Initial Teacher Training - Performing Arts (Dance): Secondary with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) PGDE

This PGDE course prepares you for a fulfilling career as an effective and creative teacher of Dance. The PGDE Dance course involves an exciting blend of practical workshops, learning from experts in the field and engaging with local theatres to explore how Dance is taught in schools. You will experiment with how teaching and learning enables pupils to know, apply and understand the knowledge, skills and processes of Dance.

During your training, you will focus on the various approaches and pedagogies for Dance, emphasising the practical application of theory. A sequence of micro-teaching experiences allow you to develop and share, with peers, your understanding of learning and teaching strategies that support effective practice in the classroom. You will explore signature pedagogies such as collaborative learning and group work. Sessions will help you deepen your understanding of the role and nature of Dance in the curriculum and your own personal philosophy for the subject. You will also have an opportunity to explore the importance of your subject and its links to other curricular areas. These sessions will help you identify strategies to support how children learn in Dance.

The subject knowledge sessions focus on the fundamental skills and knowledge areas of the Dance curriculum such as choreography, dance styles and preparing pupils for public examinations. As well as broadening your own Dance knowledge, these sessions introduce you to a range of strategies that allow you to make your knowledge as accessible as possible to secondary Dance students.

You will usually have a 2:2 (or recognised equivalent) in a Dance-related discipline normally with significant content in your chosen subject area. Dance trainees will be expected to teach a second subject in their school placements and will normally be placed in a Performing Arts or P.E. Department. The ability and/or willingness to offer Drama or PE as a second subject would be an advantage. GCSE English Language and Mathematics at minimum grade C/4 or equivalent. (Level 2 numeracy and literacy are not acceptable) to demonstrate an interest in teaching within the curriculum area. You could show this in a number of ways - time spent in schools, knowledge of the chosen curriculum area, relevant practical experience.