What? me? teach dance? : background and confidence of primary preservice teachers in dance education across five countries

In primary schools across many countries, dance is now included within the arts key learning area with its own outcomes and content. But as future teachers of dance and other art forms, how do preservice generalist primary teachers perceive their background and confidence in relation to dance and dance education? This study investigates the background and confidence of preservice primary teachers from five countries in relation to dance and dance education. It involves 936 preservice non-specialist primary school teachers from Australia, Namibia, South Africa, the USA and Ireland who were enrolled in their first creative arts unit. This paper initially identifies the preservice teachers’ perceptions of their background and confidence in relation to dance and dance education. Then it examines if there is a difference between the preservice teachers’ perceptions of their own background and confidence in dance education in relation to their gender and country. Two scales were developed and tested for reliability. Results indicate that there are significant statistical differences in the means of responses from male and female preservice teachers and from preservice teachers from the different countries in relation to both background and confidence in dance education.