This section outlines the meaning of and connection between the Big Ideas, Significant Learning and Learning Matrix. It then explains each Dance Big Idea.

Big Ideas are derived from the Learning Area essence statement and capture the essence of a subject, ensuring coherence rather than fragmentation of learning. At the subject level, they inform the Significant Learning – learning that is critical for students to know, understand, and do in relation to a subject by the end of each Curriculum Level. This covers knowledge, skills, competencies, and attitudes. It also includes Level-appropriate contexts students should encounter in senior secondary education.

The Significant Learning is collated into a Learning Matrix and progresses across Curriculum Levels 6-8. Teachers can use the Learning Matrix as a tool to construct learning programmes that cover all the ‘not to be missed’ learning in a subject. There is no prescribed order to the Learning Matrix within each level. A programme of learning might begin with a context that is relevant to the local area of the school or an idea that students are particularly interested in. This context or topic must relate to at least one Big Idea and may also link to other Big Ideas. The Learning Matrix is designed so that educators have the freedom to create courses that are both flexible and coherent.

For example, the Learning Matrix enables rich engagement with mātauranga Māori, Pacific, and many other cultures, sustaining te ao Māori and recognising the diversity of Aotearoa New Zealand. The diversity of individual learners is also recognised and valued, as the matrix does not define or constrain how students can engage with, or access, the Significant Learning.

The nature of Dance as a discipline means aspects of Significant Learning often cross over multiple Big Ideas, and vice versa. The matrix weaves together the Significant Learning and Big Ideas.

Dance is a descendant and holder of culture – He atua, he tipua, he tangata

Dance is learner-centred, where the learner is the dance. Ākonga come with their own culture, whakapapa, and indigeneity. Dance allows learners to access and benefit from mātauranga Māori and te ao Māori. Students can connect with who they are, developing confidence, well-being, and their own artistic identity.

Teachers facilitate learners’ access to dance, surface expression, and give them the skills to communicate and share their culture. Dance encourages the celebration of uniqueness. It also enables learners to be comfortable with, and to value, other cultures and ideas.

Dance is not separate from the culture of society. It is born out of context, and so evolves as society does. While culture can be interpreted widely, learners can engage with the increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse society in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The creation and exploration of dance nurtures whakawhanaungatanga

Dance is a vehicle for forming and sustaining relationships. These are multi-faceted and holistic – with others, with oneself, with the environment. Nurturing relationships is a continuous and active process. It is integral to the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of self.

Through shared moments, experiences, and collaboration, learners can gain a sense of belonging, community, and identity. Diverse identities, abilities, and roles are respected and celebrated, creating a foundation for collaboration and interdependence - valuing and learning from one another. Roles in the group can take many forms in this context and are not fixed (such as who leads, follows, and how). Likewise, tuakana-teina relationships are flexible and interchangeable.

Dance is an embodied language through which learners can explore and communicate ideas, culture, and identity

Dance is the essence of embodiment (being in your body) - learning is engaged through movement. It has its own literacy where students write dance with their bodies, and read dance with their eyes and minds. Dance vocabulary is active; it involves steps, sequences, patterns, and ways of moving which can be personal or particular to a dance form. Through moving and observing movement, learners explore and transform ideas into expressive works that communicate meaning.

Dance language supports mātauranga Māori – through dance, learners can value, sustain and reflect reo, kōrero, stories, narratives, whakapapa and tikanga.

With teacher facilitation learners can research concepts, interpret the work of others, appreciate other cultures, and examine and resolve ideas. Through increasing literacy, they can find and develop their own movement vocabulary to express ideas and identity.

Dance provides space to ask questions, challenge assumptions, promote difference and provoke alternative thinking

Dance education empowers learners to find and use their voice through curiosity and critical thinking. They gain skills for life by communicating, critiquing, challenging, questioning, negotiating, and testing meanings and ideas. Through whakawhanaungatanga, a safe and respectful space is created to support this.

Dance brings learners out of their comfort zones, encouraging them to be creative, take risks, express controversial or alternative viewpoints, and create impact through choreography. It gives a framework to provoke deep discussions about culture, identity, and society. This in turn creates a bridge between dance and other disciplines and contexts.

Dance creation and performance involves the processes of practice, exploration, selection, reflection, synthesis, editing and refinement

In exploring movement vocabulary and choreography, learners synthesise ideas through a dynamic interplay of these processes. Learners will generate and refine ideas through cycles of action and reflection to create cohesive, fluent expressions of dance forms. They will reflect and determine which process is appropriate at a specific point. Technologies will help equip students to curate and develop their choreographic devices, structures, and performance.

Dance fosters the growth of a holistic set of knowledge, skills, and dispositions

Dance education is a holistic experience not limited to physicality and movement. Dance education is a powerful tool for developing valuable and transferable social, physical, and cognitive skills. Learners develop social skills, enabling them to work in class groups, teams, and in their dance communities. Dance heightens awareness of the body and increases the quality of personal and physical well-being. Creative and critical thinking and problem-solving abilities are fostered.

Dance is a unique medium for learning about self and identity, building self-confidence, and developing resilience and perseverance. Students will develop a better sense of their ‘whys’. They have a safe platform to design and organise movements and structures and to communicate and justify their choreographic intentions. This in turn encourages learners to explore ideas freely and to have a strong sense of ownership of their choreography. They can own what they create.