cases, knowledge and skills are gained for the enactment of meaning making 

through building a dialogic understanding of the ideas and work of others. This happens at the 

levels of bodies, cognition, and language. Collaboration, through conversation and text, is 

utilized to gain insight into how others think about a particular topic, talk about a particular topic, 

and do/experience/feel a particular topic. Regardless of how explicitly stated, a person enacting 

meaning making will have to come to understand how a body participates in the discipline under 

discussion in order to successfully enact and communicate the meaning making. As exemplified 

above, a novice novelist may be in conversation with an expert novelist about how they 

physically enact the process - What does their body do? What does their body feel? How do they 

 

31 

 

make decisions based on the perceptions and experience of the body? Without that information, a 

novice novelist may have a difficult time enacting their desired meaning making. Similarly, a 

dancer may explore a new performance role through watching video models and participating in 

technique classes in order to understand and develop the practical and affective skills required to 

enact a project. 

 

Through the generation of knowledge and skills with collaborators, a meaning-maker can 

continue to build on their ideas through the enactment of their creativity and experience. In other 

words, a meaning-maker may ask themselves, “How do I bring my vision to life?” This 

envisioning can take embodied, cognitive, and linguistic forms (What do I see my body doing? 

How do I conceptualize my ideas? How do I talk about my ideas? What signs and modes might I 

include?). Having an explicit understanding of the body is essential to the creative process by 

allowing a meaning-maker to envision a range of possibilities for what the body can do as a tool 

(such as painting brush strokes) and for what the body can signify (such as a series of bodied 

photographs). 

 

In an effort to bring a creative vision to life, a meaning-maker can also ask themselves, 

“What do I know how to do?” This is the type of question that requires a meaning-maker to draw 

upon and elicit their experience as it relates to the task at hand. As discussed earlier, Spatz’s 

(2015) definitions of technique and practice become particularly relevant when thinking about 

the generation of ideas through knowledge and skill. Having a clear understanding of the 

techniques a meaning maker needs and has will support them in effectively enacting the ideas 

they have envisioned. While a meaning-maker may recognize that the technique of double-

bowing is required for successfully playing a Mozart violin concerto, they will have to decide if 

the practice they’ve developed over time will support them in effectively enacting their idea of 

 

32 

 

the concerto. It is this understanding of embodied technique and practice that will support a 

meaning-maker in seeking out the appropriate experiences and collaborators in order to build 

upon their ideas over time. 

Meaningful Sharing of Ideas and Generated Text 

 

Bodies, cognition, and language become especially important in the meaningful sharing 

of ideas and text. As a meaning-maker prepares to share their new ideas, their embodied 

knowledge becomes critical in communicating those ideas and generating new text related to 

those ideas. As described earlier, definitions of text and sharing have changed over time. While 

history has predominantly favored written alphabetic prose over other forms of text, there is still 

a wide range of cultural and linguistic practices to draw upon in the sharing of ideas. The body 

plays an important role in communicating new ideas developed by a meaning-maker. In some 

cases, the body can be an instrument for the development of text, such as a writer who uses their 

fingers to hold and move a pencil or to push down keys on a keypad. The body can also play a 

role in sharing ideas through the performance act of an oral presentation, where the body is both 

the instrument of the speaker while also enacting communicative practices, such as gesturing, 

responding to stimuli, and signaling movement and transition of ideas. The body can also 

contribute to the sharing of new ideas by enacting the text itself. In the case of movement 

studies, the body becomes the signifier which simultaneously shares and enacts meaning such as 

a dancer or actor in a performance art piece. Regardless of the mode utilized for the development 

and sharing of ideas, the body plays a critical role in developing the shareable text. As definitions 

of text have expanded over time, the body has become more apparent in the development and 

sharing of ideas. Expanded definitions of text have also made more room for bodies to 

participate as explicit communicators of ideas. As a person moves their meaning making into 

 

33 

 

shareable ideas and text, it remains critical that they understand the role that embodiment plays 

in that communicative act. 

Body, Cognition, and Language in the Classroom Context 

 

Contextually, classroom spaces play a large role in negotiating what counts as meaning 

making and communication of knowledge. Even though the students are the ones enacting 

learning and participating in meaning-making processes, the models, tools, partnerships, 

languages, texts, and practices are often decided upon by the teacher. This is particularly 

problematic because it frequently limits meaning making to a known and quantifiable outcome 

rather than as “joyous” encounters which “give rise to unforeseeable and unimaginable effects” 

(Sparrow, 2010, p. 172). Placing limits on what counts as meaning making and learning also 

places systematic barriers around students who do not see themselves reflected in the meaning-

making practices valued in the classroom (Heath, 1983). In particular, students labeled as 

disabled are often “banished to special education classrooms to be (re)habilitated in an effort to 

(re)turn them to ‘normal life’” (Erevells, 2000, p. 42) while students of color are “suffocated, 

monitored, and punished in both curriculum and the physical classroom environment” because 

the expressiveness of their bodies is disproportionately perceived as disruptive (Yuan, 2017, p. 

71.) Because the classroom decisions around meaning making, such as collaborations, tools, and 

texts are often being made by the teacher or through mandated curriculum, it is possible that 

students are missing opportunities to engage in classroom meaning-making that recognizes and 

rejoices in the imbricate embodiment and unexpected affect of body, language and cognition. 

The Meaningful Body 

 

While the field of education is still grappling with the role of the body in meaning 

making, there are certainly examples that exist of meaningful bodies in a range of 

 

34 

 

communicative contexts. In particular, performance art disciplines, such as dance and theater, 

have much to share about embodied meaning making and the ways in which the body 

communicates meaningfully. According to Katan-Schmid (2016), “dance is a perceptual 

process” in which “the process of perception generates action with meaning” (p. 12). The 

meaning generated by bodies is developed through a mutual understanding between participants, 

such as the dancer and audience. Preston-Dunlop (2006) describes the process of perception as 

the enactment of shared bodily codes: 

Each genre has codes and conventions. 

They shift and change with each new style, 

each new dance, 

is formulated 

and settles its own way of representation.  

With no shared code 

there can be no communication, 

only kinetic / visual / aural non-sense 

And sometimes that is just what a semi-formed dance is. (p. 8) 

In other words, dance is the act of communicating with the body, through which understanding is 

maintained. Katan-Schmid (2016) also notes that the “articulation of movement is not an 

illustration or a demonstration,” but rather that “aesthetic expressions are submitted by physical 

acts” (p. 12). The interaction of embodied perception and aesthetics supports dancers in 

generating movement that is affective, meaningful, and communicative.  

 

By looking to performance art, an understanding of the body as meaningful 

communicative practice can be developed. When conceptualizing bodies in classroom spaces, 

 

35 

 

performance art can present a clearer picture of the various ways the body plays a meaningful 

role in the development and sharing of ideas. One example of a classroom practice where bodies 

are explicitly recognized as part of the meaning-making process is through arts-integrated 

learning. Silverstein and Layne (2010) defines arts-integrated learning as “an approach to 

teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. 

Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject and meets 

evolving objectives in both” (p. 1). In arts-integrated instruction, explicit attention is paid to the 

use of bodies and space in order to meet arts-based learning goals simultaneously with content-

area learning goals. Not only does the student develop skills and knowledge about the material 

use of the body, such as a movement study to dance or how the body manipulates materials in 

creating a visual art piece, but within arts-integrated lessons, the body also acts explicitly in the 

sharing of ideas. In an arts-integrated science and dance lesson, for example, a student can share 

their meaning making about a rainforest biozone through a dance which pairs their understanding 

of the qualities of movement with their understanding of flora and fauna in the rainforest (The 

Kennedy Center, 2020). The body is recognized as a key component of the communicative task. 

Another example of classroom instruction where bodies play a meaningful role in 

meaning making is through process drama. Process drama is an instructional technique where a 

group of people work together to develop a shared world through a series of improvisational 

scenarios (O’Neill, 1995). When used in a classroom setting, students use their bodies, minds, 

and language to create and develop characters, setting, and plot in response to changing and 

evolving objectives presented by the facilitator. Students create and share meaning through the 

use of their bodies, embodying characters and enacting scenes. In both of these cases, the 

instructional approaches to teaching and learning explicitly support students in embodied 

 

36 

 

learning practices where they attune to their bodies, minds, and language as part of the meaning-

making process. This includes the generation, enactment, and sharing of ideas in the classroom. 

These classroom practices also include opportunities for sharing that stretch beyond traditional 

approaches to assessment and text. In both process drama and other arts-integrated learning 

opportunities, students often develop and share their meaning making through performance-

based practices and movement studies, which support them in making explicit connections 

between their bodies and their meaning making. 

Conclusion 

As the integral nature of bodies, cognition, and language is explicated, it becomes clear 

that the body plays an important role in meaning making and communicating learning. The body 

plays a meaningful role in how a person experiences the world around, including how they ask 

questions, generate meaning, and communicate ideas. Because meaning making is such a critical 

component of the classroom the role of the body in that context must be reconceptualized beyond 

understanding the body as an object of discipline and management. To limit the body thus means 

continuing to enact hidden and implicit curriculum, which will inherently value some embodied 

knowledge over others, perpetuating the same inequalities of education that have been 

experienced through a number of disciplines and contexts (Ellingson, 2017). Understanding the 

nuanced and complex contributions of the body to meaning making can shift teacher and student 

perspectives toward explicitly address the body in all classroom spaces and contexts, while also 

opening curriculum and instruction to the infinite assemblages of material and affective 

possibility. 

While reimaging classroom spaces through infinite possibility may seem like a daunting 

and impossible task, Yuan (2017) cautions that teachers must see “enacting embodied 

 

37 

 

pedagogies not as ‘add-on’ teaching activities but as the ‘new norms’ of accepting and 

advocating students’ bodily expressions in their everyday school lives” (p. 71). For example, 

steps that can be taken in classroom contexts for explicitly including the body in meaning-

making processes might include changing the way the general classroom space is utilized, 

especially the arrangement of desks, tables, and materials. Rather than thinking about classroom 

space as a means for bodily confinement (Alerby et al., 2014), classroom space and materials can 

be used flexibly for enacting learning and making meaning. In some cases, this flexibility of 

space and materials, such as moving tables and chairs into new shapes or even out of the way 

entirely, can support students in reimaging their space in order to create new meaning, even if the 

process looks and sounds louder and more chaotic than traditional uses of space as bodily 

management (Buchholz, 2015). Reimaging and flexibly adapting the use of space and materials 

in order to support embodied meaning making can also take the form of developing equitable 

discussion practices, where students extend and manipulate their physical space in order to 

provide access to all learners (Gonzalez, 2015). This includes the use of structures such as 

jigsaw, snowball, or concentric discussions in which students are required to literally move their 

bodies through space in order to encounter new ideas and develop shared meaning. 

Inevitably, because of education’s commitment to “body as object” forms of 

management, teachers and facilitators are concerned about the maintenance of control and “on 

task” behavior in the classroom. However, reconceptualizing bodies as imbricate in the meaning-

making process rather than as objects of the meaning-making process does not require that 

classrooms lose sight of learning goals or useful classroom structures and routines. Rather, it a 

shift in understanding of how the body functions in the classroom space. By recognizing that the 

body explicitly supports meaning making, teachers and researchers can provide explicit and 

 

38 

 

scaffolded discussion and reflection with students to explore and examine the ways bodies and 

space support meaning making and collaboration. Rather than assuming that the regulation of 

bodies will lead to increased learning, teachers and students can work together to explore and 

explicate the ways in which their bodies making-meaning in the classroom context - including 

which routines (such making eye contact with the speaker or flexibly moving chairs and desks 

into a new discussion space) support an equitable learning environment and which prioritize 

discipline and control (such as obligatory hand raising or sitting in seats at a desk facing the front 

of the room). Allowing students to make flexible and meaningful use of their bodies and space in 

meaning-making endeavors may look and sound less obviously structured than a traditional 

classroom context, but the explicit recognition that bodies participate in the enactment of 

meaning making will support students and teachers in making sound pedagogical decisions. 

 

Additionally, shifting perceptions of the body in meaning making can shift teacher and 

researcher expectations for how students share knowledge in the classroom context. Recognizing 

that the body plays a critical role alongside language and cognition means that communication of 

ideas can move beyond oral and written language. While written prose has traditionally been the 

staple for documenting meaning making throughout history, explicitly including the body in 

sharing meaning means finding new and inventive ways for embodied communication. This is 

also the case for using oral language to share meaning, which traditionally ties the body to a 

chair, table, or podium. Rather, the twenty-first century provides ample opportunity for sharing 

meaning beyond the use of the body as an instrument for writing or an object for speaking 

(Spatz, 2015). Advanced audio and visual technology provide the capacity to capture, share, and 

historicize knowledge through audio recording, video recording, image capturing, and multi-

modality in both print and online forums. While embodied communication does not have to be 

 

39 

 

recorded to be meaningful, advances in technology have highlighted for us the possibility and 

value of explicitly including the body in the sharing of meaning and new ideas. 

 

Whether conceptualizing, enacting, or sharing new ideas throughout the meaning-making 

process, the body works critically and imbricately with cognition and language. Importantly, 

theory and research around classroom cognition and linguistic practices are not at odds with 

embodiment. Rather, exploring students’ meaning making as an embodied practice offers 

additional nuance and insight into all the ways that students use language, cognition, social 

practices, and their space and bodies to experience learning. Connecting embodiment in research 

of classrooms and learning is a critical step for advancing understandings of students’ meaning-

making experiences. Research across disciplines and fields recognizes that implicit classroom 

practices, as the work of bodies often is, ultimately lead to inequitable and dehumanizing 

practices, exemplified by research the term “hidden curriculum” to refer to the educational 

function of “inculcation of values, political socialization, training in obedience and docility, the 

perpetuation of traditional class structure-functions that may be characterized generally as social 

control” (Vallance, 1974, p. 5). While teachers and facilitators negotiate much of the meaning-

making process in the classroom context, instructional practices can validate and make visible 

the work and contributions of the body while scaffolding and supporting students’ embodied 

experience rather than by minimizing embodied learning through management, discipline, and 

isolation. This reconceptualization of the body for meaning making and communicative practices 

is a critical act in enacting the fruitful learning environments that educational stakeholders all 

wish classroom spaces to be.  

 

 

 

40 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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41 

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LIVING ROOM: THE AFFORDANCES AND CHALLENGES OF DANCE AS AN 

ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE FOR EXPLORING CLASSROOMS 

 

Introduction 

The field of educational research is rich with methodologies and analytic techniques, 

which, over time, have led to the development of nuanced variations of qualitative, quantitative, 

social-science, and arts and humanities-oriented research. Each methodology works as an 

analytic frame (or frames) for researchers to ask and answer important questions about the 

complex classroom context. Though research methodologies are in constant states of adaptation 

and flux, many social-science research methods focus primarily on text-based and language-

based analytic techniques for exploring classrooms. Often, researchers use student and teacher 

utterances and artifacts to build a systematic narrative about the phenomenon under 

investigation. Additionally, researchers develop and share their findings through text-based 

presentations and manuscripts. 

 

While social-science education research as a field develops complex understandings of 

the phenomena within classrooms, text and language-based approaches to conducting and 

sharing research are not the only, nor even the most appropriate ways of unpacking the nuances 

of body and space in classrooms (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018). While much social-

science research includes practices such as videotaping classroom activities, keeping field notes, 

and writing memos (Glesne, 2016), which are all tied to documenting and describing the body 

and space, these techniques for documenting classroom bodies and space are limited by their 

reliance on linguistic representation for unpacking complex and nuanced uses of body and space. 

Even research methodologies that explicitly include the body through the analysis of gesture, 

gaze or facial expression, such as Conversational Analysis (Liddicoat, 2011; ten Have, 2007), 

 

46 

 

often relocate the body to a secondary or instrumentalist position behind oral and text-based 

analyses. 

 

Oral and written language in educational studies have provided rich and fruitful context 

for understanding students’ cognitive and linguistic practices. Undoubtably, the 

conceptualization of cognitive and linguistic practices through research have expanded our 

understanding of the classroom as a site of learning and meaning making. Still, by extending the 

analytic reach of research to include the body as a central feature of meaning making, scholars, 

artists, and teachers can further understandings of students’ learning. In addition to the use of 

text-based and language-based practices for analyzing and sharing education research of the 

body, I argue researchers turn to dance as an arts-based education research methodology to delve 

more carefully at the disjointed space where bodies meet analysis. In this article, I make the case 

for an arts-based (in this case, dance-based) education research methodology and analytic 

techniques as an effective, productive, and valuable approach to asking and answering questions 

about bodies and space in educational contexts. 

 

In this paper, I will carefully unpack the affordances and challenges of dance as an arts-

based education research (ABER) methodology. In order to do so, I will draw specific examples 

from my own dance as ABER research while making connections to the opportunity for dance 

ABER more broadly. First, I will explore definitions of dance and dance as an ABER 

methodology in order to establish a shared understanding of the analytic basis of the 

methodology under examination. I will then connect dance as research to the context of teaching 

and learning in classroom contexts, including a discussion of the kinds of aims and questions that 

can guide inquiry using dance as an ABER methodology. Next, I will discuss the nature of data 

generation, analysis, sharing, and evaluation through my own example of dance as an ABER 

 

47 

 

methodology, including the challenges, affordances, and opportunities of dance as arts-based 

education research as they relate to additional approaches to dance as inquiry. Finally, I will 

conclude with a discussion of next steps and suggestions for readings, models, and examples for 

researchers interested in further exploration of dance as an ABER methodology. 

Body and Space in Classrooms 

Building Background 

 

Bodies and space in classrooms, especially in Western classrooms, have been 

conceptually challenging, often frustrating students, teachers, and other stakeholders alike in 

efforts to make sense of how the body functions in the learning environment. For many pre-

service teachers, their greatest concern upon entering educational contexts as an authority figure 

is their ability to successfully enact “classroom management,” which they see as instructional 

techniques and skills for managing students’ space and bodies in classrooms for the purpose of 

providing safe and productive learning environments (Stoughton, 2007). While teachers often 

grapple with the ethical complexity of classroom management, many teachers are asked to 

participate in systems of control, where students’ bodies and space are highly regimented and 

regulated (i.e. with tables and chairs) with the teachers making implicit and explicit decisions 

about what qualifies as the ‘appropriate’ use of bodies and space (Alerby et al., 2014; Duncum, 

1999; Stahl, 2019). In other cases, teachers and students experiment in the use of classroom 

space which is flexible (i.e. with tables and chairs) are more outwardly autonomous than a 

regimented classroom (Buchholz, 2015). In both instances, teachers and students develop a 

shared understanding (both implicitly and explicitly) of how a body and space in the classroom 

can be appropriately utilized for promoting safe and productive learning environments. 

 

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Most educational understandings of bodies as management in classroom spaces is also 

tied to understandings of bodies and space in classrooms as a site of social and cultural practices 

or reproduction. Classrooms are indeed social spaces, where students and teachers act together 

and against each other toward a shared vision of culture and practice where “a person’s horizons 

for learning are established through the on-going and sometimes changing interrelationship 

between their dispositions and the learning cultures in which they participate” (Hodkinson et al., 

2008, p. 40). As learning in classroom contexts is a social event, classrooms themselves are seen 

as cultural spaces, where the “learning culture will permit, promote, inhibit or rule out certain 

kinds of learning” (Hodkinson et al., 2008, p. 37). At times, this understanding of social and 

cultural practices for bodies and space in the classroom are developed through collaboration 

between the students and teachers, while at other times they are developed through the 

reproduction of norms (often those set by the teacher or school), which have been established 

through mainstream or ‘typical’ practices. In the case of bodies as social and cultural practice, 

teachers and students must agree upon shared understanding of how a body and space in the 

classroom can be appropriately utilized for promoting a shared community, while disagreements 

often result in disciplinary measures. 

 

Typically, adherence to classroom norms as a social practice are closely tied to the use of 

disciplinary techniques in classrooms and schools. In particular, there is a raft of research that 

explores the myriad ways in which black and brown bodies in classrooms are hyper-surveilled 

and over-disciplined in comparison to their white counterparts (Franklin-Phipps, 2017; Niccolini, 

2016; Stahl, 2019). In these cases, student bodies are isolated or removed from classroom spaces 

in order to punish or intervene. As access to technology has increased, the act of video recording 

classroom practices and posting them on heavily trafficked social media sites has captured 

 

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disturbing scenes of students being physically removed from chairs, desks, and classrooms by 

larger, stronger adults. In other instances, unruly bodies are removed to the periphery of 

classroom spaces where they cannot see or hear the content of a lesson. In the case of bodies as 

discipline, teachers and students are often at odds about what applications of body and space in 

the classroom are appropriate or valuable. 

 

While bodies and space in classrooms are often considered in relation to discipline, 

control, safety, and productivity (bodies that allow for productivity, not necessarily bodies that 

are productive), there is also the opportunity to explore bodies and space as an integrated and 

integral part of the learning and thinking in classrooms. Embodiment theorists recognize that 

people learn with their minds and bodies through a range of experiential contexts, so that lived 

bodies become a critical component in the understanding of learning (Ellingson, 2017). Though 

this approach to bodies and space in classrooms is currently less well understood than traditional 

classroom management practices, there is a burgeoning field of research that explores embodied 

learning in a number of educational and disciplinary contexts (Almquist & Quennerstedt, 2015; 

Andersson & Risberg, 2018; Franks & Jewitt, 2001). In the case of embodied learning, the 

bodies and space of teachers and students alike develop a shared understanding (again, both 

implicitly and explicitly) of how a body and space in the classroom can be appropriately utilized 

for the development of meaning making both in individual and shared contexts. 

 

Understanding embodied learning has also extended understandings of language and 

literacy practices beyond traditional approaches to reading, writing and speaking. In the case of 

embodied learning, the body participates not just in the process of learning but also in the sharing 

of new knowledge. This includes the work of meaning making done collaboratively in classroom 

settings, where students’ embodied language and literacy practices are a critical component in 

 

50 

 

their collaboration and meaning making. While this can include typically understood gestures 

such as a raised hand or a thumbs up, it can also include less overt gestures in addition to gaze, 

positioning, and qualities of movement, all meant as communicative acts. In fact, Farnell (1999) 

posits that “human beings everywhere engage in complex structured systems of bodily action 

that are laden with social and cultural significance” which can be used expressively (p. 343).  In 

this case, teachers and students develop a shared understanding of how a body and space in the 

classroom are utilized for linguistic and communicative purposes. 

 

These are some of the ways, though certainly not an exhaustive list, that teachers, 

students, researchers, and other educational stakeholders have conceptualized bodies and space 

in classrooms. Though some of these cases include examples of explicitness in 

educational understandings of bodies and space, many others rely upon a degree of implicitly 

shared understanding that often goes unnoticed or overlooked in educational settings. While 

bodies and space may be explicitly discussed in relation to classroom management, that rarely 

includes any discussion of how bodies and space are a part of embodied learning and 

communicative practices. Similarly, classroom teachers may make explicit references to bodies 

and space through establishing shared norms and values, but much of the problematic 

disciplining of bodies in classrooms is done through implicit understandings of 

‘appropriateness.’  

Arts-Based Education Research 

Given the complexity and variance of conceptual understandings of the body in the 

classroom, social science research that relies upon linguistic and text-based artifacts first and the 

body second may not provide the best analytic approaches for engaging with embodied 

phenomenon. Thus, researchers have the opportunity to explore additional modes of inquiry 

 

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which prioritize the body along with the linguistic and cognitive artifacts of the classroom: such 

as dance as arts-based research methodology (ABER). In order to discuss dance as ABER, I will 

first lay the groundwork with definitions of ABER and dance as a mode of inquiry. Arts-based 

education research is a subset of arts-based research (ABR), a methodology that explores and 

shares a line of inquiry through an art form (Barone & Eisner, 2011; Leavy, 2015). In the case of 

ABR, the art form is the methodology - the approach to gathering, analyzing, and sharing data - 

rather than the object of the study. For example, a researcher may study the changing skyline of a 

community through a series of oil pastel sketches or a research may study the migratory patterns 

of sea turtles through an improvisational movement study. In each case, the art form informs the 

inquiry. This is also the case in ABER, where educational contexts are explored using art 

(Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018). Examples include the use of poetry to answer 

questions about teachers’ use of language to discipline students (Latremouille, 2018) or the use 

of theater to answer questions about students’ developing identities during a summer exchange 

program (Kao & O’Neill, 1998). 

 

Arts-based education research has slowly evolved and gained academic traction over 

time, and it poses many affordances for answering questions about education spaces in addition 

to the quantitative and qualitative learning done through the study of language, artifacts, and 

other text-based forms of data. Arts-based research methodologies serve a number of key 

purposes. First, ABER provides the opportunity to re-image familiar educational spaces as 

“means to increase attention to complexity, feeling, and new ways of seeing” (Cahnmann-Taylor 

& Siegesmund, 2018, p. 1). Classroom spaces and educational settings are highly familiar 

spaces. A child in a Western context might begin their formal education as early as three and 

 

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continue well on into their adult years. As that person becomes increasingly familiar with the 

school context, it can become increasingly challenging to reflect critically on that context.  

Additionally, ABER provides an opportunity to value additional ways of knowing. In 

many academic settings, value is placed upon particular forms of public speaking and publication 

of written text. Value is also placed upon particular registers of language and communication 

that are reflective of academic norms and standards. However, the academy may not be reflective 

of all of the values and discourses present in educational settings. In this case, ABER can extend 

the discussion which discourses are valued in education research and why. Similarly, ABER also 

expands notions of what counts as text and ways of knowing. While most education research is 

shared in the form of presentations, journal articles, and book chapters, ABER provides 

opportunity to expand thinking beyond speech and word. ABER also includes text that is 

painted, danced, sculpted, improvised, sung, played, and performed. Each of these is a fresh 

opportunity for examining education spaces. 

The tenants of arts-based research as an important methodological framework are 

supported by the work of embodiment scholars. Embodied knowledge includes four key 

affordances for its use in empirical research (1) the exploration of salient topics that were 

otherwise unknowable; (2) the opportunity for new means of analysis and representation through 

the use of multiple senses and multiple modes; (3) the enhancement of research validity through 

the situating of knowledge claims as “inevitable, intriguing sites” as opposed to bias or 

weakness; (4) the potential for engagement with non-academic audiences through research that is 

visceral and immediate (Ellingson, 2017, p. 8). When imagining the possibilities for conducting 

embodied research, the arts must be included in the conversation. Particularly, “the arts… are an 

arena in which the body is central to the process of inquiry and constitutes a mode of knowing” 

 

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(Bresler, 2004, p. 9). This resonates in classroom spaces where bodies often go unexamined. 

Therefore, educational scholarship should embrace the arts as a means for examining embodied 

knowledge in classroom spaces. That being said, researchers of and through embodied 

knowledge must carefully consider their own positionality as an embodied person. Ellingson 

(2017) warned that “leaving (our own and others’) bodies unmarked in reports and other 

representations is the privilege of the powerful” (p. 6). This is especially the case in classroom 

settings, where bodies are often privileged based on their heteronormativity, gender, class, and 

race. Teachers who ignore student bodies as an integral part of learning inadvertently privilege 

students who already hold power in their bodies through their privileged identities. 

Dance as Inquiry 

 

While ABER methodologies can draw upon many forms, methods, and materials, this 

paper focuses specifically on the affordances and challenges of dance as a research methodology 

(Bagley & Cancienne, 2002; Blumenfeld-Jones, 2008; Cancienne & Snowber, 2003; Sklar, 

2000). Dance as a discipline is a complex and multifaceted field. Western culture includes a 

broad range of movement techniques (both formal and informal) including somatics, 

improvisation, contact improvisation, contemporary, modern, ballet, hip-hop, jazz, and ballroom, 

to name a few. While there are many different disciplinary techniques that can be studied and 

mastered over time, each includes a shared understanding of what movement is. Dance is “an act 

of moving bodies in time and space” (Katan-Schmid, 2016, p. 9) where the integrative and 

contextualized combinations of bodies, spatiality, and timing of action evoke meaning. 

Performance itself becomes a study of behavior as an object in a “special metaphoric space” 

(Hahn, 2007, p. 4). In order to understand the complexity of movement, the field of dance 

includes variations and combinations of the following five elements: body, action, space, time, 

 

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and energy (Aldis et al., 2018). A body can be described as a whole or parts, including the head, 

neck, shoulders, torso, hips, legs, and feet, etc. The body can be described by its use of shapes, 

patterns, and systems. For example, the body in Figure 2 can be described as crouched low at the 

table, knees and legs tucked closely under the torso, gaze forward with the hand close to the 

chest. Dance also examines the use action in movement, including locomotor and non-locomotor 

movement. Though the images in the figure below are still, the body shifts from side the side and 

the dancers face and gaze turn sharply from one direction to another while the torso and legs 

stays primarily in one location. Additionally, art form of dance utilizes space meaningfully, 

including the size, level, direction, path, plane, and relationship of movement. The body in 

Figure 2 lives in space that juxtaposes of a crouched, low-level body which has simultaneously 

been raised over the table by a chair. While the arms of the body are tight to the torso, the 

changing direction and outward gaze of the eyes allow the dancer to take up additional space. 

The art form of dance can also be understood through time, where bodies and action can be 

described by their speed, tempo, accent, and rhythmic patterns. Though the images below are 

still, it can be imagined that the body might shift quickly from side to side, or pause persuasively 

in one gaze or the next. Finally, the art form of dance can be described by its energy, such as the 

attack, tension, force, and weight of its movements. The body in Figure 2 is compact and tightly 

held. The movement from side to side suggests sharp, percussive movement that shifts quickly 

and energetically. At any given time, a body is participating in action through space and time 

with energy. Whether intentionally or not, all humans have bodies that can be understood and 

described through the elements of their movement. This presents affordances and challenges for 

those interested in creating, interpreting, and sharing meaning through movement.  

 
 

 

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Figure 2.  
A body moves 

 

 

Part of the complexity of dance is the creation of meaning across many stakeholders, 

including choreographer, dancer, and audience. As a work of art, dance is active in that it is an 

encounter between the artist, the art, and the audience where the “process of perception generates 

action with meanings” (Katan-Schmid, 2016, p. 12). In dance, meaning may be carried with 

codes, conventions, and recognizable forms of representation, which can be used in direct and 

indirect ways. Preston-Dunlop (2006) describes meaning making in dance as follows: 

Meaning is complex. 

A dance does not have to mean something nameable 

to be meaningful. 

Meaning meanings are not verbal. 

Feelings are non-verbal. 

Recognition per se is meaningful. 

It means, ‘I’ve seen that before, 

I know it, I receive it, I respond to it.’ (p. 20)  

 

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For many, the nature of communicative meaning making is both the challenge and the affordance 

of dance as an art form. By placing dance in conversation with an audience, the meaning of the 

work is bound to shift, change, and adapt based on the process of perception.   

Dance’s transmorphic relationship to meaning making can be frustrating for those who 

find discomfort in ambiguity. This is not to suggest, however, that dance is meaningless or that 

all interpretations of dance are worthwhile. For many dancers/choreographers, creating a new 

performance piece is an act of research and inquiry. As Liz Lerman (2014) writes, dance as 

inquiry is “a way of life, a way of making art, a way of making space for others to engage in the 

conversation, of naming things to encourage dialogue, of reordering ideas, or of making 

something useful or beautiful or both” (p. 4). Indeed, for choreographers, dancers, and moving 

artists, meaning making with the body becomes an integral form of thinking and knowledge-

sharing. Yet, as Lerman (2014) shared after the mixed reception of one of her dance 

performances, audiences may be troubled or surprised by the notion that dance can be a form of 

inquiry. “Without research,” she reflected, “how did anyone think we could make the dances? 

People seemed to assume that if it is art, it must be exclusively personal expression based 

entirely on feelings or intuition - and therefore no research would be necessary… that we 

somehow just made it all up” (p. 207). This tension caused by the intersection of research, art, 

and meaning making is central to the tensions of arts-based education research as well. 

Reimagining Educational Spaces through Dance 

Making Connections 

 

Classrooms and other educational spaces are places where bodies move through space 

with time and energy. As a deeply social context, the complexity of classroom life can be 

identified as a dance itself: teacher and students move bodies through space using recognizable 

 

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patterns and movement codes that are reflective of the social and cultural understandings of the 

group. The classroom exemplifies the ways in which “movement systems have structured 

content, they can be visual manifestations of social relations, the subjects of elaborate aesthetic 

systems, and may assist in understanding cultural values and the deep structure of society” 

(Kaeppler, 2000, p. 117). Part of the challenge with other qualitative and quantitative research 

methodologies is that they can describe the body and space practices of classrooms linguistically, 

or they can count the movements and actions numerically, yet neither is ideally situated for 

dealing with the complexity of body, space, action, time, and energy as they are enacted poly-

rhythmically in classroom contexts. This is specifically where dance as an ABER methodology 

can begin to inform inquiry. 

 

The field of performance dance studies to understand educational spaces is small but 

dedicated. Cancienne & Snowber (2003) describe the wide-ranging capacity of movement 

methods to “pose critical questions; to connect with the emotions of participants; to understand 

theoretical concepts, the self as place of discovery; and to represent through performance for an 

audience” (p. 237) for the purpose of improving and supporting educational spaces as complex 

and multifaceted sites of learning where “each person’s movement schema expresses social and 

cultural meanings” (p. 239). Because classroom contexts are filled with particular uses of bodies 

and space, the classroom is already rich with movement data and it makes sense that the 

embodied movement of the space center the movement study (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2008). Given 

the inescapability of bodies and space in classroom contexts, it only makes sense that researchers 

utilize movement-based tools to examine the data that reflect the nature of the data itself. In other 

words, bodies, space, and movements should play a critical role in understanding and analyzing 

bodies, space, and movement in classroom contexts. 

 

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Aims and Questions 

 

To this end, I posit that dance as an arts-based education research (ABER) is a viable 

methodological option for teachers, students, and researchers interested in better understanding 

the complexity and nuance of bodies and space in the classroom. Using dance as an artistic 

frame, dance ABER can begin to ask and answer questions about classrooms (i.e. Who is 

moving? What movement are they doing? Where are they moving? When are they moving? How 

are they moving?) From these inquiry frames, dance ABER can start to pose questions about 

intention, relationship, and meaning (i.e. What can a person’s movement tell us about their 

thinking and understanding? How are people moving in relation to each other? Why are they 

responding in that way?) Dance as ABER methodologists can also start to think more deeply 

about these questions that might inform classroom-based inquiry and understanding of the 

purpose of bodies and space in classrooms. Researchers interested in the relationship between 

bodies, space, and management practices might ask, “How are students’ bodies adapting to the 

space, materials, and time presented by the teacher?”. Researchers interested in the relationship 

between bodies, space, and social/cultural practices might ask, “How are teachers’ and students’ 

bodies moving in relation to the shared expectations for using classroom space?”. Researchers 

interested in the relationship between bodies, space, and disciplinary practices might ask, “How 

do teachers’ and students’ bodies change over the course of a disciplinary action?”. Researchers 

interested in the relationship between embodiment and learning might ask, “How are teachers’ 

and students’ bodies moving in response to their meaning making?”. Researchers interested in 

the relationship between embodiment, language, and communicative practices might ask, “What 

does it look like when ideas are passed from one person to another?”. This is certainly not an 

exhaustive list of the kinds of questions that can be asked and answered with thinking about 

 

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bodies and space through the lens of dance. Any time a teacher, researcher, or student seeks to 

better understand the use of body, action, time, space, or energy in the classroom, a question can 

be formed and explored through a dance form. Both the question and the object of inquiry a 

vocabulary and way of knowing with dance. 

Researcher-Dancer 

 

Though dance may provide a critical lens for inquiry in education spaces, an education 

researcher interested in bodies and space may or may not identify as a dancer. Particularly in the 

context of the United States, dance, or the identity of ‘dancer’, has traditionally been a privileged 

position reserved for the disciplinary elite. There may be the stance, implicit or explicitly stated, 

that those wishing to engage in dance as an ABER methodology must have earned the identity of 

dancer. However, I would respond to this with two rebuttals. First, I argue that to live in a body 

is to be a dancer. At any time, teachers, scholars, and dancers alike make decisions about where, 

how, when, and with what energy their bodies move, they are enacting a form of dance. To use 

dance as an ABER methodology is to recalibrate the view of bodies and space in the classroom 

in order to see with new eyes what may have been taken for granted previously. Second, the 

methodology, performance, presentation, and publication of ABER work can take many forms. 

To ask and answer a question using dance as a methodology does not presuppose that the 

researcher must be the dancer. It may be that the researcher is a collaborator with other 

stakeholders engaged in the act of dance, such as the teachers and students themselves or a 

trained professional. It should not be assumed that the presentation of knowledge through dance 

is the right of the researcher alone. Therefore, whether a currently practicing dancer or a moving 

pedestrian, the paper seeks to provide support for those interested in dance as an ABER 

methodology. 

 

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Dance as ABER Exemplar 

In order to more closely explore the possibilities of dance as an ABER methodology, I 

will describe methodological considerations of one of my own dance as ABER projects. In the 

following sections, I will describe the steps that I enacted throughout my research process, 

highlighting the role of dance as inquiry. These descriptions, however, are not meant to be 

stagnant series of steps for replication. Any ABER project is a work of art, meaning that it comes 

from the research, experiences, aesthetics, and active understandings of those participating in the 

inquiry. No two works of art are exactly the same, and no creative process can be exactly 

replicated. The purpose of describing this example is to contextualize the affordances and 

challenges of dance as an ABER methodology, not to suggest that this is the only nor the best 

way to engage in movement inquiry (see Appendix B for additional models of dance as ABER 

methodology).  

Question and Context 

 

This dance as ABER project was developed through the work of a group of fifth-grade 

students in a small suburban community in Michigan, USA. In this classroom, twenty-eight 

students were split into four island groups for the duration of a three-week interdisciplinary 

process drama unit as part of their science, social studies, and literacy curriculum. A process 

drama is an interactive improvisational drama where participants (in this case, classroom 

students) are led through a series of scenarios in which they must work together to create a 

shared world in response to the scenario (O’Neill, 1995). The four islands of this fifth-grade 

classroom, Greenel, Bluenel, Brownel, and Greynel, participated in twelve activities over the 

course of three weeks. This project follows specifically the collaborative work of the island of 

Greynel over the course of the process drama. 

 

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The island of Greynel consisted of seven students: Alice, Ben, Cato, Darcy, Elizabeth, 

Fletcher, and Gwen (all pseudonyms). Over the course of the process drama, these seven 

students worked closely together to create artifacts (i.e. an acrylic and clay island map, an 

essential agreement, thematic movement study, island treaties) and to respond to scenarios (i.e. 

natural disasters). By participating in the process drama, the group of students was participating 

in critical collaborative meaning-making episodes (CCMME). A critical-collaborative meaning-

making episode refers to the points throughout the process drama where students had to work 

closely with each other through the articulation, deliberation, and consensus of ideas in order to 

create new meaning. The CCMME were the work of the students alone with little interruption or 

management from the teacher or I (both of us participated actively in the process drama). 

 

While I initially entered the project interested in how students were sharing and 

negotiating their ideas as a collaborative group, it quickly became clear to me that text-based 

analysis of artifacts and audio transcripts were not going to do justice to the work of the group. 

As the process drama unfolded, what became particularly clear was that students’ embodiment 

was playing a critical role in the work of the CCMME. While students were articulating, 

deliberating, and conceding their ideas with the use of their spoken language, they were also 

negotiating ideas with their bodies. Driven by the idea that the critical work of the CCMME was 

happening in the bodies of the students and the use of their space in addition to the work of their 

words, I asked the following two questions: (1) How are students’ physical bodies a part of their 

collaborative learning spaces in creative endeavors; (2) What do students’ physical bodies 

suggest about their collaboration and meaning-making processes? 

 

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My desire to answer these questions thoughtfully while also recognizing the complexity, 

nuance, and seemingly chaotic nature of bodies in space led me to dance as an ABER 

methodology. 

Data Generation and Preparation 

 

The generation for data in the project was driven by two forces: (1) the nature of 

empirical data; and (2) the nature of artistic [data]. As a qualitative researcher in an observational 

setting, I collected a range of empirical data sources including audio recordings of each group, 

video recording of the classroom, and artifacts created by both the teacher and the students. 

Additionally, I generated my own artifacts including observation protocol, daily research memos, 

and interviews with both the teacher and the students. Through the generation of these data 

sources, I also worked to enact analytic practices informed by both aesthetics and intuition. 

While generating empirical data, I also allowed my participation and observation to guide my 

noticing, sparked interest, and unusual moments over the course of data generation. I allowed 

myself room to ask additional questions such as, “Did you see the way Elizabeth and Fletcher 

were looking at each other over there? What is happening?” or, “It’s been ten minutes and 

Gwen hasn’t moved. Why?” In addition to enacting my own preparation of field notes and 

participation in the classroom itself, I also allowed myself room to still, slow down, and let my 

attention redirect itself to the moments my body was noticing but my eyes were missing. 

 

From all the data generated in this project, the audio and video recordings became the 

most critical in my analysis using dance as an ABER methodology. While the memos and field 

notes allowed me to re-see the structure of the unit as a whole in order to establish the moments 

from the unit that would best answer the questions of my inquiry, the audio and video recordings 

of the island of Greynel became the initial fodder for movement generation. Prior to the 

 

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generation of movement, I reviewed the structure of the unit and selected four of the twelve 

classroom activities from the unit, using the following inclusion criteria: (a) the collaborative 

nature of the group work; (b) the inclusion of all group members; (c) requirement that the group 

come to a shared understanding of a new island component; and (d) their relative equidistance 

over the course of the Four Islands project. The purpose of the inclusion criteria was to find 

critical collaborative meaning-making episodes (CCMME), where island members were 

arguing, negotiating, developing, structuring, and revising the meaning-making ideas supporting 

the development of their island. Examples of collaborative group work were excluded when the 

island was working explicitly with the teacher or receiving instructions, or when the group was 

implementing or sharing ideas that had already reached consensus.  

After identifying four CCMME, I then transcribed the audio data from the CCMME (on 

average, 50:00 min). From the transcripts, I coded student contributions as articulations of new 

ideas/information, deliberation of ideas that had been articulated, and consensus of how ideas 

would be taken up into new meaning. After coding the transcripts, I identified one-minute 

segments that were represented of a pivotal moment - the most meaningful segment for the 

collaborative work of the group, focusing again on articulation, deliberation, and consensus. I 

then timestamped video and audio data so that I also had video data of each pivotal moment in 

addition to the audio and transcript. These pivotal moments across the four CCMME are the 

central to my analysis and understanding of the work of the group. 

Data Analysis 

 

Preparing the data became a critical step in analyzing the data. In order to best answer the 

questions of the inquiry, I needed to be able to explain exactly which moments of the 

collaboration I was analyzing and why. Narrowing the view of the project also became critical 

 

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for making meaning of students’ bodies across the collaboration. While a transcript of audio may 

only show one or two students talking at a time, a student never leaves their body. Their body is 

always present whether they are actively speaking or not. Because my interest is in students’ 

embodied collaboration, I worked to narrow the scope of my data in order to more richly 

examine, describe, and analyze the embodied work of students over time. Below I describe in 

detail the key components of my analysis as I danced to deepen and share my understanding. 

Viewing the Data 

Before I moved myself, I reexamined my classroom data through a series of pointed 

video observations. My goal through these video observations was twofold: I wanted to observe 

the movement of students as individuals and I wanted to observe the movement of individuals in 

relationship to their peers. I also wanted to re-observe the experiences of the group through the 

lens of body, action, space, time, and energy. Rather than trying to ‘read’ or ‘infer’ what students 

were doing, I wanted to re-see the aesthetic of action. I watched each one-minute pivotal moment 

clip (15 total) 14 times, twice for each student. As I watched each clip, I would record my 

observations. The first time I observed a particular student, I would describe the action, body, 

space, time, and energy of the individual student, trying to notice and attune to the unique 

movement vocabulary of the student. Then, I would immediately watch the clip again, still 

focused on that same student. The second time, I would note the action, body, space, time, and 

energy of that student in relation to their peers, attuning to the ways in which their movements 

were enacted towards, with, around, between, in addition to their peers. 

Describing and Naming 

In these re-observations using video data, I made a practice of describing what I saw 

utilizing vocabulary of movement as is found in elements of dance (Aldis et al., 2018). In a T-

 

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chart, I worked to vividly describe movement using words of action, shape, direction, speed, 

attack, and the like (see Table 1 for an example). I was careful in my descriptions to focus on 

what I could observe and see rather than what I thought the movement meant. Often in the 

observation of bodies and space, attention is focused on literal and representational 

interpretations of what a body means (i.e., the student has his head on the desk so he must be 

bored, the student is raising their hand so she must have a question). Even in description of a 

students’ movements in relationship or response to their peers, the language of the description 

focused on the body, action, space, time, and energy rather than on any inferences I might make 

about what that movement meant. While inferences and interpretations are a valuable part of 

analytic processes, in these opening stages of re-observation my goal was to re-see movement in 

the context of meaning making. 

Table 1  
Example of descriptive language from video re-observation 

Student 

Individual 

Group 

Darcy 

D leans forward on her elbows, legs 
tucked up. Her body faces forward. D 
raises her hand slowly, opening and 
closing her palm. Her movements are 
small and close to her body. She sits all 
the way down in her chair, her head 
barely clears the table. She pops up to 
stand, hands on the table before leaning 
back on her arms. 

Elizabeth  E sits straight in her chair, arms resting 
on the table. She bounces periodically, 
arching as she laughs. She shoulders 
raise to her ears and relax back down. 
She does not raise her hands but taps her 
fingers lightly on the table. She shifts 
her weight quickly back and forth on her 
seat. She quickly and quietly lifts her  

D leans forward toward C and B. D 
raises her hand and sweeps her 
attention across the group, landing on G 
and A. She sits all the way down, 
lowering herself well below her peers’ 
eye level. She tilts her head back to 
look at the speaker. She stands as 
another group comes by, and then leans 
back down close to the table, centering 
on the middle of the group. 
E focuses her face and eyes toward her 
peers. She does not raise her hand when 
others do. She continues to shift her 
weight, until at one moment, C and A 
lean in towards her. She lifts her thumb 
subtly towards D, who stands. (She has 
voted D president). She sits very tall, 
and then points her thumb again  

 

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Table 1 (cont’d) 
 

forearm, pointing with her thumb. She 
sits tall straight and still, pointing with 
her thumb again. 

towards D, this time lifting her whole 
arm off the table. 

After the practice of describing and naming, I also highlighted descriptive movements 

that were aesthetically meaningful. In some cases, it was because the movement was surprising, 

unusual, in opposition to others, energetic, still, heavy, light, recognizable, or intentionally 

communicative. Highlighting these moments made it possible to return to the places where 

action moved beyond the pedestrian mundane. From these descriptions I was also able to begin 

identifying and organizing movement themes, such as the pattern of students’ levels, their use of 

pathways and direction, the variation in time and energy of their actions, the direction of gesture. 

These re-observations of video data became the groundwork for the development of 

choreography. 

Building Phrases 

Through the iterative process of reviewing observation memos written at the time of the 

study and of re-observation of video data, I had developed a strong theoretical understanding of 

the movement attributes of particular students as well as the ways bodies, ideas, and actions 

moved through, around, and within the space of their collaborative group and the classroom as a 

whole. The next step was then to apply theoretical knowledge practically through a series of 

movement studies. I began building movement phrases by creating individual translations of 

each students’ movement for the first pivotal moment video clip. I developed seven total 

movement phrases that were each approximately four eight-counts in length. In this initial series 

of movement phrases, I worked to hone my skill at replicating the shape, action, direction, focus, 

speed, duration, tempo, accent, weight, and force of students’ movements across a series of a 

 

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minute. For example, the movements of Alice were sharp, syncopated and fast compared to those 

of Cato or Ben. This series of movement phrases most closely mirrored the practice of 

transcribing verbal language into written text or transposing aural sound into musical notes. The 

purpose of this kind of transcription was to describe the movement of students in my body while 

attending to the aesthetic practices of dance. Of course, no one can become the body of another 

or directly replicate the movement of others, part of the work of a dancer is to closely examine 

and create with body, action, space, time, and energy. 

In addition to building phrases by studying the movements of individual students, I also 

developed phrases through the examination of movement themes across students. For example, 

by exploring students’ different uses of levels throughout their collaborative process, I developed 

movement phrases that identified and adapted level use, from standing tall in front of the chair to 

sitting low with a chin propped on the table. Additional movement phrases were developed by 

analyzing students’ uses of energy, rhythmic patterns, space, and pathways, for example. These 

movement phrases were developed across students and pivotal moments. While attention was 

still paid to the aesthetics of the body and space, the movement phrases in this case were not a 

direct translation of any one student but were rather representative of movement themes across 

students and across time. 

Movement phrases were also developed based on the space, action, and energy of ideas. 

Though less visually obvious because ideas have no corporeal form, the pathway of an idea can 

still be identified as it moves from person to person to material to person, and so on. 

Additionally, the speed and rhythm of ideas can also be seen as some ideas move through the 

collaboration very quickly and others move more slowly through the meaning-making process. 

While movement phrases developed around ideas did not replicate the shape or action of the 

 

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body the way other phrases did, there was still embodied movement to explore on the part of the 

dancer. 

Figure 3.  
Movement memo of building phrases 

Movement Memo: In Section 2, I am trying to explore the pathways of particular people 
around the table. Before I was showing flow of ideas across space, but in Section 2, I want to 
show flow of bodies around ideas if that makes sense. 
 
The middle of Section 2 is still a little messy. I may have too many ideas packed in at one time. 
---- 
In order to choreograph Section 3, I re-watched the four CCMME videos, focusing my 
attention on student gestures that called for attention or communicated directly. 
 
As I watched the videos, I pulled gestures and put them together into gesture strings (I don’t 
love this). While some students gesture more than others, I tried to make sure that I had 
gestures representative of each student included. 
 
Once I had three gesture strings, I experimented with how they fit together in the space - 
including the two chairs and table from yesterday). 

 

Organizing Ideas 

As a choreographer, I had a number of choices I could make about the organization of 

movement phrases into a cohesive unit. I could organize ideas by student, theme, or 

chronological order. Just as in any piece of writing or storytelling, decisions about the 

organization of the piece stemmed from the narrative envisioned by the choreographer. In this 

performance piece, I organized the movement phrases into four sections (see Table 2). While 

each section is linked to a thematic series representative of the students’ embodied experiences 

broadly, the order of sections is also indicative of the transition of ideas over the course of the 

collaboration. Part I introduces the movements of students of ideas much the same way that 

students initially articulated their ideas to the group at the beginning of each CCMME. Sections 

II and III of the dance explore the different ways that students engaged energy, level, and gesture 

 

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to share ideas, deliberate their meaning, and come to a consensus or shared understanding. 

Sections III and IV of the choreography explore the different movement practices of students and 

ideas as collaboration reached its ultimate consensus and conclusion. 

 

Similarly, the organization of the performance narrative (the words that I say out loud as I 

am dancing) is intentional in its use of repetition to signal to the audience that a new section is 

beginning in the dance though no formal pause is occurring (i.e. Seven students sit around a 

table, collaborating). A similar use of repetition and adaptation of question is used in the 

performance to frame the inquiry for the audience as they observing the dance unfold (i.e. Where 

do…, How do…). These structural clues have been thoughtfully included as signposts for the 

audience in order to frame the view of the audience with attempting to do the challenging 

interpretive work for them. 

Table 2  
Performance narrative 

Sect.  Theme 

I 

Introduction to moving students & 
moving ideas 

II 

Pathways & levels 

 

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Narrative 

Seven students sit around a table, 
collaborating: 
Alice, 
Ben, 
Cato, 
Darcy, 
Elizabeth, 
Fletcher, 
and Gwen. 
 
Where do their ideas go? 
How do their ideas move? 
Seven students sit around a table, 
collaborating. 
 
Where do their bodies go? 
How do their bodies move? 

 

Table 2 (cont’d) 
III 

Energy & gesture 

IV 

Pathways & space 

Seven students sit around a table, 
collaborating. 
 
How do their bodies speak? 
How do their bodies decide? 
Seven students sit around a table, 
collaborating. 
 
Where did their ideas go? 
How did their ideas move? 

 
Experimenting, Building, Drafting, Revising, Adapting, and Moving 

The process of any creative work, whether dance or another art form, is an inherently 

complex process (Mace & Ward, 2002). While there is an overarching series of progress steps 

(i.e., gathering information, formulating ideas, drafting, revising, gathering feedback, etc.), the 

creation of art is often a convoluted and iterative process. Throughout the process of developing 

each movement section, I relied upon the individual, thematic, and figurative movement phrases, 

which I had drafted in the initial stages of my choreography. Over time, those phrases morphed 

and adapted to fit the aesthetic needs of the piece as a whole while still maintaining an accurate 

reflection of the collaborative work of the students. In some cases, movement phrases were 

shortened or truncated. In others, multiple movement phrases were collapsed into one. 

The most taxing revisions came from breaking phrases apart and moving them within 

other phrases. At times during the development of choreography, it becomes clear that a 

particular series of movements, while important to the piece as a whole, are not organized 

effectively for the purposes of the narrative. Just as an author may cut a section of text and then 

paste it into a more appropriate paragraph, so too must choreographers find ways to cut out and 

shift movement. The challenge arises in that the movement text is held in the 

 

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choreographer/dancer’s mind and body and, therefore, cannot be easily shifted through the 

simple means of a keystroke command. Especially when a dancer is working both as 

choreographer and performer, the transition of movement to a new ‘position’ can be cumbersome 

and challenging.  

Figure 4.  
Movement memo of experimenting, building, drafting, revising, adapting, and moving 

Movement Memo: In Section 1, I started with the movement phrases I developed from the 
student “introduction” phrases. I broke them down into smaller pieces, and I moved them up 
on the table. I put them up on the table because the collaboration is happening in the center-
point. The students may be in their seats, but the action and the ideas are being read across the 
center of the group. 
----- 
Revisions for Section 3 included a reworking of the culminating conflict between G, C, and A. 
This is the section that explores the theme of movement manipulation where one student would 
actively drive the action of another student through placing their hands on the body of another. 
I was not happy with the way it bled into the previous section, which highlighted the 
conflict/meaningful gesture between F and E. Because this was the case, I added a beat to the 
end of the meaningful gesture section, and then I added a transition of idea to show that the 
group was coming to the end of their collaboration - they had a shared idea on the floor. From 
there, I added a sharp contrast from idea to dissenting body, finishing Section 3 with the 
manipulated agreement of the final student G. 

 

Documenting and Rehearsing 

The development and maintenance of dance over time presents its own series of 

challenges. Without constant and consistent review, movements held primarily in the mind and 

body can start to lose their sharp focus and practiced edge. In order to continue building 

productively upon the work of my dance as ABER project, I prioritized consistent rehearsals 

over the course of drafting and developing the piece. Every two days, I would find a rehearsal 

space (including my kitchen and a friend’s living room) to review what I had created so far and 

to continue developing and expanding the narrative of the performance piece. In this project, I 

 

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found the most success in rehearsing the work chronologically, beginning with Part I and 

working through Part IV. Each section took the span of one 60-120-minute rehearsal. 

Additionally, I would conclude each rehearsal by turning on the video camera and 

recording each new section twice. Even if the first run-through of the section went well, I would 

still pause, reset, and repeat. By having at least two runs of each section by the end of rehearsal, I 

had multiple checkpoints where I could go back, reflect, compare, contrast, and re-think through 

the development of phrases. Knowing there would be a second run through also lifted the 

pressure and performance anxiety (even if I was the only person there) that I am prone to feel as 

a mover occupying public (i.e., recorded) space. 

For me, recording the progress of my rehearsals with a video camera was the best way for 

me to continue building over time. I would position my camera that the ‘front’ of the rehearsal 

space, though most of the dance occurs cyclically or in profile. Other dancers may prefer to 

record movement phrases from the ‘back’ of the rehearsal space so that they can review and 

practice without having to mirror. As I discovered in my data generation, having multiple 

cameras recording from juxtaposing viewpoints can be the most helpful in capturing the nuance 

of movement from more than one angle. 

Additionally, I documented rehearsals and choreography through the use of memo 

writing. After recording the day’s work with a video camera, I would sit and reflect on my 

computer, highlighting the decisions I had made, the challenges I faced, and the work I had done 

to address those challenges. Most importantly in the memo writing was the opportunity to track 

my thinking over time - to see where and when I had made particular decisions - so that I could 

continue thoughtfully revising, adjusting, and adapting material over time. Others may choose to 

capture the development of movement graphically, such as through Labanotation (Hutchinson, 

 

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1977), which is another means for more concretely fixing movement into a stable, replicable 

form. 

Figure 5.  
Movement memo of documenting and rehearsing 

Movement Memo: Tonight, I mapped out the pathways of Section 4 before tomorrow’s 
rehearsal. I looked back through the videos, CCMME 1-4, and I mapped onto paper the 
pathways of each student and the center-point of each pivotal moment. 
 
I split each paper into a storyboard by CCMME and then added blocks for each pivotal 
moment within the CCMME. I then drew the series of desks/tables into each block. 
 
I started at the beginning of each PM video by labeling where each student started. As I 
watched the video, I drew arrows for each student as they moved around the room in sequence 
from the beginning of the PM to the end of the PM. 
---- 
Today was the first rehearsal in the performance space. X came to watch. The first run of the 
piece was particularly challenging because the tables that we had put together in the center 
were actually on wheels. Much of the performance piece moves on or across the tables, and so 
throughout my performance I was having to speed up, slow down, or add additional shifts to 
my weight because the tables were shifting underneath me. It was precarious to say the least - 
certainly not ideal. The first run was additionally challenging because the height of the tables 
in relation to the height of the chairs was different then when I choreographed the piece. Now 
the top of the tables was higher than the seat of the chairs rather than flush. This required that 
I adapt the facing of chairs and the way they were pushed in and out from the table. At one 
point, I lay on the seat of the chair and put my feet up in the air. I had to drastically change the 
facing of the chair so I wouldn’t hit my head on the table. 

 

Responding to Feedback 

A critical step in creative work is the opportunity to elicit and respond to feedback. For 

some, feedback may be as informal as inviting a friend to a rehearsal. For others, it may include 

scheduling a formal work-in-progress showcase with an audience and established protocol for 

reflection and feedback. For most, creating a dance involves combinations of both.  

 

Throughout the beginning stages of choreography, feedback can take the form of 

responding to the questions and concerns of the dancers presenting the work. For dancers 

 

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working as choreographers/performers, feedback can take the form of reviewing rehearsal 

footage and responding to areas of concern (i.e. unwieldy transitions, gestures lacking clarity, 

etc.). As the dance comes to life, that feedback can then take a series of more formal forms. In 

the case of this dance as research project, I began by offering and responding to my own 

feedback through the review of my memos, the revision of my narrative text and written 

overview, the review of rehearsal videos, and the continued re-observation of my classroom data. 

 

As the work progressed to a more completed piece, I began to schedule rehearsals in the 

performance space (rather than the kitchen or living room) where I could invite colleagues or 

small groups of friends to watch and respond to my work. These opportunities for individualized 

feedback from a small group of colleagues committed to my success became critical from 

transitioning the work from my own conceptualization of the project to a work that was 

generating meaning from others. In these informal settings, conversations were grounded in my 

colleagues expressing moments that caught their attention, confused them, and/or surprised them, 

which ultimately lead to a dialogue about what they felt those moments meant. This feedback 

became crucial to my ability to make decisions for revision (i.e., Is that what I thought would 

stand out? Is that what I was thinking when I developed that phrase? Is there a 

miscommunication here?). 

 

Finally, formal opportunities for feedback can be pursued through work-in-progress 

workshops. At this time, I invited a group of individuals to come together to the performance 

space to view and respond to a work - knowing that it is a work in progress and that the purpose 

of the performance is to share and discuss on behalf of the choreographer and dancers. In the 

case of this project, work-in-progress workshops were conducted using Liz Lerman’s Critical 

Response Process as a guiding frame, which includes (1) statements of meaning; (2) artist as a 

 

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questioner; (3) neutral questions from responders; and (4) permissioned opinions (Lerman & 

Borstel, 2003, p. 28). This four-step process is particularly generative for receiving and 

responding to feedback on dance as research projects because it takes the emphasis off of the 

‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of the dance and focuses instead on the communicative practices of the 

piece. In responding to works of art, it can be easy to fixate so much on the personal effect of 

‘good’ or ‘bad’ that it becomes challenging to shift the lens to the work itself. Lerman and 

Borstel (2003) provide useful guidelines for framing the discussion, both for the artist and 

audience, as a generative dialogue rather than as an arbitrary collection of opinions. 

Figure 6.  
Movement memo of responding to feedback 

Movement Memo: X had great feedback for me to think about. Here are a couple of the 
highlights: 
 
The strength of my body - my posture, my face, my stance with feet apart and shoulders back - 
lead X to the conclusion that I was a teacher, or at least shifting between teacher and student. 
This is important for me to find out because I am not a teacher at any point during the dance - 
but the students were certainly mimicking movement phrases and gestures that are identifiable 
as ‘authoritarian.’ 
 
My movement phrases in general look and feel very adult. X suggested finding ways to adapt 
my posture and dress to be more representative of children - especially since this project is 
about the collaboration of 5th graders and I am (physically, anyway) an adult. I could also be 
using my posture and expression to better differentiate between students participating in the 
collaboration. 

 

Reflecting and Finding the Whole 

Reflection is a critical component of the creative process, beginning immediately with the 

conception of the project and continuing all the way through sharing or publishing a work. In this 

project, reflection became an important tool for envisioning revision. As a dancer taking on the 

role of choreographer and performer, I was faced with the particular challenge of enacting the art 

 

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as the dancer, rather than seeing or experiencing the art on the body of another person. To this 

end, reflection - the time to sit or walk quietly and think about the work as it existed thus far - 

became critical. To facilitate reflection, I relied heavily upon memo-writing to document, not just 

what I had done or my rationale for doing so, but also the ways I was thinking about the work as 

a whole. How were the movement phrases speaking to each other? Which gestures were being 

emphasized by the use of my body and energy? Which narrative moments felt overlooked or lost 

in the active shuffle? Protecting time in and out of rehearsal for reflection supported my inquiry 

and the development of a performance piece that was a cohesive whole rather than a series of 

movements strung together through time. 

 

Reflection and memo writing also provided the opportunity to respond to feedback and to 

prepare a plan for the next steps of the following rehearsal. As seen in the movement memo 

below, part of reflecting meant thinking forward to anticipate what would happen next. In order 

to continue working towards a cohesive piece of art, the reflection and planning for revision 

provided the opportunity to examine parts of the dance were ‘not working’ and then prepare an 

agenda, draft ideas, think through potential revisions for re-working problematic areas of the 

dance. It is easy to overlook these moments of reflection and preparation because they are often 

not tied to any movement at all, other than potentially the tapping of fingers on keys, the 

scratching of pencil on paper, or even the tracking eyes watching cars drive past in the street. 

The work that happens when the body is still, the potential energy building for the future, is just 

as important for creating a complete work of art as the kinetic energy transferred in rehearsal. 

While binary thinking often associates stillness with absence, this is not the case in embodiment. 

Stillness and silence are equally valued affects of communicative and meaning making 

processes. 

 

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Figure 7.  

Movement memo of reflecting and finding the whole 

Movement Memo: Just had a thought, at the end when I stand up and hold the paper to the 
center, I should walk a lap around the table, holding the paper in the center so that everyone 
has a chance to see it. Then I should stop, do a 180 pivot and work my way through Grace’s 
final scene where her head and hands are manipulated. That may be clearer for showing the 
way she was physically asked to give in to the final decision of the group. 
----- 
I need to watch each of the videos again to identify for each student a “stillness” or a “resting 
place.” In other words, when students are still/resting/paused in their collaborative efforts, 
whether sitting or standing, what does it look like? What is the shape and pattern of their 
body? By identifying a “resting place” for each student, just as I developed a thematic 
movement phrase for each of them, I can revise my own movements of stillness to better reflect 
the stillness of the students. I can also use the resting place as an act of body to better show 
transition between students and ownership of movement phrases. I believe this revision would 
ultimately blur the line between my adult dancer body and the movement phrases of the 
participating youth. 
---- 
I am going to add a third chair to the table, specifically for G. There are a couple of moments 
of stillness that are specific to G that currently aren’t reading well because she does not have 
her own designated location in space. This is part of the problem with the shape of the tables 
in the rehearsal space as opposed to the shape of the tables in the actual collaboration. They 
are not an exact match. 

 

Analytic Challenges, Affordances, and Ways to Rethink 

Analyzing data through dance as an ABER methodology presents its own unique 

challenges, affordances, and opportunities to rethink methodological techniques and values. 

Creativity is messy, and messiness is not always highly valued in research settings. Movement 

studies are messy, sometimes feeling impractical and imprecise, other times feeling cogent and 

insightful. A shared tenant of arts-based research is the idea that art is challenging and 

unpredictable, which presents unique opportunities for researchers interested in diving into the 

unexpected. 

 

Experimenting with dance as an analytic technique raised as many questions about art 

and research as it did answer lines of inquiry. I do not necessarily see the questions that I’ve 

 

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asked myself over the course of analysis as flaws, but rather as opportunities to re-think and to 

imagine next steps for dance as an ABER research methodology. What other kinds of data could 

I have collected that would support my analytic process? Are there other angles, sounds, 

perspectives that I haven’t thought about or that might have remained hidden from view? Where 

else can I explore and experiment with language that is thick enough and descriptive enough to 

meaningfully articulate the work of the body? In what other ways could language and text 

support and challenge the analytic body at work? How and when would the addition of moving 

collaborators support and challenge the analytic body at work? Asking questions and probing the 

periphery is an affordance of art as well as an opportunity to rethink the structures consciously 

and unconsciously used to shape narrative and answer questions. 

Figure 8.  
Movement memo of analytic challenges, affordances, and ways to rethink 

Movement Memo: I was trapped in the world of literal replication. I was also developing the 
phrases based on the order in which they showed up in the video, and because I’m only seeing 
them on myself (which means not really seeing them at all), it’s much harder to think about 
how to reorder and remix them in a way that might be more meaningful. 
 
On the other hand, today felt harder because in the video there are much more deliberate 
connections between the gestures. Like, when the gestures held direct meaning, it was much 
more challenging to connect that meaning to the empty space around me, and to put those 
meanings in places that made sense for some sort of narrative or thematic arc. 
 
And then, I thought about how those gestures communicated ideas from one participant to 
another. This part was more challenging because there were gestures that had very specific 
and intentional meaning behind them, and I wanted to be thoughtful about how they fit into the 
big picture of the gesture strings. But this also wasn’t easy to do because the communicative 
gestures are rather authoritarian, and I also don’t want my audience to get the idea that the 
students were only working in ways that were controlling - because that's not really true 
either. 

 

 

 

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Sharing the Work 

Sharing and Evaluating Dance as ABER 

Special considerations must be made for how, when, and where to share dance as an 

ABER project. Performing bodies have not always fit easily into current structures for presenting 

and publishing work in educational academia. Conference presentations and journal manuscripts 

rarely provide room, literally or figuratively, for movement-based studies. Conference 

presentations often take place in lecture halls with a table or podium and screen are placed in the 

front for speakers and chairs are neatly aligned in rows for the audience. However, as technology 

and expertise change over time, venues for sharing research and inquiry adapt as well. The 

twenty-first century has brought with it increasingly advanced opportunities for utilizing 

technology to capture and share movement studies (Spatz, 2015). With forethought, creativity, 

and adaptability, researchers sharing dance as ABER have the opportunity to share their work 

across a range of stakeholders. 

Opportunities for Performance 

A key component of sharing dance is the act of performance. Dance performance 

opportunities abound for those interested in sharing their artwork, including work-in-progress 

showcases, formal performances, and contributions to a performance series. Venues for 

performance, especially those tied to education spaces, can include, but are not limited to, 

theaters, green space, gymnasiums, and classrooms, each of which present their own affordances 

and challenges. Presenters of dance as ABER may find educational spaces to be especially 

fruitful venues for sharing their work, as schools often include venues for sharing such as 

auditoriums, cafeterias, gymnasiums, and classrooms themselves. Performance of dance as 

ABER also has opportunity for sharing through conference presentations and invited lectures, 

 

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which provide the opportunity to not only perform the artwork, but also to share and explain the 

analytic and conceptual work happening behind the scenes of the performance art. Consideration 

should be made for video recording performances of dance as ABER research. Is the live 

performance an appropriate venue for recording the work? If so, where should the cameras be 

placed and how will the footage be used afterward? Thinking carefully through opportunities for 

the using technology to capture performance can be helpful in preparing for sharing and 

publication. 

Opportunities for Publication 

 

Opportunities for publishing embodied research are growing thanks to the development 

of technology rich modalities and the increased visibility of performative inquiry practices 

(Spatz, 2015). Video recordings of live performances or of studio-recorded performance pieces 

can be shared directly in research manuscripts through embedded QR codes or links to platforms 

such as Youtube or Vimeo. Additionally, some journals, such as the Journal of Language and 

Literacy Education, Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, Video Journal of 

Education and Pedagogy, and International Journal of Education & the Arts, offer direct 

publication of recorded video, which could include video-recorded dance performances. While 

there are opportunities to share full length performance video, there are also techniques for 

sharing video clips within manuscripts. For example, GIFs, short, repeating video clips, can be 

embedded directly into manuscripts with the use of Adobe Acrobat or InDesign. Dancer-

researchers can utilize online video editing software to create GIFs, such as GIFBrewery. 

Certainly, this is not a comprehensive list of techniques for sharing dance as research; however, 

it is encouraging to find a range of venues and technologies designed for developing and sharing 

embodied research texts. 

 

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Responsible Sharing 

 

When thinking about how and when dance as ABER methodology can be presented and 

shared, researchers should, as with any publication of findings, consider the ethics of their 

selected strategy. Depending on the relationship between the dance, researcher, and participants, 

there are particular considerations for responsible sharing. As the researcher and sole performer 

of this particular dance as ABER project, there is little risk for my participants from the island of 

Greynel. My choreography is neither a direct representation of their embodied experience nor is 

there any recognizable or identifiable information presented in the performance of the project. 

The performance of this project does not include any video of the student participants, and the 

audio being utilized as accompaniment is also a recording of the researcher. 

 

However, it may certainly be the case that researchers are interested in collaborating, 

choreographing, and performing with participants, including children and teachers from the 

classroom, or with a performing artist. In this case, performance and sharing should be 

negotiated with the participants. The choreographic inquiry process of Liz Lerman (2014), while 

not specific to education, is a prime example for the variety of ways that dance can be generated 

through participation with professional and pedestrian performers alike. Guiding questions may 

include: In what venue will you share your work? With whom will you share your work? Are 

they interested in moving the work beyond performance to publication? Are you comfortable 

being identified within the work? To what extent? Of additional importance is considering how 

and when participants are given credit for their collaborative efforts in the work: Are they listed 

as choreographers or dancers? Are they cited or included in publication as collaborators? Are 

they, especially in the case of collaborating professional artists, receiving compensation for their 

work? In particular, Cahnmann-Taylor and Siegesmund (2018) stress the importance of utilizing 

 

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and appropriately compensating professional artists in endeavors to create aesthetic education 

research. 

Evaluating the Work 

 

One of the challenges of ABER methodologies is evaluation. Arts-based research is 

particularly challenging to codify and evaluate because it is framed both as a piece of art and as a 

piece of science. Because of this, it can be challenging to find the balance between two fields, art 

and science, which can feel at conflict with each other (Barone & Eisner, 2011; Cahnmann-

Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018; Leavy, 2015). Educational research in the social sciences have 

developed very clear guidelines for systematic and rigorous analysis, which can be seen in the 

“Standards for Reporting on Empirical Social Science Research” developed by the American 

Educational Research Association (2006). These standards were designed to “provide guidance 

about the kinds of information essential to understanding both the nature of the research and the 

importance of the results” (p. 33). While the “Standards for Reporting on Humanities-Oriented 

Research” (American Educational Research Association, 2009) also state that “the term 

standards is understood to be sufficiently broad to encompass the kind of flexibility and 

judgement in application that evaluating humanities-oriented research requires” (p. 481), it can 

pose a challenge to arts-based researchers in general and dancers in particular to find the kinds of 

standards and guidelines that are accessible and reflective of the work at hand. In particular, the 

AERA standards (2009) reflect that humanities-oriented research “often looks to the overlapping 

and dialogic qualities between what is studied and the conceptual categories implicitly or 

explicitly guiding the study” (p. 483). These sorts of key differences between the 

conceptualization, implementation, and reporting of social science versus humanities-oriented 

 

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and art-based research can pose evaluative challenges, especially for burgeoning methodologies, 

such as dance as ABER. 

Defining Analytic Quality 

According to the AERA standards (2009), the expectations for implementing and 

reporting humanities-oriented research are not dissimilar to those for social science research. 

While the standards problematize the complexity of evaluating humanities-oriented research, the 

foundation of evaluation is the same. Like social science research, humanities-oriented research 

is required to make a significant claim, clearly articulate the methodological and conceptual 

framing of the project and substantiate claims credibly with warrants drawn from scholarly 

literature, empirical evidence, and other critical and intellectual resources. In the case of dance as 

ABER methodology, a researcher faces similar hurdles for developing, implementing, and 

reporting their work. Does the work make a relevant or necessary claim? Does the work make 

clear how the project was conceptualized and implemented through the rigorous application of 

theory and practice? While these are all questions that researchers are used to considering, the 

challenge remains that there are currently few models from which to cull guidance and 

inspiration, and there are currently few journals and reviewers who can comfortably evaluate the 

empirical rigor of a dance as ABER work of art. 

Defining Aesthetic Quality 

While researchers are experienced in meeting the standards for empirical research, ABER 

scholars must also consider the aesthetic quality in their work. As Blumenfeld-Jones (2008) 

states, “the insights discovered through the practice of dance as an art form are only available 

through that practice, and the practice focuses on making art, not on coming to understand. To 

consider using dance as a primary mode of research, persons must first develop themselves as 

 

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artists, understanding that the practice of art is, in many ways, no different from the practice of 

research” (p. 184). Bagley and Cancienne (2002) shared the challenge of their first foray into 

dance as ABER, which resulted in a poor-quality performance they felt was undermining and 

“trivializing” dance as an art form (p. 4). As Snowber (2002) writes about her own dance as 

research, while all persons experience their lives through their bodies, “to take intuition into 

action, one needs practice” (p. 28). In other words, the quality of dance, much like that of 

writing, is “developed, honed, and refined” through practice (Snowber, 2002, p. 28). Having you 

done the work of an artist, or elicited the support of a practicing artist? 

 

The field of dance and movement studies provide tools for reflecting upon and evaluating 

dance as a work of art. Lavender (2003), for example, explains the value of artwork as “the way 

in which it rewards attention and the kind of reward it offers,” which underlies the fact that 

artwork is intentional - that it is “the result of an intelligent activity of making that usually 

includes experimentation, decision-making, skilled crafting, revision, and almost always a bit of 

luck (p. 225). For Preston-Dunlop (2006), the quality of a dance piece is partly a consequence of 

its structure: how elements of movement build upon or juxtapose each other, how gestures build 

to moments, to scenes, to complete pieces, and how well the structure carries meaning. A critical 

step in developing and evaluating performance artwork is through presenting and responding to 

feedback. While acquiring feedback from an audience can be a daunting task for any presenter of 

performance art, there are helpful feedback structures available, such as Liz Lerman’s Critical 

Response Process (Lerman & Borstel, 2003), which provide tools for facilitating meaningful 

discussion around dance inquiry. 

 

 

 

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Challenges and Affordances of Dance as ABER Methodology 

Discussion 

 

As with any research methodology, there are affordances and challenges associated with 

dance as ABER. On the one hand, dance as research is a powerful technique for developing new 

perspectives and sharing meaning in a way that honors the questions (i.e. bodies sharing our 

understanding of bodies), especially in classroom contexts where bodies often go overlooked for 

the sake of linguistic and text-based markers for learning. Additionally, dance as research 

provides opportunities to value additional ways of knowing through expanding definitions of 

language, text, and communicative practices in classroom contexts. 

 

Challenges of dance as ABER include the difficulties of getting started in a new and 

unfamiliar research paradigm. For many researchers, the energy required to generate momentum 

in a dance research project may feel insurmountable because dance as inquiry requires ability to 

ask and answer questions both as a scientist and an artist. While many researchers live each day 

within the halls of the academy, an appropriate first step for dance as inquiry may be to identify 

and participate in dance technique classes. In the United States, there are many opportunities for 

adults to take beginning dance classes with professional teaching artists, which may be a critical 

first step for explicitly remembering what if feels like to learn in the body. Once those first steps 

have been taken, then a researcher can continue to build their repertoire between art and science, 

while honing the skills for sharing the work. 

Opportunities for Investigating Classroom Bodies and Space 

Currently, there is a real need for education communities to enter a more nuanced 

understanding of bodies and space in classroom contexts. Education researchers have the 

opportunity to reanalyze the relationship between the body and critical classroom values, such as 

 

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classroom management, disciplinary practices, embodied knowledge and learning, and embodied 

language and literacy. Currently, bodies and space take a secondary position to oral and written 

language. Often, bodies are not recognized by teachers, students, or researchers as a viable way 

to produce and explain knowledge. Even when bodies are included, they are often relegated to 

secondary positions in favor of language and text-production. Given all that a body can do, it is 

critical that researchers expand their repertoire to better ask and answer questions of the body in 

the classroom (see Appendix A for guiding questions in building a dance inquiry and Appendix 

B for additional reading and models of dance as arts-based education research). 

While qualitative and quantitative research methods are valuable tools for asking and 

answering nuanced questions about the classroom, they are not necessarily designed to be an 

ideal fit for closely examining the complexity of bodies and space in education spaces. In order 

to center attention upon classroom bodies and ask critical questions about the role they play in 

education spaces, the research community would do well to turn to and develop dance as an 

ABER methodology. Through dance as inquiry, researchers can develop the capacity for 

generating, analyzing, and sharing body-based data in addition to opportunities to collaborate 

and perform with various stakeholders, including teachers, students, and performing artists. 

 

 

 

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APPENDICES 

 

88 

 

APPENDIX A. Next steps for dance as arts-based education research 
 

Research step 
Form a line of inquiry 

Guiding questions 

•  Did you as a question driven by your conceptual 

understanding of a problem? 

•  Did you ask a question that is best answered with 

movement-based tools (body, action, space, time, and 
energy)? 

•  Did you systematically generate data that will answer your 

question? 

•  Did you generate data that attunes to aesthetic 

understandings of perception and reflection with room for 
improvisation and responsiveness to unique situations? 

•  Have you systematically and thoroughly reviewed your data 

utilizing a range of linguistic and embodied techniques? 

•  Did you thoughtfully engage your participant community in 
understanding the phenomena evoked through your work? 

•  Have you elicited feedback from the arts community to 
drive reflection, revision, and development of the art? 
•  Have you systematically and thoroughly recorded your 
analytic process in order to make a coherent and valid 
argument for your art and its findings? 

•  Have you engaged your participants and arts communities 

in accessible options for publicly sharing your art? 

•  Have you made arrangements to produce high-quality 

recordings of your art that can be shared with the broader 
community? 

•  Have you engaged the insight of various stakeholders? 
o  Participants (students, teachers, etc.) 
o  Colleagues (academics, dancers, teachers, etc.) 
o  Professionals (academics, artists, teachers, 
o  Public (audience, readers, viewers, etc.) 

administrators) 

•  Have you elicited and responded to the needs of various 

stakeholders? This could include: 

your art 

valuing and reflecting upon your art 

o  Workshops for revising, reflecting upon, and adapting 
o  Building arguments and counterarguments for 
o  Providing scaffolded opportunities for reflection 
with various stakeholders (whether or not they are 
new to evaluating, critiquing, and responding to art 
and science) 

Generate data 

Analyze data 

Share data 

Identify and respond to 
stakeholders 

 
 

 

 

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APPENDIX B. Additional reading and models for dance as arts-based education research 
 

Additional reading and models 
Apol, L. & Kambour, T. (1999). Telling stories through writing and dance: An 

intergenerational project. Language Arts, 77(2), 106-117. 

 
Bagley, C., & Cancienne, M. B. (Eds.). (2002). Dancing the data. Peter Lang. 
 
Blumenfeld-Jones, D. S. (1995). Dance as a mode of research representation. Qualitative 

Inquiry, 4(1), 391-401. 

 
Bresler, L. (Ed.) (2004). Knowing bodies, moving minds: Towards embodied teaching and 

learning. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

 
Cancienne, M. B. (1999). The gender gaze: Rethinking gender through performance. Journal 

of Curriculum Theorizing, 15(2), 167-175. 

 
Cancienne, M. B. (2007). The soul moves: Dance and spirituality in educative practice. In 
International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (vol 16). Springer, pp. 1449-
1458. 

 
Cancienne, M. B., & Megibow, A. (2001). The story of Anne: Movement as an educative 

text. Journal of Curriculum Theory, 17(2), 61-72. 

 
Davenport, D. R., & Forbes, C. A. (1997). Writing movement/dancing words: A collaborative 

pedagogy. Education, 118(2), 293-303. 

 
Liamputtong, P., & Rumbold, J. (Eds.) (2008). Knowing differently: Arts-based and 

collaborative research. Nova Science Publishers. 

 
Markula, P., & Denison, J. (2000). See spot run: Movement as an object of textual analysis. 

Qualitative Inquiry, 6(3), 406-431. 

 
Snowber, C. N. (2012). Dancing a curriculum of hope: Cultivating passion as an embodied 

inquiry. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28(2), 118-125. 

 
Snowber (Schroeder), C., & Gerofsky, S. (1998). Beyond the span of my limbs: Gesture, 

number and infinity. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 15(2), 39-48. 

 
Spry, T. (2001). Performing autoethnography: An embodied methodological praxis. 

Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 706-732. 

 
Stinson, S. (1995). Body of knowledge. Educational Theory, 45(1), 43-54. 
 
Stinson, S. W., & Dils, A. H. (2007). Dance and qualitative research. In L. Givens (Ed.) The 

Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Sage Publications. 

 

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REFERENCES 

91 

REFERENCES 

 
 
 
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Almquist, J., & Quennerstedt, M. (2015). Is there (any)body in science education? Interchange, 

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project. Language Arts, 77(2), 106–117. 

 
Bagley, C., & Cancienne, M. B. (2002). Educational research and intertextual forms of 

(re)presentation: The case for dancing the data. In C. Bagley & M. B. Cancienne (Eds.), 
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Cancienne, M. B. (2007). The soul moves: Dance and spirituality in educative practice. In 

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Cancienne, M. B., & Megibow, A. (2001). The story of Anne: Movement as an educative text. 

Journal of Curriculum Theory, 17(2), 61–72. 

 
Cancienne, M. B., & Snowber, C. (2003). Writing rhythm: Movement as method. Qualitative 

Inquiry, 9(2), 237–253. 

 
Davenport, D. R., & Forbes, C. A. (1997). Writing movement/dancing words: A collaborative 

pedagogy. Education, 118(2), 293–303. 

 
Duncum, P. (1999). The semiotics of children’s bodies as found in popular media. Arts and 

Learning Research Journal, 16(1), 78–81. 

 
Ellingson, L. L. (2017). Embodiment in qualitative research. Taylor & Francis. 
 
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Hahn, T. (2007). Sensational knowledge: Embodying culture through Japanese dance. Wesleyan 

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Kao, S. M., & O’Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through 

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Latremouille, J. M. (2018). Silence, discipline, and student bodies. Journal of the Candian 

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Lavender, L. (2003). The critical appreciation of dances. In J. Chazin-Bennahum (Ed.), The 

living dance: An anthology of essays on movement and culture (pp. 224–252). 
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Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Publications. 
 
Lerman, L. (2014). Hiking the horizontal: Field notes from a choreographer. Wesleyan 

University Press. 

 
Lerman, L., & Borstel, J. (2003). Liz Lerman’s critical response process: A method for getting 
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Liamputtong, P., & Rumbold, J. (Eds.). (2008). Knowing differently: Arts-based and 

collaborative research. Nova Science Publishers. 

 
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International Publishing Group. 

 
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Snowber, C. (2002). Bodydance: Enfleshing soulful inquiry through improvisation. In C. Bagley 

& M. B. Cancienne (Eds.), Dancing the data (pp. 20–33). Peter Lang Publishing. 

 
Snowber, C. N. (2012). Dancing a curriculum of hope: Cultivating passion as an embodied 

inquiry. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28(2), 118–125. 

 
Snowber (Schroeder), C., & Gerofsky, S. (1998). Beyond the span of my limbs: Gesture, number 

and infinity. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 15(2), 39–48. 

 
Spatz, B. (2015). What a body can do. Routledge. 
 
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Inquiry, 7(6), 706–732. 

 
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schools. Journal of Youth Studies, 1-17. 

 
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Stinson, S. W., & Dils, A. H. (2007). Dance and qualitative research. In L. Givens (Ed.), The 

Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Sage Publications. 

 
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MOVING LANGUAGE: THE ROLE OF CLASSROOM BODIES AND SPACE IN 

NEGOTIATING COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATIONS 

 
 

Introduction 

and thinking spirals. 

Collective Effort 
The rush of hand drums. 
The thunder strikes of twin palms. 
Ideas hum. 
The pitter patter of tracking eyes 
 
The volleys that sail across the way. 
 
The rush of torso jumps. 
The thunder echo of body calm. 
Feet hum. 
The stillness of hunched repose 
 
The collection that gets tucked away. 
 
Look here! 
See here! 
I’m here! 
 
 

and shadow caves. 

Classrooms are spaces specifically designated for the purpose of learning. Teachers 

traditionally hold the role of leaders of learning, where their purpose is to guide a group of 

students through a series of scaffolded steps designed to lead them to new meaning and 

understanding. In order to do so, teachers center students as learners by providing students with 

opportunities to act as meaning-makers. Social theories of education have led us to the 

understanding that learning happens in groups, and that learning happens best when the learner 

creates the meaning (Wenger, 1998). Arts-integrated learning experiences, the act of learning 

disciplinary content through and with an art form, provide ample opportunities to students to 

work together, make meaning, and create new knowledge through a range of modes (Silverstein 

 

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& Layne, 2010). The possibilities for learning can be exciting when groups of students are put 

together to create and to enact what they know. 

 

However, arts-integrated learning experiences also require that students work in 

classroom spaces in new ways - out of their chairs, with groups of people, and with explicit use 

of bodies for learning and communicating. Particularly when arts-integrated learning is tied to 

the performing arts (such as dance, theater, music, spoken word), students may be asked to 

embody their learning in new ways. They must work together to create, and they must 

communicate their understanding through new modes. As students become more autonomous in 

their collaborative and creative efforts, it becomes especially important for teachers and students 

to be critical and thoughtful about students’ approach to the use of their bodies and space as part 

of the learning process.  

 

This research project stemmed from a multi-year collaboration with Ms. Page 

(pseudonym), a fifth-grade teacher in a small, Midwestern elementary school. Ms. Page and I 

originally piloted an introductory process-drama in the 2017 school year. Over the summer of 

2018, Ms. Page and I collaborated further to expand upon the arts-integrated content of the 

process drama and to deepen connections to fifth-grade content area learning goals. Ms. Page 

asked me to return to her classroom in the fall of 2018 to participate in the facilitation of the 

revised process-drama, which introduced fifth graders to the overarching themes for science, 

social studies, and language arts. Her goal with the process-drama was to build a collaborative 

foundation of understanding for content-area learning goals that she and her students could 

return to over the course of the school year. The structure of the process drama, adapted from 

earlier renditions, broke the class into four islands, each with its own natural resources and 

identity. The drama then leads students through a series of dramatic exchanges and creative 

 

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collaboration. I participated as a researcher, collaborator, and teacher-in-role (Kao & O’Neill, 

1998) in the classroom for the purpose of exploring students’ language use in a collaborative, 

arts-based setting. 

After initial observations, it became clear that not only were students using verbal 

language in interesting and iterative ways, but they were also using their bodies and physical 

space to communicate and facilitate their shared meaning making. While oral language was 

students’ most obvious mode of communication and negotiation, I began to notice students’ 

embodied experience was another material and affective component of the meaning-making 

process. In order to better understand students’ moving language, I asked:  

1.  How are students’ physical bodies a part of their collaborative learning spaces in 

creative endeavors?  

2.  What do students’ physical bodies suggest about their collaboration and meaning-

making processes? 

The Role of the Arts 

 

In this project, the role of the arts, which are defined as creative endeavors falling into the 

broad categories of dance, theater, music, visual art, and poetry, is two-fold. First, the curriculum 

designed and implemented by the teacher with her fifth-grade students was a process-drama. In 

this process drama, students engaged in visual art through painting, sculpting, and drawing. They 

engaged in music and dance through the creation and presentation of musical island themes, 

drama/theater practices through staged performances and in-role improvisation, writing through 

the development of social contracts and forms of government, and extensive collaborative group 

work to create materials and to respond to the input presented by the teacher. The collaborative 

 

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group work where students worked together to create arts-based materials is the focus of this 

project, not the arts-based materials themselves. 

 

Second, this project includes the art form of dance as a methodology to examine the 

embodied experiences of the students in their collaborative group work. Using the language of 

students’ bodies and the language of their discussions, movement phrases were choreographed, 

organized, rehearsed, and revised as part of the analytic process. The dance performance serves, 

in part, as the findings of the project, which will then be discussed in their relationship to the 

field’s current understandings of collaborative and arts-based classroom practices. While it may 

seem counterintuitive and unwieldy to focus attention on students’ bodies during collaborative 

work, as a researcher, it felt unethical to examine only student language when, as a classroom 

observer, it was apparent that students’ bodies and space were participating in telling an complex 

and nuanced story. 

Literature Review 

Collaboration is an important part of learning experiences in the classroom. Research and 

practice have worked to develop a shared understanding that collaboration is a key component of 

centering students as meaning-makers throughout the learning process while offering language-

rich opportunities for increased understanding (Chinn et al., 2000; DiCamilla & Anton, 1997; 

Mason & Santi, 1998; Osborne, 2010; Rimm-Kaufman & Merritt, 2019; Vass et al., 2008). 

Collaborative group work is also critical because it places value on the ideas of students while 

requiring peers to respond directly to those ideas in order to move collaborations forward. 

Specifically, students learn from each other, respond directly to each other, utilize a range of 

communicative practices and rich language, practice perspective-taking, and develop new ideas 

 

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through shared meaning making (M. C. Nussbaum, 2010; Van Boxtel et al., 2002). Collaboration 

is a key ingredient in developing socially embedded learning environments. 

 

A critical component of collaboration is the use of communicative practices to share 

ideas. Much of the research on collaborative discourse focuses primarily on students’ language 

use, verbal and written, to communicate new ideas through argumentation and negotiated 

meaning making (Resnick, 1991). However, students’ verbal and written language is not the only 

way that collaboration and meaning making unfold. Students’ bodies are also always present in 

their collaborative interactions. Often overlooked when thinking about discourse and 

communicative practices, bodies play a key role in learning (Almquist & Quennerstedt, 2015; 

Mulcahy, 2012; Perry & Medina, 2011). While research often focuses its understanding of 

bodies in classrooms through explicit instruction (such as body training in physical education, or 

learning how to use materials in science education), bodies and space are also contributing to 

classroom learning, even when they are not the focus of instruction (Andersson & Risberg, 2018; 

Buchholz, 2015). 

Rethinking the relationship between bodies and learning means rethinking the role that 

bodies and space play in classroom spaces. In many cases, school is associated with the 

confinement and management of bodies and space (Alerby et al., 2014; Duncum, 1999; Spina, 

1999). Classroom spaces are designed specifically with tables, desks, and chairs in mind. They 

are used to create a range of spatial formations, which students are asked to inhabit. Students are 

socially conditioned to follow the implicit rules of bodies and space, where bodies are meant to 

sit quietly within the boundaries designated by their tables and chairs. The boundaries of tables, 

chairs, and room then signal to students where and how they should be directing their bodies, 

talk and thinking. Education spaces also associate bodies with power and authority, in both 

 

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implicit and explicit ways. Implicit body biases become explicit through the verbal positioning 

one body against another, where a person’s gender, height, skin color, or affect becomes an 

object of authority over another (Ardis, 1992). Similarly, implicit understandings about body and 

authority show themselves through the unexpected and unwelcome physical touch of others 

(Connor et al., 2004). In order to better understand the role of bodies and space in learning and 

communication, research must make explicit how bodies work in classroom spaces while 

reimagining bodies beyond management and discipline. 

Recently, there has been a shift in research to thinking about the role of the body in 

learning and communicative practices. Specifically, research has been conducted to more clearly 

identify the role of the body in communicating disciplinary understanding in the science 

classroom (Almquist & Quennerstedt, 2015; Franks & Jewitt, 2001). Work has also been done to 

better understand the role of the body and physical touch in developing and communicating 

learning goals in the classroom (Andersson & Garrison, 2016; Andersson & Risberg, 2018). 

Buchholz (2015) has also examined the way that bodies in collaborative contexts can be utilized 

for developing and sharing meaning making, especially in relationship to the use of technology. 

Theoretical Frame 

 

Social context influences access to and participation in learning. Classroom spaces, in 

particular, cast a socially complex net. As theorized by Rogoff, Baker-Sennett, Lacasa, and 

Goldsmith (1995), social context is critical for individual development, and social contexts are 

constructed of three key planes: community, interpersonal, and personal. The community plane 

refers to “culturally organized activity, with institutional practices and development… guided by 

cultural values and goals” (p. 46). The interpersonal plane refers to “face-to-face and side-by-

side interaction as well as more distal arrangements of people’s activities,” which include both 

 

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inclusion and exclusion criteria (p. 46). The personal plane “focuses on how individuals change 

through their involvement in one or another activity,” a process which builds and adapts across 

participation in subsequent activities (p. 46). Classrooms can be described through their 

community, interpersonal, and personal planes, where the abstract system of ‘schooling’ and the 

concrete building of ‘schooling’ work together form the community in which teachers and 

students enact interpersonal practices strategically designed to scaffold students through a series 

of personal activities built upon each other for development and growth. 

 

The classroom as a social context also influences access to and participation in learning. 

As personal development relies on series of interpersonal activities within a community, personal 

development is also contingent upon the values and inclusionary practices of that community. 

When considering classroom bodies and space through the lens of management and discipline, 

the educational community, implicitly and explicitly, values the variation of tables, desks, and 

chairs for the practice of spatial confinement - where bodies are valued for their stillness, their 

controlled manipulation of materials such as paper, pens, or computers, and their unified 

responsiveness to authority figures (such as Stahl, 2019). The social context of school provides 

access and scaffolds towards learning, where students who offer a shared series of values and 

commitments as the school community are granted access to interpersonal activities developed to 

support learning while students deemed deviant or unruly are not (such as Erevelles, 2000 and 

Niccolini, 2016). 

Discourse practices provide another lens through which to view inclusivity and 

exclusivity in school communities. The communicative practices, or Discourses, of teachers and 

students are a key component in who gains access to learning in the social setting of the school. 

A person’s Discourse is a set of literacy practices developed over time in social groups, which, 

 

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like the community, share particular ways of speaking, being, valuing, and participating in 

language (Gee, 1991). As communities share values and rules for participation, they also share 

Discourses - particular ways of utilizing and valuing language and literacy. Participants in social 

settings, such as school, are also included and excluded based on their familiarity and mastery of 

the required Discourse of the community. 

Discourse, which includes ‘ways of being,’ can also be extended to a community’s use of 

embodiment. Embodiment and embodied knowledge recognize the “embeddedness of thought in 

experience” (Davidson, 2004, p. 198) in which the body cannot be separated from the mind as a 

person participates in social contexts. Embodied knowledge, which includes intricately the 

relationship between the mind and the experience of the body, is a development of technique and 

practices, where the technique is the structured rules guiding the practice (Spatz, 2015). For 

example, a student in a classroom uses the embodied technique of hand-raising to signal that they 

agree, have something to say, or want to share. While the act of hand-raising is a common 

technique across school settings, the practice of hand raising varies from student to student. 

Some students may slowly raise their hand to shoulder level, keeping their arm close to their 

chest. Other students may quickly shoot their hand into the air, lifting their arm straight above 

their shoulder, rotating their palm back and forth at the wrist, fingers wiggling percussively. 

However, the educational community may value one practice over another - where the technique 

is properly executed by raising a straight arm above the shoulder, palm facing forward, fingers 

still. 

Schools and classrooms, as social sites of community-based interpersonal practices, 

include values and expectations for embodied learning that is inclusionary and exclusionary. For 

some students, exclusionary practices are a matter of regulation, management, confinement, or 

 

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discipline rather than for learning and communication (Franklin-Phipps, 2017; Harden, 2012; ; 

McLaren, 1999; Niccolini, 2016; Stahl, 2019). Reimagining bodies and space in classrooms as 

sites for learning and communication means rethinking community and interpersonal values in 

education spaces. This project is part of an effort to explore what can be learned when bodies and 

space in classrooms are reimagined as a critical component of collaboration and communication. 

Methods 

 

This project is developed through the use of arts-based and performance inquiry 

methodologies. Arts-based research is an approach to inquiry which utilizes the “intrinsic 

similarities” between art and science which are “grounded in exploration, revelation, and 

representation” (Leavy, 2015, p. 3). Arts-based research provides “highly nuanced and 

expressive renderings of human affairs” (Barone & Eisner, 2011, p. 8). This attention to the 

complexity of humanity is especially applicable to classroom spaces, where diverse groups of 

people with a range of goals and values are put together and asked to achieve common 

objectives. Arts-based research, then, provides a new perspective through which to view the 

classroom. In the words of Barone and Eisner (2011): 

It is indeed through this reexperiencing – not through a logical form of discourse, nor 

through the acceptance of a linear argument or explanation – that what we call deep 

persuasion might occur. This is a luring of percipients into the acceptance of alternative 

values and meanings for facets of social issues and practices that were previously 

misunderstood as being finally understood. (p. 20) 

As a means for reexperiencing familiar spaces, arts-based research has unique potential for 

examining classrooms. Many of us may have spent the majority of our lives in classrooms, as 

students, teachers, researchers, parents, administrators, and/or community members. We have 

 

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become such experts at navigating classroom spaces that it becomes challenging to see beyond 

our own experiences. In order to ‘re-see,’ arts-based research has “the potential to jar people into 

seeing/or thinking differently, feeling more deeply, learning something new, or building 

empathetic understandings” (Leavy, 2015, p. 21). While many may be highly empathetic of 

classroom life and have developed strong feelings of the work done within, arts-based 

methodology provides a lens to re-imagine and re-evaluate our own assumptions of classroom 

spaces. As Leavy (2015) states, “In order to address different issues successfully and 

communicate effectively with diverse audiences, we need to able to see in different shapes and to 

produce knowledge in different shapes” (p. 3, emphasis in original).  

 

One facet of arts-based research is performative inquiry. Performative inquiry is a 

method used by researcher-performers to examine questions body, ways of knowing, and social 

and cultural practices. Though broad in nature, including performance art such as dance, theater, 

and improvisation, etc., this methodology employs the work of dance scholars and ethnographers 

to make connections between action and bodies as sites of meaning. Dance ethnographers have 

long thought of dance as a way to examine “cultural knowledge [that is] embedded in 

movement” because dance is not only somatic, mental, and emotional, but it also includes 

cultural history, beliefs, values, and feelings (Sklar, 2000, p. 6).  Though dance ethnography is 

the examination of dance itself, performance ethnography through dance can serve many of the 

same purposes, where the “analysis of movement experiences becomes a way to meet, 

somatically, and symbolically, those larger tacit patterns” (Sklar, 2000, p. 71). Just as researchers 

utilizing text-based research methodologies examine and interpret their observed worlds to 

answer questions, so, too, does the choreographer. “The choreographer analyzes the observed 

world, has a motional response, and interprets and rearranges the world through motion” 

 

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(Blumenfeld-Jones, 2008, p. 177). Examples of dance as a performative inquiry/arts-based 

research methodology take a variety of shapes. In some cases, researchers create dance pieces 

through the analysis of language and text (Apol & Kambour, 1999; Buono & Gonzalez, 2017; 

Davenport & Forbes, 1997; Markula & Denison, 2000). In other cases, researchers develop 

dance through the examination of meaningful movement and embodied experience (Cancienne 

& Snowber, 2003; Markula & Denison, 2000; Snowber, 2012). Research has been conducted by 

researcher-dancers (Cancienne & Snowber, 2003; Snowber, 2012) and by interdisciplinary 

collaborations (Apol & Kambour, 1999; Buono & Gonzalez, 2017; Davenport & Forbes, 1997; 

Markula & Denison, 2000). Because there is no one set of procedures for performative inquiry, 

much of analytical and methodological tension left to the ethical discretion of the researcher. In 

spite of the varied procedures employed in dance as a research methodology, ABER has yet to 

examine classroom bodies and space as site of meaning making and communicative practices. 

In this project, dance as an analytic process re-invents classroom spaces while examining 

both student bodies and student language as sources of vital information. As a researcher-dancer, 

I take on the roles of data generator, analyzer, and performer. Given the dual nature of the arts in 

the project, I will explicitly describe the analytic process in two parts: Phase 1, which details the 

process of data generation in the classroom; and Phase 2, which describes the analysis of said 

data through dance. 

Setting the Stage 

Phase 1: The Process Drama 

This project follows the collaborative work of four groups of students, Bluenel, Greynel, 

Brownel and Greenel. Each group consists of seven students who worked together to establish a 

fictional community based on the description and prompts of their classroom teacher, Ms. Page. 

 

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These communities were developed over the course of multiple weeks through the use of a 

process drama. The process drama was developed by me and Ms. Page as part of the literacy and 

social studies curriculum. The groups were organized ahead of time by Ms. Page, and they did 

not change over the course of the study. The collaborative practices of each group were recorded 

separately, though there was some overlap in communication between groups, especially as the 

process drama went on. The process drama was conducted through twelve activities/lessons over 

the course of 11 non-consecutive days (see Table 3). 

Table 3  
Overview of Ms. Page's process drama 

# 

1 

2 

3 

4 

Island Creation 

Island Theme & 
Gallery Walk 

5  Main Idea & 
Supporting 
Details 

Activity 

Description 

Introduction 

Introduction to “Four Islands” unit. Students 
brainstormed island governments and 
individual island maps based on “Four 
Islands” narrative. 

Island Creation  Explicit instruction on “What is 

Integration?” Island small groups began 
designing and sketching their island visual 
art piece. 
Island small groups painted island visual art 
piece and created accompanying sculptures. 
Island small groups attached their sculptures 
to their Island paintings. Island small groups 
created Island themes (musical numbers 
examining Island values). Students gallery 
walk visual art projects with sticky notes for 
feedback. 
Whole class instruction related to identifying 
main idea and supporting details. Island 
small groups use main idea and supporting 
details to examine feedback from gallery 
walk. Students begin drafting essential 
agreements.  

Researcher 
Role 
 

Duration 

 

Observer 

90 min 

Co-teacher 
Observer 
Observer 

90 min 

60 min 

Observer 

90 min 

 

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Table 3 (cont’d) 
6 

Essential 
Agreements & 
Island 
Presentations 

7 

8 

Island Theme 
Performance 

“They Say the 
People…” 

9 

“Two Sides…” 

10 

11 

“Two Sides…” 
performance & 
reflection 
“Disaster!” 

12 

“Disaster!” 

Ext  End-of-year 

reflection 

 

The Actors 

Whole class instruction of belief/value. 
Island small group work for developing 
essential agreement. Island group 
presentations of visual art projects (with 
response to peer feedback) and essential 
agreements. 
Island small groups rehearse and present 
Island themes, prefaced by Island essential 
agreements. Explicit instruction on theme of 
culture. 
Island small group activity of “They Say the 
People on that Island…” based on a teacher-
in-role narrative of rumor and disinformation 
spreading from Island to Island. 
Island small groups began planning for “Two 
Sides of the Same Story” drama.  
Island small groups rehearsed and performed 
their “Two Sides of the Same Story” dramas. 
Explicit instruction for the actor’s toolkit. 
Teacher-in-role narrative of breaking news 
from Island natural disasters. Island small 
groups discuss and negotiate cross-island 
survival plans. Explicit instruction of 
“making connections” strategy. 
Teacher-in-role conducted tv interviews of 
Island small group survival plans. Whole 
group and individual reflection of “Four 
Islands” unit. 
Island small groups discuss Island survival 
and reflect on “Four Island” experience 

Observer 

90 min 

Observer 

60 min 

Teacher-
in- 
role 
Observer 
 

60 min 

 

Co-teacher 
Observer 

60 min 

Teacher-
in- 
role 
Observer 

Teacher-
in- 
role 
Observer 
Observer 

60 min 

30 min 

90 min 

This study focuses particularly on the process-drama actors from one of the four islands: 

Greynel. This island was inhabited by seven fifth-grade students, Alice, Ben, Cato, Darcy, 

Elizabeth, Fletcher, and Gwen (pseudonyms). Seven of the seven students were native English 

 

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speakers, six of the seven students identified as White, one of the seven students identified as a 

Person of Color, three of the students identified as male, four of the students identified as female, 

and one of the students had received additional services outside the classroom. The seven 

students were placed on the island together by Ms. Page. Through Ms. Page’s introductory 

activity, the actors were placed on the island of Greynel and given the description of its 

geography and its natural resources. From there, the actors were given charge of the development 

of the island, its inhabitants, and its course of action through several scenarios. 

Data Sources 

Observation 

Observations occurred during October and November of 2018. While the process drama 

was originally conceived as a one-week unit, it quickly became apparent that students needed 

additional time and space to participate in and reflect upon their learning experiences. As seen 

above in Table 1, the process drama was extended over three weeks, with students working 

collaboratively on unit activities two or three days a week for one to two hours each. 

Observations were conducted in person. As the researcher, I participated as a collaborator, 

observer, resource supplier, and, occasionally, teacher-in-role (see Table 3). Observations of 

classroom activities were audio-recorded, video-taped, and documented using an observation 

protocol. 

Memos 

Memos were written at the completion of each observation (Heath & Street, 2008). 

Memos included lesson goals, descriptions of activities, and my impressions and reflections of 

the teacher’s and students’ work that day. When memo-writing, I focused my attention on my 

interpretations and reflections on the work that I had documented using my observation protocol. 

 

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I drew attention to particular language and activities that were unique, on-going, or raised 

questions. I made notes of my questions, theories, and hypotheses for my observations moving 

forward. 

Video and Audio 

Video and audio recordings were generated during classroom observations. Videos were 

trained on the three participating island groups, using two different cameras from complementary 

angles. Each participating island group also had an audio recorder that traveled with the group 

throughout their island activities and interactions. 

Interviews 

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Ms. Page after the completion of lessons 

and activities (Dyson & Genishi, 2005). These interviews included discussion of the goals and 

objectives of the lesson, as well as the teacher’s perceptions of students’ achievement of those 

goals. Additionally, a semi-formal focus group interview was conducted with the students of the 

island of Greynel (project focus) in May at the end of their formal school year. 

Artifacts 

Artifacts collected for this project included pictures of students’ creative work, such as 

the visual arts paintings of the four islands (see Figure 9) as well as the posters and scripts 

developed collaboratively by the island group. Artifacts also include written reflections, 

worksheets, and sketches completed by individual students. Teacher artifacts also include lesson 

plans, PowerPoints, memos, and sequencing documents.  

 

 

 

 

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Figure 9.  
Island of Greynel created collaboratively by seven group members. 

 

 

Phase 2: A Dance Methodology 

The Context for Data Analysis 

Choreographer/Dancer 

As the researcher-dancer, I play the role of both choreographer and dance performer. 

Through the data analysis steps indicated below, I was responsible for the analysis of student 

movement phrases and for the transformation of those phrases into a solo performance dance, in 

which I act as dancer and narrator.  

Rehearsal Space 

The analysis of data took place in a dance studio. Studio space was used to analyze 

student movement phrases through video data and to put those phrases in conversation with 

 

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audio transcripts from collaborative group work. The use of a designated dance studio is critical 

for the opportunity to warm up, develop technique and qualities of movement specific to the 

choreography, and manipulate space in order to best represent the experience of the students. 

Memos 

Memos were also written as part of the data analysis process, tracking with detail the 

iterative cycles of watching, recording, and translating video data into movement phrases. These 

memos will include detailed agendas of the rehearsal as well as summaries of methods utilized, 

decisions made, and reflections on process. 

Video Recordings 

Video recordings were kept of the dance analysis process. Movement phrases were video 

recorded during rehearsals for the analysis of movement phrases for the development of 

choreography.  

Data Analysis 

 

In this section, I describe my data analysis process, which included practices adopted 

through performative inquiry and arts-based research practices. In order to make these practices 

as transparent as possible, I outline and describe them step by step. While these analytic steps 

look very linear on paper (see Table 4) they were, in fact, a cyclical and iterative process, where 

the work of each step is adapted and transformed based on the implementation, reflection, and 

revision inherent in any creative process (Mace & Ward, 2002). Similarly, the description of my 

analytic process is not intended to represent stepping stones for how an arts-based/performance 

inquiry project should be or must be conducted. However, these steps are meant to provide a 

cogent trail for those wishing to understand or replicate this particular analysis. 

 

 

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Table 4  
Overview of data analysis procedure 

Step  Procedure 

1 

2c 

3a 

Identify four-unit activities that engaged island groups in critical 
collaborative meaning-making episodes (CCMME) using inclusion and 
exclusion criteria. 
Transcribe audio of each CCMME. 

2a 
2b  Use transcription to time stamp video data for opening and closing of 

each CCMME. 
Use transcription to time stamp video data for three segments within 
each CCMME: (a) articulation of thinking; (b) deliberation of 
conceptual knowledge; (c) consensus of meaning. 
Identify and time stamp a “pivotal moment” for each opening 
articulation, deliberation, and consensus.  
Organize into 1-minute coding blocks. 
“Transcribe” video data into movement phrases using one-minute 
coding blocks (pivotal moments) for each individual student. 
(Approximately 20 seconds per 2 8-count movement phrase) 
 
Review video data for each student using descriptive and narrative 
analysis. 

3b  Use descriptive and narrative analysis to develop themes, codes, and 

examples for student movement across CCMME. 

4a  Develop individual and thematic movement phrases based on codes and 

examples from descriptive and narrative analysis. 

4b 

Extend movement phrases into performance dance piece. 

 

 

 

 

113 

Data 

Field 
observations 
Field memos 
Audio 
Audio 
transcripts 
Video 

Audio 
transcripts 
Video 
Video 
Descriptive 
codebook 

Video 
Descriptive 
codebook 
Video 
Descriptive 
codebook 
Movement 
phrases 
Video 
Movement 
phrases 

 

Step 1 

Data analysis will be conducted using video data from the group, Greynel, from the Four 

Islands project. Four approximately twenty-minute samples of collaborative group work from 

Greynel were selected over the course of the Four Islands project. The four samples span the 

duration of the project (see Table 5). These four video samples were selected based on (a) the 

collaborative nature of the group work; (b) the inclusion of all group members; (c) requirement 

that the group come to a shared understanding of a new island component; and (d) their relative 

equidistance over the course of the Four Islands project. The purpose of the inclusion criteria was 

to find critical collaborative meaning-making episodes (CCMME), where island members were 

arguing, negotiating, developing, structuring, and revising the meaning-making ideas supporting 

the development of their island. For that reason, video samples were excluded when the island 

was conferencing directly with the teacher or receiving direct instruction from the teacher, as 

well as when island members had finished their negotiations and were implementing shared 

plans (in which case the negotiation of meaning was generally over and the focus of group work 

shifted from conceptualization to practice). 

Table 5  
Overview of video data for Greynel analysis 

Act. #  Critical Collaborative Meaning-Making Episode 

2 

4 

6 

11 

 

Initial group meeting to design island using individual sketches as basis 
for discussion (CCMME 1). 
Group meeting to develop an island theme song by negotiating values and 
shared beliefs of the island (CCMME 2). 
Group meeting to develop an essential agreement and government 
structure in response to peer feedback (CCMME 3). 
Group discussion of inclusion or exclusion of group into a larger society 
developed by Disaster! Scenarios (CCMME 4). 

114 

Duration 

36:20 

50:27 

33:53 

38:44 

 

Step 2 

After the selection of collaborative group work samples, the audio of those island 

discussions was transcribed into written text. Transcripts were first utilized to mark the duration 

of the critical collaborative meaning-making episodes within the broader video observation data. 

Then, each CCMME will be categorized and time stamped for three sequential discourse 

segments: (a) articulation of thinking; (b) deliberation of conceptual knowledge, and (c) 

consensus of meaning (see Table 6). These discourse categories are consistent with research 

around collaborative group work, which explains these key practices (Van Boxtel et al., 2002). 

Examples of articulation of thinking include students’ initial responses to the activity or prompts 

by the teacher and their opening explanations of ideas or pre-writing activities. Examples of 

deliberation of conceptual knowledge include students’ responses to the ideas of others, whether 

it be to support, extend, challenge, modify, or clarify the group’s thinking. Examples of 

consensus of meaning include ideas and knowledge that are ultimately agreed upon or taken up 

by the group prior to the implementation or public sharing of the group’s meaning making. The 

purpose of segmenting each CCMME as such was to ensure that movement phrases were 

generated via video data for each student for each part of the CCMME. This was one way to 

ensure that the students’ body of work was examined across the different peaks and valleys of 

the collaborative meaning making. 

 

Once the CCMME were identified and segmented into moments of articulation, 

deliberation, and consensus, the audio transcripts and video data were examined to identify a 

pivotal moment for each CCMME segment (see Table 6). I define a pivotal moment as a one-

minute clip of video data where meaning was shared, transformed, taken up, or rejected. 

Examples of a pivotal moment may be when students land upon one critical idea that they 

 

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negotiate intently because of divergent perspectives. It may also be a moment when students sit 

silently because no consensus can be reached on an idea. Another example may be students’ 

overlapping articulation of ideas as initial thoughts about a project outcome are shared. The 

purpose of identifying pivotal moment clips is twofold. First, narrowing in on a pivotal moment 

required keeping focus on the collaborative and shared experience of the students in the group. 

Second, identifying a one-minute pivotal moment supported the development of movement 

phrases. The purpose of the movement phrases was not to “transcribe” student gesture movement 

by movement, but to examine the body and space dynamics of the group as a whole over the 

course of their collaborative group work. Therefore, identifying pivotal moments allowed the 

analysis to narrow the focus particularly important meaning-making experiences while 

examining each students’ contributions to body and space as a whole. 

Finally, transcriptions were called upon to support the analysis of body and space in 

video data as needed. For example, audio transcripts were useful in clarifying speaker, 

positionality of language, and dialogic overlap in the messiness of collaborative group work. 

Language transcriptions also hold the potential for generating and rethinking movement phrases. 

The examination of oral language provided additional meaning or clarification to the movement 

phrases developed through body and space via video data. 

Table 6  
Overview of critical collaborative meaning-making episodes (CCMME), discourse segments, 
and pivotal moments (PM) for video samples 

CCMME  Duration 

Discourse Segment  Total Time  PM  PM Time 

Duration 

1 

 

 

10:00 - 46:20  Articulation 

10:02-24:54  1:A  10:02-11:05  1:03 

 

Deliberation 

12:00-42:36  1:D  25:53-26:45 
32:55-33:55 

0:52 
1:00 

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Table 6 (cont’d) 

 

2 

3 

 

Consensus 

29:35-42:37  1:C 

 40:31-41:38  1:06  

7:05 - 57:32  Articulation 

7:05-10:24 

2:A 

 9:22-10:24 

1:02  

Deliberation 

7:11-51:28 

2:D  30:42-32:29  1:47 

Consensus 

17:09-24:07  2:C  18:56-19:55  0:59 

17:51 -  51:44  Articulation 

17:51-34:26  3:A  18:16-19:00 
19:10-20:20 
21:05-22:25 
22:42-23:35 
24:41-25:07 
25:57-26:24 
26:26-26:42 
20:02-51:36  3:D  45:51-46:57 
47:39-48:52 

0:44 
1:10 
1:20 
0:53 
0:26 
0:27 
0:16 
1:06 
1:13 
23:35-50:40  3:C  28:45-29:59  1:14 
 

4:A  9:41-10:34 

0:53 

Deliberation 

Consensus 

4 

6:42 - 45:26  Articulation 

Deliberation 

Consensus 

 

 

4:D  19:37-20:26 
38:18-39:40 

0:49 
1:22 
4:C  26:07-27:09  1:02 

 
Step 3 

Each pivotal moment (PM) was reviewed twice per student. In order to review each PM, 

I watched video data from the collaboration. During each viewing, I conducted a text-based 

analysis. First, I watched each PM video and conducted a descriptive analysis where I focused 

my observation on one student and a time, describing in detail the movement qualities of each 

student, focusing on their body, action, space, time, and energy (Aldis et al., 2018). In the 

descriptive analysis, I focused my attention on what I could observe without trying to make 

inferences about what I thought it meant. After completing the descriptive analysis for the 

 

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student, I then re-watched the video again, this time describing the movement of the student in 

relation to their peers. The level of analysis was still focused on body, action, space, time, and 

energy with additional narrative description explaining how the movements were being enacted 

in relation to others within the group. 

Throughout the descriptive analysis, I highlighted movement moments that were unique 

and unexpected, and I also highlighted movement moments that were consistent and thematic 

across the course of the collaboration. From there, I identified and organized movement themes, 

including the patterns of students’ levels, pathways, time and energy, and gesture (see Appendix 

A). For each of these themes, I explored different movement variations and coded them with 

examples from the pivotal moments in the collaboration. For example, in some cases, the 

movement variations within the theme were specific to a specific student, such as A rolling 

backward onto the floor during the articulation of CCMME 4, and in other cases the movements 

were repeated across students and across CCMME, such as students standing up to speak (see 

Appendix A for additional examples). 

Step 4 

After identifying thematic movement movements through descriptive analysis, I began 

the process of developing those themes into movement phrases. In order to successfully do this, I 

started with individual introductory movement phrases for each of the students, with an emphasis 

on the use of body, action, space, and energy as it is specific to the individual student. For each 

student, I re-watched the one-minute articulation PM for CCMME 1. As I did so, I worked to 

translate each students’ action into a four eight-count movement phrase. I use the word 

translation to describe the process of creating these introductory movement phrases because 

student movement was analyzed and replicated with specific attention to the placement of the 

 

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body and the quality and rhythm of their movement. Dance as an art form is very intentional 

about the use of body, quality, and rhythm. However, typically in classroom spaces, students 

give much less attention to their bodies and space unless those things are being predetermined or 

punished (unruliness). Because of this, the creation of movement phrases was not an exact 

replication of the gestures and actions of the students. Rather, the introductory movement 

phrases captured the essence of where and how a student moved. This was especially important 

for then putting students’ movement phrases in conversation with each other to better understand 

how students’ bodies and space interact in critical collaborative meaning-making episodes. 

After developing introductory movement phrases for each individual, those movement 

phrases were put in conversation with each other through the exploration of movement themes. 

Additional movement phrases were developed by re-watching and developing choreography 

based on thematic examples from descriptive analysis and coding. In this case, the movement 

phrases were developed not just based on the individual actions of specific students, but on how 

action and space were replicated across students and across time. After developing a series of 

individual and thematic movement phrases, those phrases were put together into the 

choreographic narrative of the performance piece. Choreographic techniques for developing the 

performance narrative included the manipulation of: (a) space - constructing and deconstructing 

groupings to replicate or expand upon “classroom” space; (b) time - exploring movement phrases 

linearly/chronologically versus exploration of movement phrases thematically; (c) speed and 

rhythm - showing the passing of time by accelerating movement phrases and drawing attention to 

powerful moments by decelerating movement phrases; (d) amplification - extending and 

projecting movement phrases to examine potential conflicts and resolutions; and (e) repetition - 

 

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repeating key movement phrases or dance moments to highlight, emphasize, or replay powerful 

or important moments (Aldis et al., 2018; Preston-Dunlop, 2006). 

Special Considerations for Dance 

Analysis of student movement phrases is conducted through the development and 

manipulation of choreography; therefore, findings take the form of performative dance 

supplemented by written text. Choreography developed through the examination of movement 

phrases pay special attention to the use of space, rhythm, and quality of movement explicitly, 

which is a different approach to bodies in space than the way they are used implicitly in 

everyday communicative practices. Thus, while movement phrases are easily recognizable from 

the video data, they are not exact replicas of the student movement, nor should they be 

interpreted as an exact representation of any one student. 

Findings 

 

As noted above, the findings for this project were presented as a live performance dance. 

Video from the performance can be accessed using the QR code below (see Figure 10). In 

addition to video of the live performance, I also share the findings of this project here using 

textual evidence, describing and exploring the use of movement, bodies, and space as a critical 

part of students’ collaborative meaning-making practices. Students’ bodies were a part of the 

collaborative learning and meaning making through the manipulation of space, energy, level, 

action, and gesture. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Figure 10.  

QR code for "I'm Here: A Dance Performance." 

Space 

 

 

Throughout critical collaborative meaning-making episodes, students utilized their 

personal and general space in a number of critical ways. First, the collaborative work of students 

was focused around a center-point that shifted and morphed throughout activities based on 

students’ flexible use of bodies and space throughout their collaboration. The crux of students’ 

collaborative work was defined by the center-point of their discussion and creation (see Figure 

11). The center-point refers to the invisible center of the group, where the facings of students’ 

bodies converge. When students sat in a circle, the center-point often fell in the direct center of 

that circle as all the students’ bodies, attention, and ideas converged in the center space. As 

students stood up, leaned in, or moved around the circle, their actions would shift the center-

point towards themselves, drawing attention to their contributions.  

Center-points also converged over materials used by the group. For example, during the 

deliberation of CCMME 1, the critical meaning-making episode where students were 

collaborating on a visual art project of their island, the students had a large paper on which they 

were sketching the outline of their island map. First, the map was center on their table, allowing 

 

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the center-point to stay in the center of the group. As Elizabeth and Fletcher drew the map over 

to their side of the table, the center-point of the group shifted, so that the bodies, attention, and 

ideas converged directly over the map, which was between Elizabeth and Fletcher. With the shift 

in the center-point, Cato, Darcy, and Alice had to lean farther over the table to assert their ideas 

while Elizabeth and Fletcher had immediate access to the map. In later activities, as students 

moved away from the table, their center-points began to fracture as student bodies and attention 

no longer converged at one point. During the deliberation of CCMME 2 and of CCMME 4, there 

were multiple groups determining their own center-points that flexed and shifted as students 

moved through the space.  

Figure 11.  
Center-point of collaborative groupwork during the articulation of CCMME 1. 

 

The center-point (again, an invisible marker of the convergence of body facings) played a 

 

critical role in students’ access to and participation in the collaboration. As the center-point 

moved, because a student moved or because a new material was introduced to the group, other 

participants would shift as well in order to maintain their participatory relationship to the center-

point. This included physically standing and transitioning to another area around the table. 

During the consensus of CCMME 1, Cato and Ben both moved to physically stand between the 

 

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desks of Gwen and Fletcher, placing themselves closer to the center-point, which had shifted 

with the map between Fletcher and Elizabeth. During the deliberation of CCMME 3, Alice and 

Gwen moved to stand at the tables of Cato and Darcy in order to put themselves closer to the 

center-point of the collaboration. Moving to a new position in space was not always an effective 

means of accessing the collaboration, however. During the deliberation of CCMME 1, Gwen 

moved to sit in Cato’s seat. Because the center-point had shifted to Elizabeth and Fletcher, 

however, she ultimately was neither closer nor more active in the collaborative efforts of the 

group.  

At other moments, students would be unresponsive to the shifts in center-point or would 

actively face away from the convergence of their peers, effectively isolating themselves from 

participation in the shared meaning making. During the group’s first articulation during CCMME 

1, Gwen kept her body perpendicular to the rest of the group (see Figure 11), which kept her 

isolated from the work of the group. During the deliberation of CCMME 2, Fletcher left the 

collaborative space around the center-point and returned to his seat, where he remained at a 

deliberate distance from the meaning-making work of the group. The disengagement with the 

center-point was at times an active resistance and at other times a more passive non-

responsiveness. For example, during the consensus of CCMME 3, Fletcher continued to face 

directly forward in his seat, even after the center-point of the collaboration had shifted over to 

the space between Cato and Darcy. Similarly, during the deliberation of CCMME 3, Gwen ended 

up facing forward and away from the center-point of the group through passive non-

responsiveness. Whether through active or passive means, the facing of students’ bodies away 

from or outside the center-point of the group reflected a lack of access to the critical meaning 

making of the collaboration. It is possible that in some cases, a student’s unresponsiveness to 

 

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shifts in center-point may also be an act of self-reflection in response to meaning making before 

re-entering the collaboration. 

 

The shape of the group’s personal space also affected students’ access to the center-point 

of the collaboration. Because of the oblong nature of the tables, Gwen was placed much farther 

away than her peers from the center-point of the conversation. This limited her access to 

participation unless she exerted additional energy to stand or lean in towards the center-point. 

Additionally, as the center-point shifted toward a particular student or two another part of the 

room, students had to renegotiate their access to the center-point, making it easier for some 

students and more challenging for others to participate in the ebb and flow of ideas through the 

center-point. Similarly, the long line of the tables presented challenges for the student sitting in 

the middle to navigate the contributions of their peers sitting next to them. During the 

deliberation of CCMME 3, Elizabeth sat with her back directly to Darcy, and then, when 

addressing Darcy, turned her back entirely to Fletcher and Gwen. The long, angular shape of the 

tables posed challenges for students negotiating their bodies in relation to their collaboration. 

 

Additionally, students’ bodies had the ability to limit their peers’ access to the center-

point of the collaboration. For example, one student could lean in far over the center-point, 

cutting off another student from being able to see, hear, and access the ideas under discussion. 

During the deliberation of CCMME 1, Cato leaned far enough forward over the table that he 

blocked Ben, sitting next to him, from the center-point of the collaboration. Like, during the 

deliberation of CCMME 3, Ben blocked Alice and Gwen from the center-point of the 

collaboration. In addition to the inadvertent blocking of peers by leaning of standing, students 

also limit their peers’ access to the collaboration by bending over or curving around a material, 

or it could also look like a student turning their body by placing their back in between a peer and 

 

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the center-point. For example, during CCMME 4, Elizabeth and Darcy both took turns with a 

clipboard holding pertinent information to the collaboration in which they held the clipboard 

tight to their bodies, limiting anyone else’s access to the work being done there. Similarly, during 

the deliberation of CCMME 1, Fletcher cupped his hands over the group sketch of the island, 

limiting Ben and Cato’s access to the collaborative meaning making of the group. Students’ 

access to the collaboration could also be interrupted when peers held up paper or other materials 

toward the center-point, making the information visible to some and invisible to others. Each of 

these large shifts has the potential not only to shift the center-point, but also to inhibit other 

students’ access to bodies, attention, and ideas. 

 

Students in the collaborative peer group also utilized space by facing their bodies in 

opposition to each other. At points throughout meaning-making episodes, students would 

transition their bodies away from the center-point of the group to face directly toward another 

peer. For example, throughout CCMME 3, Ben and Cato made direct exchanges of ideas, as did 

Elizabeth and Darcy, and Cato and Gwen. Often, the direct facing of bodies included a fast and 

energetic exchange before returning to the group as a whole. This occurred with students across 

levels, often between students at the same level - where both peers would be standing or sitting, 

facing directly towards each other. Interestingly, this direct opposition also included interlocking 

pairs. For example, in consensus of CCMME 4, Gwen and Alice stood together with their elbows 

entwined, directly facing Cato. In this case, the interlocking bodies of Gwen and Alice reflected 

the consensus of their ideas, which stood in opposition to the desires of Cato. 

 

Overall, the use of students’ bodies throughout their personal and general space played an 

important role in their access and participation in the collaborative meaning making of the 

episode. In a classroom, space is designed in particular ways through the use of desks, tables, 

 

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chairs, and material storage. While students made use of their personal space for participating in 

meaning making (i.e. turning their bodies, moving around the table), the general space developed 

for them by the teacher and school itself played a role in the collaboration. As seen in Figure 11, 

the design of the group of tables left Gwen on the outside of the collaborative circle. She was 

automatically farther away than her peers from the center-point of the group because the 

placement of her desk at the end of the group was asymmetrical to the rest of her peers. In this 

case, the historical use of students’ desks as parameters for learning impacted students’ access to 

the collaboration. 

Energy 

 

Like the use of space to access and participate in the collaborative meaning making of the 

group, students’ embodied use of energy also played a role in how students engaged in the 

collaboration. The energy of a students’ body and action relates to the attack, force, and weight 

of their movement (Aldis et al., 2018). Throughout the pivotal moments of each critical 

collaborative meaning-making episode, students utilized the energy of their action and bodies in 

a variety of ways. In some cases, the use of energy varied between students, where each student 

energized their movements in ways specific to them as an individual. For example, Alice’s 

movements were typically sharp and sudden where she would wave her hands and arms 

forcefully. Elizabeth, on the other hand, would often move lightly and quickly, tapping her 

fingers quietly or sitting momentarily in stillness. Just like a student’s body has a unique set of 

fingerprints which can be used to identify an individual, so, too, can the energy of a person’s 

body be a unique and recognizable signal. 

 

While energy of movement varies between students, the energy exerted by students’ 

bodies also changed over the course of a single activity and over the course of multiple activities. 

 

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For some students, energy levels acted as a ramp, running from low to high or from high to low. 

For Ben, this meant that he would start activity with actions that were sharp and percussive and 

then end them with stillness or resting his head against his hands. Gwen, on the other hand, 

began the series of activities with low energy actions, including rocking, leaning, or skimming 

her hands over her paper. By the end of the series of activities, she exerted more energy in her 

actions, moving around the room and gesturing percussively toward her peers. For other 

students, the energy of actions acted as waves of water, where energy levels rose and fell over 

the course of activities. For example, Cato would fluctuate between high energy actions, such as 

spring to his feet and clapping his hands, and lower energy actions, such as leaning back in his 

chair and resting his hands in his lap. In many cases, students' energy level was closely tied to 

the level of their bodies. Students exerted energy to stand up, move around the room, or lean in 

towards the center-point of the group. On the other hand, students whose bodies stayed in the 

lowest level of the group, sitting below the eye level of their peers, often exerted the lowest 

energy. This included students who leaned their heads against their hands, the table, or leaned 

back in their chairs away from the center-point of the group. 

 

Over the course of activities, deliberation included the highest levels of energy, with 

students standing often and pointing or gesturing directly to other students in the group. Pivotal 

moments of consensus were consistently the lowest level of energy across the group, where most 

students sat in their chairs, leaning against the table or backs of their seats with one or two 

speakers talking broadly to the group as a whole. Pivotal moments of articulation varied as some 

discussions were highly energetic across multiple students and other included transitions of high 

energy speaking to low energy listening. In many cases, the energy of students’ bodies related to 

the articulation of their own ideas. With the exception of articulation in CCMME 3, students’ 

 

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actions were more energetic as they shared their own ideas or responded directly to the ideas of 

others. Students energetically articulated their ideas by pointing fingers, lifting or waving papers 

and other materials, or gesturing toward particular people with their hands or heads. Students’ 

actions also gained energy when they sought to gain their peers’ attention, such as through 

clapping, waving, or standing suddenly. When students were not actively articulating their ideas 

or responding to the ideas of others, they were more likely to sitting, including rocking back and 

forth or leaning side to side. In some cases, they would wave and gesture their hands more 

slowly and closer to their body, or they might rest their head on their hands or the table. 

Level 

 

Throughout activities, students participated in the collaboration through the use of high 

and low levels. In dance and movement studies, level refers to the height of the movement in 

space. For example, in a dance piece, the upper level includes a range of space where dancers 

might jump, move on chairs and tables, or lift each other into the air. The lower level refers to a 

range of space where the dancer might be sitting, laying, or moving low to the group. In the case 

of the collaborative group work, the upper level included students who would stand to speak, 

stand to move around the circumference of the center-point, and students who would use their 

feet on the seat of their chairs to lift themselves above the eye level of their peers. In particular, 

Darcy would often rest her feet on the seat of her chair in order to prop herself up higher than if 

she were sitting on the chair with her feet on the ground. Cato, on the other hand, would alternate 

repeatedly from leaning back in his chair to standing, both when listening and contributing to the 

collaboration. During CCMME 2, Fletcher and Cato both spent time with their heads resting 

directly on their desks, lowering their eye level well below that of their peers. Throughout the 

collaborative meaning-making episodes, students consistently used the upper level to draw 

 

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attention to a point they were trying to communicate a new idea, to respond directly to a point a 

peer had made, or to better position themselves around the center-point for easier access to 

participation in the meaning making. This was not always successful. A student standing or 

moving around the circumference did not always guarantee that they were positioned within the 

center-point. Sometimes, the center-point would shift as the students shifted so that those farthest 

away stayed the farthest away even after moving. 

 

Students also participated in the collaboration through leaning their bodies in and out of 

the group’s circumference. While they stayed in the same mid-range level, the change in 

proximity to the center-point played a role in their body’s participation in the discussion. In this 

case, students who wanted to articulate a point or respond to the point of someone else would 

lean their bodies into the group, closer or directly over the center-point of the group. Students 

might also lean their bodies into the circumference of the group in order to listen closely to the 

contributions of their peers. For example, during the deliberation of CCMME 1, where students 

were arguing over what landmarks to include on their island sketch, Darcy and Alice were both 

leaning in far enough toward the center-point that their heads were near touching. During 

CCMME 4, which took place with students sitting on the ground, Cato could be frequently seen 

kneeling on his hands or leaning directly over the center-point of the group in order to present an 

idea or a relevant material. On the other hand, students could also be seen leaning out or away 

from the center-point. In the case of leaning out, these were moments where students stepped 

back from the collaborative group work, momentarily removing themselves from the moment of 

inquiry. While leaning out was utilized intentionally for momentary removal from the 

collaboration, leaning out also happened when a student did not respond bodily to the 

collaborative work of the group. During the consensus of CCMME 1, Gwen had transitioned to a 

 

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new location in order to gain access to the center-point. However, the students around her shifted 

the center-point by leaning far in over the tables, once again leaving Gwen inadvertently outside 

the circle of inquiry. Leaning out also took the form of grand gestures, where students would be 

waving or gesticulating their hands and arms outside the circumference of the center-point. 

While these gestures occurred outside the group, the large and energetic nature of the gestures 

contributed to gaining peers’ attention. 

Action and Time 

 

Throughout activities, there were examples of actions that were sharp, syncopated, quick, 

and unpredictable. These actions were often paired with high energy moments of articulation or 

deliberation. These moments often occurred one peer at a time, and usually paired with the 

introduction of a new idea or through the argumentation and deliberation of an old idea. For 

example, at different points during the deliberation of CCMME 1, Darcy and Fletcher both 

suddenly pointed at the group sketch of the island map while simultaneously hitting their other 

hand against the table. During the second series of deliberations in CCMME 4, Alice and Cato 

could both be seen waving and pointing their hands above their heads and wide to their sides as 

they responded to their peers’ suggestions for survival after a natural disaster damaged their 

island. On the other hand, student bodies also included actions that were slow, smooth, and 

predictable. These actions were often paired with lower energy moments of articulation or 

consensus, often when students were listening to the idea of others or presenting new ideas 

through more formal means of sharing, such as using a talking stick to establish the introduction 

of ideas systematically. For example, during consensus of CCMME 2 after being elected island 

president, Darcy would transition smoothly between leaning forward, gesturing toward the 

group, and then bending down over the material in front of her as her needs shifted between 

 

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talking and writing. Ben could often be seen waving, pointing, and turning repeatedly from side 

to side as he followed the arc of the collaboration, though his gestures tended to be smooth, 

repetitive, and predictable in comparison to his peers. These smooth and predictable actions 

typically occurred when students were sitting, leaning back, or resting in their chairs, often 

becoming more animated when leaning in or standing. 

 

More interesting were moments of student bodies that were conspicuously still or 

noticeably inactive. For example, during the deliberation of CCMME 1, a highly active 

collaborative moment as the group developed their island sketch, Gwen sat very still in her chair 

with her hands hidden in her lap. Similarly, during deliberation of CCMME 2, in which the 

group was developing movement phrases to explore life on their island, Fletcher left the group 

and returned to his seat, sitting frozen in his chair, arms crossed and chin down. In these cases of 

non-responsiveness, a student would stop moving their body, including their heads and hands, 

which are often highly active throughout the collaboration. This included a lack of gestures and 

nodding or head turning in response to the flow of ideas from one person to another. In the case 

of the first series of deliberation for CCMME 4 where island members argued about where and 

how to use remaining resources, Alice sat noticeably still throughout the collaborative efforts of 

her group. Even though she was facing the center-point of the group, she neither rocked, leaned, 

nor gestured in response to the flow of ideas. While students might still be turned toward the 

center-point, their stillness articulated a stand-still in their participation in the collaboration. This 

stillness included both passive breaks from participation and active resistance to participation in 

the collaboration. 

 

Likewise, students’ actions occasionally displayed a unique non-responsiveness to the 

bodies, movement, and ideas of the center-point. In some cases, this was a passive inaction 

 

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where a student’s body did not respond to the transition of the center-point or the flow of ideas 

across space. For example, during the consensus of CCMME 1 where students worked closely 

over the sketch of the island map, Gwen did not change the facing of level of her body in 

response to the moving center-point, as did her peers. Rather, she continued with a series of 

actions which had begun prior to the shift of the group. On the other hand, some cases of non-

responsiveness displayed active resistance to the movements of the group. During the consensus 

of CCMME 3, Fletcher meticulously and rhythmically places and folded post-it notes around the 

stem of his pencil as his peers came to a collaborative consensus on the name of their essential 

agreement, a document central to the island collaboration. In this case, Fletcher engaged in an 

action which was repetitive, smooth, strong, and actively dissimilar to the actions of the group 

around the center-point. Though engaged in different examples of non-responsiveness, both 

students remained outside the meaning-making efforts of the collaboration. 

 

As the activities of the collaboration progressed, students also began to take up the 

manipulation of each other’s bodies. Manipulation of bodies began during the consensus of 

CCMME 1 when Alice took Ben’s hand and used it to high-five Cato. By the end of CCMME 4 

where students were making final decisions for a treaty with other islands, Alice held Grace by 

the shoulders, pushing her back, then she grabbed Gwen by the harm, holding it behind Gwen as 

she attempted to move away. During CCMME 4 after the island of Greynel had agreed upon a 

treaty, Cato also manipulated Gwen’s body by lightly placing his hand on her shoulder as well as 

on top of her head. In each of these cases, one peer would directly manipulate the actions of 

another, often in direct response to the collaborative work of students around the center-point. In 

the first case, Cato had been waiting for a high-five from Ben to congratulate him for his 

 

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contribution of an important idea. In the last instance, Alice and Cato were manipulating Gwen 

in response to her unpopular idea that they were trying to overrule. 

Gesture and Materials 

 

Students used gestures to draw their peers’ attention to a particular idea or material of the 

collaborative group. This frequently included direct gestures, such as pointing at a peer or 

material, but also included broader gestures that included the group at large. For example, during 

the articulation of ideas during CCMME 1, Fletcher hit his fingers repeatedly against Alice’s 

table in order to draw her attention to him and his idea. During the deliberation of CCMME 3, 

Darcy snatched the talking prop (designed to designate a single speaker) out of the center-point 

in order to draw her peers’ attention and distinguish herself as the speaker. Gesture was also used 

to draw peers’ attention to the materials themselves, such as when students would hold up 

examples of their drawing or writing and wave their hand or point to elements of the paper in 

order to gain their peers’ attention. 

 

Specific gestures were also utilized to specifically communicate a key piece of 

information. During a pivotal moment of articulation in CCMME 2, Elizabeth cast her vote for 

island president by distinctly raising her thumb to point at Darcy. This was a gesture that she 

repeated twice, without words, to cast the deciding vote in the presidential election. Across the 

group, raising hands and fists in the air was a generally accepted way for students to cast votes 

and signal agreement with ideas or speakers. Other gestures were utilized to communicate more 

disciplinary measures. During the deliberation of CCMME 3, Darcy pointed and flexed her hand 

repeatedly at Cato, physically demanding that he give her his paper. During the articulation of 

CCMME 3, Elizabeth paused her sharing in order to turn her head and narrow her eyes pointedly 

at Fletcher until he stopped tapping his pencil vigorously against the side at the table. In these 

 

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instances, gestures were used to communicate with and direct peers within the collaborative 

group. 

 

Finally, gestures and materials were also used to shift the center-point of a collaborative 

discussion towards particular students or ideas. While the group sketch of the island map was 

originally centered on the group of tables at the midpoint between Alice, Ben, Cato, Darcy, 

Elizabeth, and Fletcher, by the time students had entered consensus, the map had shifted directly 

in between Fletcher and Elizabeth, which in turn, shifted the center-point of the collaboration, so 

that Fletcher and Elizabeth had significantly more access to the transmission and implementation 

of ideas than other students. Similarly, students used their bodies to try and shift the center-point 

of collaboration towards themselves, through actions such as clapping repeatedly or pointing. 

The use of gesture and material to shift the center-point of discussions became a powerful tool 

for providing and limiting access to the deliberation and implementation of ideas. 

Discussion 

Over the course of the collaborative process-drama, students in the group of Greynel used 

their bodies in complex ways to share their thinking, deliberate ideas, and come to agreement in 

their shared meaning making. Throughout the collaboration, students used bodies and space to 

enter and exit the conversation. This included a number of embodied practices from sitting and 

standing, leaning out and leaning in, gesturing, and changing facings. Students’ bodies acted 

responsively to the ebb and flow of collaboration, and students’ bodies acted responsively and 

directly to the bodies and ideas of their peers. While student bodies and space were the objective 

of analysis in this project, the rich and meaningful tapestry of their embodied meaning making is 

representative of the rich language evidenced in research of collaborative practices (E. M. 

Nussbaum, 2008; Van Boxtel et al., 2002) Students’ bodies and space as an objective of analysis 

 

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also brought to light additional ways in which bodies, space, and gesture contributed to and 

directed the exchange of ideas in such a way that oral and text-based analyses could not have 

included (Buchholz, 2015).  

 

In addition to the range of communicative practices represented in students’ embodied 

experiences, students’ bodies and space were also utilized for sharing and [hiding] ideas. In most 

cases, students used their bodies to negotiate the ways in which ideas traveled from one 

participant to another. In some cases, however, student bodies were utilized as a mechanism for 

shielding ideas from view, such as when a student held their hand over a paper, curved their 

body around a clipboard, or turned their face away from one peer and towards another. This 

relationship between bodies and learning, where the student relies upon and can also be hindered 

by the bodily experience of themselves and others is reflective of the ways in which bodies are 

always present yet often overlooked in classrooms spaces (Almquist & Quennerstedt, 2015). 

Regardless, the students’ bodily experience in the case of this collaborative work was directly 

and irrevocably connected to their thinking and learning (Ellingson, 2017). 

 

Students’ embodied collaboration was also reflective of the norms, values, and shared 

expectations of the classroom as a school community (Rogoff et al., 1995). For example, 

students frequently practice familiar classroom techniques for management, such as raising 

hands or standing up to gain attention from peers or to make a point (Spatz, 2015). In some 

cases, the replication of embodied techniques for management was helpful for supporting the 

communication of ideas. In other cases, however, students replicated more authoritarian uses of 

bodies and space that were reflective of school practices meant to manage and discipline student 

bodies. Moments where students would gesture commandingly or even physically move the 

 

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body of another student were reflective of the surprising and unexpected moments when a body’s 

power suddenly comes to light in a classroom space (Connor et al., 2004).  

 

Across the collaborative work, students’ bodies and space were utilized flexibly and 

purposefully to engage in the meaningful development of ideas over time. Students’ bodies and 

spaces responded directly to their peers and to the ideas deliberated by the group. Students’ 

bodies also reflected the affordances and limitations of the classroom space for accessing the 

transmission of ideas across participants, reflecting the often-challenging nature of spatial 

confinement in a classroom setting (Alerby et al., 2014). Certainly, students’ bodies and spaces 

played a critical role in their ability to articulate, deliberate, and come to consensus of ideas 

during their collaborative meaning making. 

Significance and Next Steps 

It is possible that by asking the questions, “How are students’ physical bodies a part of 

their collaborative learning spaces in creative endeavors?” and “What can students’ physical 

bodies tell us about their collaboration and meaning-making processes?” I am simply looking for 

the opportunity to ask more questions than I answer. This is, after all, the intent of arts-based 

research (Barone & Eisner, 2011), which causes ABR researchers to critically examine those 

spaces that are so familiar, they can no longer be seen. This is also the affordance of performance 

dance. By examining students’ bodies and space through dance, a researcher-artist shifts the lens 

through which classroom spaces are typically viewed. This is bound to be an uncomfortable 

experience. 

 

Though engagement in arts-based research can support those interested in embodied 

research to reconsider lines of inquiry, this project also holds immediate implications for students 

and teachers in classrooms. As teachers and researchers, we are always interested in the utility of 

 

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empirical understandings. There are several considerations specifically for teachers and 

education stakeholders. First, the physical nature of classroom space matters as students need 

room, literally, to flexibly enact learning. While classrooms are often designed with static 

furniture and formation (Alerby et. al., 2014; Duncum, 1999), stagnant space is not ideal for 

collaborative meaning making. Ideally, students and teachers can engage in classrooms where 

desks and chairs are mobile and flexible, allowing ample space for students to move 

autonomously and purposefully throughout the room. Similarly, students’ collaborative space 

matters. The space in which collaborative groups work matter in how well students can access, 

contribute to, and shape the meaning developed in the group. Teachers can explicitly support 

students in making physically equitable group space where students build skills in equitably 

utilizing space and materials.  

 

In addition to the use of classroom space, there are very real implications for teachers’ 

and students’ understanding of classroom bodies. While gesture, eye contact, and facial 

expression are well understood social and cultural forms of communicative practice (Liddicoat, 

2011; ten Have, 2007), they are not the only ways in which the body communicates and forms 

meaning imbricately with language and cognition. The energy and force of action tied to the use 

of space and form are constantly in communicative motion. A students’ stillness is as meaningful 

as their explicit language-based gesture (Goldin-Meadow, 1999). Educators and researchers have 

developed many tools for supporting students in communicating their thinking through oral and 

written language; however, there are fewer explicit supports for students’ bodies other than 

management strategies such as sitting up straight and looking at the speaker (Stahl, 2019), which 

cover a very narrow range of bodily experiences compared to the sophisticated embodiment of 

collaborative work. Attention to bodies always runs the risk of prioritizing discipline and control. 

 

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However, I would argue that the intentional reflection of material and affective practices of the 

body can result in access to meaning making. The emphasis of instructional practices must 

remain on meaning making rather than on the replication or assimilation of desired normative 

bodily practices. 

 

The significance and implications of bodies in collaborative meaning making lead to an 

additional score of questions to be answered by intersections of students, teachers, artists, and 

researchers. What would classrooms look life if they were designed specifically for embodied 

and collaborative learning? How do students understand and experience their embodied meaning 

making? What happens to meaning making when instructional practices see, hear, support, and 

acknowledge classroom bodies as imbricately tied to language and cognition in communicative 

practices? For many of researchers and teachers, these ideas are critically important. In order to 

support students in their learning, growth, and development, it is essential that the utilization of 

classroom spaces is reimagined, especially in consideration of how and why students are 

engaging in those spaces, both with their bodies and their minds. Minds are never separated from 

bodies, especially in critical and collaborative meaning making. Each plays a critical role in both 

the navigation of physical space and social meaning. The continued disinterest in the bodies of 

students in classrooms other than to manage or discipline is a limitation and a disservice to 

students. 

 

 

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APPENDIX 

 

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APPENDIX A. Codebook 
 
Reading the codebook: 

•  Student pseudonyms are abbreviated by first letter 
•  Critical Collaborative Meaning-making Episodes (CCMME) are abbreviated by CCMME 

number and by pivotal moment (articulation, deliberation, consensus). For example, a 
movement example numbered 2:D refers to a movement that occurred during CCMME 2: 
Deliberation. A movement example numbered 4:C refers to a movement that occurred 
during CCMME 4: Consensus. Examples that do not include a CCMME reference 
happened across CCMMEs and pivotal moments by multiple students. 

 

 

 

Theme 

Energy 

Level 

Space 
(blocking) 

Description of codes with examples 

Energy levels change over the course of the activity. Different students utilize 
different momentums of energy over the course of the activity (i.e. Ben’s 
energy fluctuates from high to low during CCMME 1 and 3; Alice remains 
consistently high energy across CCMME 1 and 3). 
 
During Articulation and Deliberation, students exhibit a range of high-energy 
gestures (i.e. pointing fingers, hitting the table with palms or backs of hands, 
waving, walking). 
 
During Articulation and Consensus, students exhibit a range of low-energy 
gestures (i.e. rocking and leaning, rotating head, resting head on hands or 
table). 
 
Energy connects with the student body level: Standing denotes higher levels of 
energy (i.e. Cato and Darcy stand with energy to share ideas; students move 
collaboration away from the tables to open space). 
 
Energy connects with the student body level: Sitting denotes lower levels of 
energy (i.e. Cato rests his head on his arms; Ben leans back in his flexible 
chair; Fletcher rests his chin on the table). 
Students’ bodies move across levels: high to low (i.e. Darcy sits on her feet to 
raise herself to eye level with her peers; Alice stands over peers to respond to 
an idea; Gwen shifts between leaning low over the table to standing and back). 
 
Students’ bodies move across levels: in and out (i.e. Ben leans forward to listen 
to his peers, Fletcher leans around Elizabeth to see what she drew on her 
paper; Gwen leans back in her chair away from her peers). 
The discussion/collaboration has a center-point/mid-point that shifts throughout 
activities. Students rotate their position/bodies around the center-point of the 
collaboration (i.e. the center-point is in the middle of Alice, Ben, Cato, Darcy, 
and Fletcher; the center-point shifts narrowly between Elizabeth and Fletcher 

140 

 

 

as they work on the island sketch; the center-point shifts away from the table 
and fragments into three groups as the students move into the open space). 
 
Students’ bodies move across the center-point: facing toward and facing away 
from collaboration (i.e. Gwen turns her body and face in a different direction 
than the center-point; Darcy continues to face the original center-point after it 
shifts to a new location; Elizabeth sits with her back directly toward Fletcher, 
Gwen, and Alice). 
 
Students move locations/transition from their original seat (i.e. Cato 
circumnavigates the group to stand in a new location; Alice and Gwen leave 
their seats to stand between Darcy and Cato; all the students leave seats to 
collaborate in open area). 
 
Students’ bodies will come in between their peers and the center-point or 
materials under discussion (i.e. Cato and Alice block Gwen by turning their 
backs to her; Fletcher holds his hand over his sketch; Elizabeth twists around a 
clipboard). 
 
Students’ bodies will be placed in opposition to each other (i.e., Ben turns his 
body directly towards Cato as he listens and responds to his ideas; Alice and 
Gwen stand directly across from each other; Alice and Gwen stand side by side 
with arms interlocked). 
 
The shape of the space limits some students’ access to the center-point of the 
collaboration (i.e. the placement of the desks in the group means Gwen is 
farther away than her peers from the center-point; the narrow space between 
the tables presents challenges for establishing a new center-point). 

Action/body  Students’ movements are sharp, sudden, syncopated, or unpredictable (i.e. 

Alice waves her hands sharply during articulation; Fletcher points and hits his 
hands during deliberation; Cato and Gwen stand suddenly). 
 
Students’ movements are slow, smooth, rhythmic, and predictable (i.e. Darcy 
transitions between standing/gesturing and leaning/writing; Gwen skims her 
paper with her pencil; Ben waves his arms smoothly and repeatedly). 
 
Students’ movements are conspicuously still and frozen (i.e. Gwen shifts her 
body away from her peers as they move towards her; Fletcher rhythmically 
folds post-it notes as his peers deliberate). 
 
Students move and manipulate their peers’ bodies (i.e. Alice uses Ben’s hand to 
give Cato a high-five; Cato places his hand on Gwen’s head). 

141 

 

 
 

 

Gesture/ 
material 

Students use gestures to draw attention to a particular person or material (i.e. 
Fletcher hits his fingers against Alice’s table; Elizabeth lifts her paper and 
gestures towards it). 
 
Specific gestures are used to specifically communicate a key piece of 
information (i.e. Elizabeth points her thumb directly at Darcy to cast a 
deciding vote; Darcy points and flexes her hand at Cato demanding his paper). 
 
The movement of materials can shift the center-point (i.e., the group sketch 
shifts directly between Elizabeth and Fletcher; Darcy keeps the treaty 
clipboard on the floor directly in front of her). 

 

142 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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143 

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I’M HERE: A DANCE PERFORMANCE 

Accessing Dance Performance 

Given the affordances of technology in the twenty-first century, video from the dance 

performance, “I’m Here,” can be viewed through the QR code in Figure 12. While video 

recordings of performance are not a perfect place holder for live performance (for example, “I’m 

Here” was originally choreographed to be viewed by an audience sitting in the round), it 

provides access to performance content for those unable to attend and to those interested in the 

work of the performance well after the dance has already taken place. 

Figure 12.  
 
QR code for “I’m Here: A Dance Performance” 

 

 

 

Responding to Dance Performance 

Responding to performance art can be a daunting task, whether the art is viewed in the 

live time or through recording. In Table 7 below are a number of resources and guiding questions 

for those interested in viewing and responding critically and thoughtfully to a work of 

performance art. 

 

 

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Table 7  
Areas for reflection and guiding questions when responding to a dance performance 
Areas for Reflection 
Dance as intentional 

Guiding questions 
In what ways is the art rewarding my attention and what kind of 
reward does it offer? (Lavender, 2003) 
What decisions can I see the artist making and what do those 
decisions say to me? (Lavender, 2003) 
How do elements of movement build upon each other and 
juxtapose each other? (Preston-Dunlop, 2006) 
How do gestures build to moments, to scenes, to a complete 
piece? (Preston-Dunlop, 2006) 
How well does this structure carry meaning for me as an audience 
member? (Preston-Dunlop, 2006) 

audience member? (Lerman & Borstel, 2003) 
What was interesting, compelling, surprising, challenging (or 
other additional adjectives) for you as an audience member? 
(Lerman & Borstel, 2003) 
What opinions do I have about this piece, and how can I rephrase 
them as a neutral question or as a wondering? (Lerman & Borstel, 
2003) 
Example opinion: I’m confused about why there is only one 
dancer. 
Example wondering: I wonder why the choreographer decided to 
use only: one dancer instead of multiple dancers. 
Example neutral question: Can your share some of your thinking 
behind using one dancer for this piece? 

Dance as communication  What about the performance holds meaning for you as an 

Dance as structure 

Dance as process 

 
 

 

 

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REFERENCES 

 

150 

REFERENCES 

 
 
 
Lavender, L. (2003). The critical appreciation of dances. In J. Chazin-Bennahum (Ed.), The 

living dance: An anthology of essays on movement and culture (pp. 224–252). 
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Lerman, L., & Borstel, J. (2003). Liz Lerman’s critical response process: A method for getting 
useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert (1st ed.). Dance Exchange, 
Inc. 

 
Preston-Dunlop, V. (2006). Looking at dances: A choreological perspective on choreography. 

Verve Publishing. 

 

 
 

 

 

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CONCLUSION 

A Body’s Final Thoughts 

 
 
 

 

Figure 13.  
QR code for "A Body's Final Thoughts." 

 

 
Bowed and bent, a schooled body 
dedicates thought to the material. 
Black and white curl in a code 
as rigid fingers curl over keys. 
 
Aching back and forgotten limbs 
twist to squeeze the last 
low hanging fruit 
from the embattled tree. 
 
A twist of fate stands 
to shift perspective. 
Squeeze again in a final push 
to lift letters higher. 
 
Yet: 
 
Step away 
chair table desk stand 
paper pen keys curser screen. 
Into 
hands feet knees elbow neck 
thighs ribs shoulders pelvis. 

 

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Layers and levels 
of action announced. 
A body being a body 
to learn a body. 
 
I look again 
for the first time, 
and the tree 
 
Teems with life. 

 

153