Sensing The Direction of Leadership and Social Identity in Dance Education_Interview data

The Social Identity in Leadership (SIL) model, recently applied in sports coaching environments argues that leadership is best understood in terms of the relationship between the leader and followers within a particular social or cultural group. SIL addresses how individuals who share a common social identity collaborate to lead other members of the community and influence them. Despite potential application benefits, this theory has yet to be defined and contextualised in dance environments. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to determine current approaches to the delivery of dance with regard to motivating learners to initiate then sustain and extend their engagement. Specifically, we sought to discover the approaches to leadership currently applied by dance teachers and to determine if principles of SIL are used. Based on a review of current literature about the application of SIL in teaching and coaching contexts, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine experienced dance teachers recruited from a network of experienced dance teachers in the UK using a purposive sampling approach. The range of experience the dance teachers had was from 5-20 years, with an overall mean of 11 years of dance teaching. The interviews lasted between 10 and 44 min, the variation in the duration of the interviews and relevant transcripts is attributed to each participant’s ability to articulate their understanding of SIL as this is a relatively new concept and terminology to be applied to dance. Five themes emerged from the data that provide evidence to suggest that, whist not as yet clearly defined, principles of SIL were employed by the dance teachers.