Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Giuliana Blasi Humanities and Social Science

Dance Learning and Situated Social Practice

Dance Learning and Situated Social Practice” examines how social position, culture, and community influence learning processes and outcomes in youth dance programs. In this investigation, I ask: How do interactions between identity, culture, and community mediate students’ learning experiences in dance programs across different genres? This summer, I will conduct an ethnographic case study at AileyCamp- a dance and youth development program for underprivileged middle school aged children. To focus on the sociocultural aspects of learning, I am using situated social practice theory as a conceptual framework to describe how community practice mediates adolescents’ experience of dance education.

Message To Sponsor

With this research, I aim to contribute to pedagogical knowledge about how learning happens through situated social practice. I am interested in how dance or arts programs can address educational needs and challenges. By using dance education as case study that elaborates practice-based learning theories, I hope to develop a method to describe an "out-of-school" learning context in a manner that can critique and inform more general educational practices and trends. My findings will materialize in a Sociology senior honors thesis (Dance and Education minor), which will inform the second part of my project: the creation and implementation of a dance unit for my ongoing artistic residencies teaching dance in Berkeley and Oakland after school programs.