From body workshop to co-researcher teachers: a study on the educational value of Biodanza in Primary School contexts. Pre and post pandemic reflections

In autumn 2019 the Embodied Pedagogy research group of the University of Milan-Bicocca started a qualitative inquiry, commissioned by “Biodanza Italia” Association and AIPOB – International Professional Association of Biodanza Operators Rolando Toro System – aimed at investigating the pedagogical value of Biodanza methodology in Primary School contexts. This paper intends to retrace the design, the structural and the implementation phases of this qualitative research. The study followed a Cooperative Inquiry methodology with a training footprint, to enhance the specific contribution of teachers involved in the research process. The research observation area was the exchanging plan between workshop and daily teaching. It was planned not to evaluate the impact of Biodanza workshops through direct children observations at the gym or in the classroom. The assumption followed in the research was that a laboratory reverberates its value in the class life also through teacher’s ability to use that moment as a special point of view and as opportunity to work on issues observed from a decentralized perspective. For this reason, the design of the research system made teachers involved as co-researchers, in search of traces of exportability from the laboratory context to the classroom. A research-training structure – practical and theoretical – was created in the first phase of the research process to provide participants specific tools centered on Biocentric education: affectivity, embodied education and mutual listening. After this training phase started the Biodanza workshops addressed to children and at the same time the meeting phase between the researcher (author of this contribution) and the teachers involved through interviews and focus groups. Although the inquiry has stopped due to the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, just when the first significant developments in educational and didactic terms were appearing, the research directions that emerged from the analysis of the data collected may represent significant reflections for those who work in Primary School in this critical historical moment.