MA Dance Education

MA Dance Education

  • Duration 1 year (full-time) 2 years (part-time)
  • Funding Available

Overview

The MA Dance Education offers the opportunity for practicing dance teachers to update their knowledge with the most recent and cutting edge, evidence informed, best dance teaching practice while earning a postgraduate dance teaching qualification at the same time.

Focusing on the Professional, Conservatoire and Higher Education dance teaching contexts, this distance learning course allows you to access your learning from anywhere in the world, at any time of day, to fit in with the often-unpredictable life of a professional dance artist. This means that you can tailor your course to your other professional or personal commitments. The course can also be taken full or part-time to aid this flexibility.

The first phase of the course, which can be taken as a stand-alone PGCert (4 months full-time, 8 months part-time), develops your understanding of professional dance pedagogy and theories of learning, how these ideas apply to practice, dance science for teaching, continued professional development best practice and how all of these ideas apply to your own teaching practice using opportunities to transfer the learning you are doing on the course directly into your everyday professional life.

The second phase develops your professional practice through philosophical understanding of issues relating to the dance education field and research into personal professional practice and beyond. You will be able to extend your dance teaching practice and situate your own knowledge within the broader landscape of dance education and research.

As a student on either stage of the course, you will be able to use your own dance teaching practice as a playground to test out new ideas you are learning about to find ways to improve and enhance your skills and/or freshen up your approach underpinned by the most recent and relevant best practice in the industry.

British and Irish Nationals and those with settled status in the UK may be eligible for postgraduate student loan funding for this course.

Intakes for the MA Dance Education are in October and February of each academic year.

REGULATIONS

Please click here to see the Middlesex University Regulations.

Subject to validation

Applications for the MA Dance Education are open.

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Programme Specifications

Structure

The MA Dance Education contains six units of study - three in the PGCert stage of the course and a further three in the MA only stage of the course.

PGCert Stage

First Unit: Professional Dance Pedagogy in Practice (30 credits)
This unit explores different learning and teaching theories as they relate to dance teaching in the Professional Conservatoire and Higher Education Contexts. The unit allows you to explore the topics in the unit before putting new ideas into practice in your own dance teaching context.

Second Unit: Supporting Healthy Dance Practice (15 credits)
This unit explores the most up-to-date dance science and psychology information to help you support healthy dance practice in your own dance teaching context.

Final Unit: Continuous Enhancement of Teaching Practice (15 credits)
This unit explores how to continue to improve your dance teaching practice even after you finish the course through targeting CPD activities, goal setting and reflective practice.

MA Only Stage

First Unit: Perspectives and Contexts in Dance Education (30 credits)
This unit explores the philosophical debates around dance education in the twenty-first century allowing you to reflect upon your own dance teaching perspective and context.

Second Unit: Research Methods in Dance Education (30 credits)

This unit explores how you will design and propose your final research project allowing you an in-depth look at recent research models within dance education in order to prepare.

Final Unit: Independent Research Project (60 credits)

This unit allows you to undertake a practice-based research investigating an area of interest within your dance practice. You will be supported one-to-one by an expert research supervisor all the way through the research project from proposal to dissemination.

Entry requirements

Applications are made online directly to London Studio Centre and not through UCAS.

In addition to the online application form, applicants are required to submit a personal statement and two written references.

All applicants will be invited to an admissions interview.

In line with UCA’s admissions policy, the Entry Criteria and requirements are as follows:

  • A good Honours degree or equivalent qualification in dance, dance education or a related discipline and/or relevant work experience, demonstrating an ability to study at postgraduate level.
  • Access to a relevant weekly teaching practice either through employment or volunteering. Proof of this access is required.
  • Consideration will also be given to applicants who can make a strong case for admission in relation to a particular project and can demonstrate their potential to satisfactorily complete the course.
  • Other relevant and equivalent UK, European and International qualifications will be considered.
  • For applicants whose first language is not English: Average IELTS score of 6.5 (or equivalent) with a minimum achievement of 5.5 for all components, is required.

Applicants who have non-standard qualifications (or who wish work or life experience to be taken into account as part of their application) will be considered on an individual basis, in line with the general aims and principles of the Admissions Policy and within the terms of the Accreditation of Prior Learning policy (APEL).

Applications are made online directly to London Studio Centre and not through UCAS. In addition to the online application form, applicants are required to submit a personal statement and two written references. All applicants will be invited to an Admissions Interview.

Annual Fees

MA Dance Education

Tuition fees per annum (Academic Year 2024/25): £8,500

Careers

This course offers continuing professional development and recognition to teachers of dance who wish to develop their existing practice. In the world of dance education, many dance teachers do not have a formal qualification when the demands for such a qualification are ever growing. This course allows teachers to acknowledge their existing teaching practice, while enhancing it through the learning and the application of their learnings gained from the course.

Where our graduates are