VIDEO AND ACTIVE LEARNING: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF FILMS IN TRAINING FUTURE DANCE TEACHERS

The formal education of future dance teachers seeks to focus on practical techniques and methods that combine body control, performativity, and pedagogy dimensions (Huddy, & Stevens, 2011).Even in the more theoretical subjects, these students continue to seek the practical application of the disciplinary study material in their learning, once imagery use is an important part of the comprehension and assimilation of movements.The study reflects on the incorporation of different strategies for raising awareness of professional teaching identity in dance pedagogy, particularly the analysis and sharing of different points of view about teaching roles, teacher-student relations, and classroom management, which can also be fruitfully taken into account in broader educational contexts.For that purpose, this case study uses a qualitative, interpretive approach, and seeks to reflect on the use of cinematographic works as an active learning strategy, with a view to greater student involvement in theoretical learning purposes.From the context of a curricular unit of Psychopedagogy with different strategies, which includes, in addition to the traditional reading of documents, the insertion of educational videos and practical group activities and exercises, in which each student participates in a committed way, the use of fictional films was proposed as a powerful tool to engage students, and to promote their participation in dance-films debate.The films analyzed can function as a form of speculative educational fiction, and as an analysis of the symbolic and fictional role of films in the formation of pedagogical identities, that is, of becoming a teacher.The approach with active learning methods involving films positively achieves the objectives and results aimed at successful learning, and peer feedback reinforces students' self-regulation and self-knowledge regarding their levels of competence and capability perception.The discussion in the classroom, and the statements left by the students who participated as subjects in this case study, prove what the literature has stated, that active learning combined with recognizing the significance of the symbolic representation, improves the quality of learning (De Graaff, & Mierson, 2005).