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Social experiments through dance

place India + 1 more

Breaking myths and stereotypes in society through dance education

A student agency that develops social experiments through dance to challenge the unconscious bias in adults, teachers and leaders. The students design, scripts, and choreographs performances based on social experiment data that is collected from their live audience. This helps them to address and ask challenging questions to the adults on 21st century issues like pretty privilege, brain drain etc.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2024

Established

30

Children

1

Countries
Target group
Teachers
Updated
April 2024
These experiments help to address the implicit bias and problems that exist within the society. The student through their voice and choice will have a chance to make a difference in the implicit behavior of adults. Through a collective sense of realization, they would be able to develop a shared humanity to make the world a more peaceful place.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

As an International Baccalaureate (IB) educator, I embrace lifelong learning and sought to enrich the learning process for my students. Working as a curriculum developer for the enhanced MYP project I was introduced to Gert Biesta’s ‘world- education’. I asked my students, “What challenging question do you want to ask the adults in your school related to a current issue the world is facing?

What does your innovation look like in practice?

The question: “What is a pretty face?”, led to a powerful social experiment challenging co, pretty privilege, and bias. I guided them through the Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Product & Standards (GRASPS) strategy to bring clarity to their planning and learning process. The students designed, scripted, and choreographed a performance based social experiment. On the day of the showcase, 15 adults (teachers, staff & pedagogical leaders) were invited to the classroom one by one and asked to select the cast for an upcoming Hollywood movie. They were asked to choose the male lead, female lead, and villain from the set of pictures given to them. After the experiment all the adults were called in the room and shown the results where most of them had chosen people with darker skin tone to be the villain and people with lighter skin tone for the male lead and female lead. The students culminated the experiment with a dance performance advocating the adults to remove their implicit bias.

How has it been spreading?

This innovation through dance to address social issue has helped it to make interdisciplinary threads with other subjects like language, social sciences and integrated sciences. The International Baccalaureate published this innovation in art education in the IB community blog to help art educators and other educators to experiment with possibilities and opportunities that interdisciplinary learning can provide. This also helped students to develop agency and apply their knowledge in real world situations. This also helped adults to learn along and with students to make conscious changes in their everyday life and develop a shared humanity.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Step 1: Carry out an inquiry with students to ask challenging questions to adults
Step 2: Identity a myth/ stereotype/ problem
Step 3: Ideate a social experiment
Step 4: Devise a method to collect and analyze data in a short span of time
Step 5: Have scripts and dance routines ready for different outcomes of the experiment
Step 6: Keep the audience curious till the end

Implementation steps

Social Experiments through dance
Step 1: Encourage students to ask challenging questions to adults about the society
Step 2: Collect and anayse the responses and questions asked
Step 3: Identify a social problem/ myth/ stereotype
Step 4: Design a social experiment keeping in mind the audience should not be able to understand the purpose behind it
Step 5: Devise a method to collect data in a short span of time
Step 6: Have pre-planned scripts and dance routines for different outcomes of the experiment
Step 7: Sustain curiosity

Spread of the innovation

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