Bodies in crisis: Exploring how the body, as a tool in Drama Therapy and Dance Therapy, offers insight into the effects of teaching online

Abstract

This study looks at the experience of 12 Dance Movement Therapy and Drama Therapy lecturers from different parts of the world who engaged with teaching and learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study’s focus is not on comparing the two disciplines, but on seeing them as two equal disciplines that use the body as a tool in teaching. This research began in 2020 with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic when online teaching was introduced/re-introduced to, and enforced in, academic institutions. Lecturers moved their teaching online while navigating lockdown restrictions and institutional expectations. The realities of working from home, working online, and teaching in a new context are explored in this qualitative study, which draws upon both literature and data from semi- structured interviews. Drawing upon literature about the body, dance, emotions and online pedagogy practices, the study seeks to explore the possible effects on the human body of teaching online. The research study focuses on the voices and experiences of university lecturers from different parts of the world. The study explores the use of space, context, perspectives, and teaching strategies in the online space that the research participants all engaged in. Using the human body as the tool for inquiry in online teaching, this research explores what teaching strategies and techniques worked well in the online space, what was possible and impossible to teach online, what the experience of trying to engage with students online was like and what lessons teaching in the online space provided. The question of what could be lost if students are taught Dance Movement Therapy and Drama Therapy only in the online space arose. This research demonstrates how working in the online space is different to teaching in person and how the Arts Therapies can and do work online. Whether teaching and learning online was done effectively remains a question for further study.