Arts Therapies in Schools

Research and Practice

Vassiliki Karkou

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781843106333
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857002099
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

As arts therapists are increasingly working in schools, there is growing interest in identifying applicable therapeutic approaches and expanding on relevant research evidence. This book outlines the potential uses of music, art, drama and dance movement therapies in educational settings, and the contribution they have to make to the emotional and social development of children and adolescents.

Drawing on international evidence, the book outlines a wide range of innovative applications of arts therapies across a range of settings, including mainstream classrooms, special schools and student support units. Examples of subjects covered include solution-focused brief dramatherapy groupwork in mainstream education, art therapy for children with specific learning difficulties who have experienced trauma and music therapy in special education. Particular emphasis is placed upon collaborative work, whether it be between arts therapists from different disciplines, arts therapists and teaching staff or arts therapists and researchers.

Arts Therapies in Schools will be of great interest to arts therapists, and will also be useful to others who want to know about the potential of arts therapies in the classroom, including teachers and other education professionals, health professionals, educational psychologists, school counsellors and policy makers.

Part I

Mainstream Schools

Chapter 1

From the Dance Studio to the Classroom

Translating the Clinical Dance Movement Psychotherapy Experience into a School Context

Suzi Tortora

Introduction

Setting the scene

The bubble bee was such a bully; even when asked she would not stop stinging everyone. One day she went far away. When she came back everyone was so surprised that she was better. She listened and was friendly and best of all she wasn’t stinging anyone. Everyone wanted to know what had happened. She said she met someone that helped her feel better and now she could be nice… (Salina 2007. DMP client, seven years old.)

The excerpt above is from a story written, directed and performed by Salina,^[2] aged seven, during one of her weekly private dance movement psychotherapy sessions. It was developed from the activity called ‘ complete the story’ (Crenshaw 2004), which invites the child to add her own ending to a story that involves some type of conflict representative of her own internal issues. The core of the story depicts an initially out-of-control animal who one day disappears. When she returns, she has changed. The child is asked to decide what happened to the animal upon leaving her community, and what she explains to her friends upon her return. In Salina’s version of the story the bubble bee tells her family and friends that she finds a wise person to share her concerns with. Through this person, she is taught how to share her feelings more appropriately, is able to return home, and is welcomed and successfully integrated into her community. This story was written a year and a half into Salina’s private dance movement psychotherapy sessions. In its sincerity and simplicity it depicts how she experienced the effects of her sessions.

Salina was referred to dance movement psychotherapy because of concerns her parents and the school had about her extremely disruptive, volatile, emotional and physical behaviour. In school these behaviours manifested through controlling and bullying actions. Salina was unable to calm herself down when upset, and had unpredictable, sudden outbursts that suggested difficulties with emotional and physical regulation. This case study explores how the use of dance, body awareness and relaxation techniques, story writing and dance-play activities, along with music, were used to assist Salina in learning how to gain control over her difficult behaviours.

Literature Review

Over the past 60 years, the expressive and healing aspects of dance have been widely explored as a method for psychological change (Bernstein 1981; Halprin 2004; Levy 2005; Tortora 2006). Through both group and individual dance movement psychotherapy sessions, participants gain awareness of feelings, thoughts and experiences that may be felt but not easily expressed. It is in the body that these experiences are held. Since movement is the initial and primary language of the body, movement-based activities create metaphoric entry into the emotional/feeling self (Halprin 2004; Tortora 2006). By moving these feelings, using the tools of improvisational dance, music and theatrical explorations, psychodynamic structures that underlie the mover’s perspective and way of being in the world are revealed, explored and developed. The aim is to facilitate improved functioning on all levels of an individual’s life.

The field of dance education has also used the tools of dance and dance making to support personal growth. Dance scholars have widely researched the effectiveness of school-based dance programmes to enhance the academic learning process (Gilbert 2006; Laban 1968; Stinson 2004. Dance educational programmes have been offered within the actual classroom curriculum to provide experiential learning of all academic subjects, often providing a bridge between subjects, creating cross-modal learning opportunities. Dance movement psychotherapy sessions conducted in school settings are typically offered for children with special needs such as autism, attention deficit disorders, hyperactivity, communication difficulties, conduct disorders and issues with relating, in order to support improved socialization, self-expression, attention, academic learning, body awareness and body control (Levy 2005; Tortora 2001; see also Wengrower in Chapter 10 of this book). Dance movement psychotherapy has also successfully been implemented in bullying, peace, and violence prevention school programmes (Beardall 1996, 2005; Beardall, Bergman and Surrey 2007; Kornblum 2002; Koshland and Wittaker 2004).

In this chapter a model of intervention will be discussed that uses the psychodynamic elements revealed in a private dance movement psychotherapy treatment to improve classroom functioning (Tortora 2006). This model, called ‘Ways of Seeing’, highlights the role of the clinical psychotherapeutic setting as a liaison between the home and school environment.

The study

Research questions

This case study systematically explores how the ‘Ways of Seeing’ model has supported change in Salina’s school experience. The following questions guided this inquiry:

1. Can the metaphoric process of dance expression, as revealed in the dance movement psychotherapy sessions, support a child’s improvement in the school setting?

2. Can physical stress and affect regulation methods used in the dance movement psychotherapy setting be translated into behavioural improvement for an elementary school-age child?

The Ways of Seeing programme

‘Ways of Seeing’ is a comprehensive theoretical, clinical and research-based programme that was developed over a 20-year period. It is based on an extensive variety of sources, including the nonverbal observational principles of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA); the discipline of authentic movement (Adler 2002); dance movement psychotherapy practice; and early childhood developmental principles (Tortora 2006). Underlying all components of the programme is the essential goal of supporting social and emotional expression, stabilization and mental health. This is done within the context of developing a secure relationship between the therapist, the child and the family by providing a safe therapeutic ‘holding’ environment (Winnicott 1965), from which the patients feel comfortable enough to share their concerns.

A key element of the ‘Ways of Seeing’ programme, which has played a significant role in this case study, is analysing how the child’s nonverbal movement style reveals information about how the child regulates herself on an emotional and physiological level. This interplay between emotional and physical/sensory regulation can significantly influence how the child experiences and expresses herself, and how she behaves in the surroundings – which, in turn, influences how she forms relationships with others.

One of the most important aspects of dance movement psychotherapy practice that was instituted in this study was ‘starting where the patient is at’ (Bernstein 1981; Levy 2005; Tortora 2006). This classic phrase enables the therapist to attune to the patient, letting the patient’s own particular needs and nonverbal style direct and guide the session. Following the child’s lead, rather than imposing preconceived ideas about how the therapeutic intervention should unfold, immediately enables the child to feel respected and listened to.

The activities of each session were organized with the four dynamic processes of the Ways of Seeing programme in mind (Tortora 2006). These activities may occur either simultaneously or as separate elements supporting the developing relationship and the unfolding metaphoric content of the activities. These dynamic processes are as follows.

1. Establishing rapport: all activities aim to enhance the social/emotional and communicative development of the child. This is a key element of dance movement psychotherapy practice that differentiates our work from other body-oriented approaches such as occupational, physical and somatic movement-based therapy. These methods focus on movement rehabilitation and re-education. Dance movement therapists are trained to provide psychological support using movement, dance and the body as added tools for expression and intervention. I emphasize this point by calling the practice ‘dance movement psychotherapy’.

2. Expressing feelings: the establishment of this relationship enables the child to become comfortable exploring deeper feelings, emotions and traumatic events. All activities are designed to support the child for such exploration, often revealing experiences the child may or may not be conscious of from his or her past or present experience.

3. Building skills: the movement and body-based nature of the activities of the session also provides the opportunity to build physical, cognitive and communicative skills within the context of the psychological and physiological themes that arise.

4. Healing dance: dance, movement and dance-play activities can have an intrinsically joyful and healing element to them. Dance-play activities (Tortora 2006) include the movement, dance, play and story-telling elements that develop during a session. Dance identifies the embodied, improvisational and choreographed nature of the activities; play references the creative, playful and pretend aspects of the activities that unfold.

Borrowi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Mainstream Schools
• Part II Special Schools