Abstract
This thesis presents a constructivist analysis of dance in the secondary school and reports the 'intervention' of the researcher in the educational practice of a small group of teachers. Short-term and long-term staff development is a central concern of the research. In the introduction to the thesis there is an identification of the autobiographical context of the research which provides the basis for the discussion of general and particular issues in Chapter Two. There follows, in the next chapter, an extended review of the dance in education literature which generates a number of themes. These themes provide the backcloth to the empirical evidence presented in the thesis. Chapter Four provides a detailed account of the methodological basis of the thesis. Chapters Five, Six and Seven present empirical evidence in the form of two main case studies and summary case study material. The final chapter of the thesis provides a comparison of the empirical evidence and the themes identified in the literature. The thesis concludes with a consideration of the importance of a socially-situated account of dance in education and the significance of the contribution of interventionist approaches to qualitative improvements in the teaching of dance.