This doctoral project is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The main objective is to understand if and how young people experience with dance in upper-secondary education relate to their well-being and their view of themselves as citizens.

At the level of European policies, there seems to be a normative primacy attributed to a conception of education that prioritizes reason, technical and technological knowledge (EURYDICE, 2009), fostering principles of competition, individuality and increasing socio-educational inequalities. Within a Europe governed by numbers, vehemently market-oriented (Council of Europe, 2019), the relationship between education and the market gets tightened, developing an educational agenda with the main goal to equip young people with skills that allow them to successfully enter the world of work.

This may lead to dehumanization of young people: the devaluation of subjective, expressive, creative, and emotional dimensions, pointed out in academic research as extremely relevant in learning-teaching (Macedo, 2021). This line of concerns with more humane and holistic principles, opens up space for education with arts, notably dance.

This research is developed in a small country in southwestern Europe – Portugal. It departs from the global concern about schooling as generator of learning with real meaning and significance for students, to provide the experience of being citizens in the current time (Macedo, Nairz-Wirth, Araújo, Szalai, 2020) and prepare them for life in society (World Bank, 2018), recognizing the importance of more ethical, aesthetic and solidary dimensions.

The potential of the arts to stimulate expressive, cognitive, aesthetic, ethical, creative and socio-affective is highlighted (Eisner, 2004). The focus on dance is based on the intrinsic relationship between people’s emotional, identity and relational dimension (Alves, 2020), in the framework of citizenship construction in the here and now of young lives in education.

The research argues that dance can contribute to develop body awareness; the construction of a social, cultural and political reality; and expression and nonverbal communication (Duberg et al., 2016; Ramos & Medeiros, 2018); useful in education and society. Moreover, the European action strategy recognizes the transformative potential of cultural practices – like dance – to strengthen democracy (Council of the European Union, 2022). About this, Wise and colleagues (2019) consider that dance-promoting spaces in schools can lead young people to develop inclusive, participatory and empowering spaces.

Already in 2009, one of the main recommendations of the European Parliament was that arts education should be compulsory at all levels (EURYDICE, 2009). In Portugal, the Profile of Pupils Exiting Compulsory Schooling (Martins et al., 2017) seems to consider these concerns, establishing a set of principles that should feature the education of young people, recognizing the importance of artistic, critical, creative and body mastery skills. Also, the National Plan for the Arts (Vale et al., 2019) highlights the need to implement people’s closeness to the arts, continuously providing a diversity of aesthetic and artistic experiences in educational communities and civil society as a whole. However, the analysis of national decree-law on curricular matrices of secondary education, shows that these dimensions tend to fade throughout the educational system. In upper-secondary education, dance is limited to one/two classes of physical education and the other artistic areas are restricted to artistic education courses. We can admit the existence of a discourse that recognizes the artistic potential in the development/training of young people, and a contrasting practice that replaces it with competences for the labour market and country’s economic competitiveness. Young people’s well-being and enactment of citizenship claims for a different approach.

This research is inserted into the phenomenological-interpretative paradigm, assuming a naturalistic and interpretive approach to the world (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). It involves a composite methodology, of mixed approach (Creswell & Creswell, 2022) where some quantitative data complements the qualitative view. To address the main objective of the research - identified above – we set two major objectives expressed in a set of sub-objectives. The first major objective is to understand what dance experiences young people can enjoy in upper-secondary school . this implies: i) Identifying upper-secondary education institutions (public, private, artistic and professional), in Porto’s district, that have spaces that promote dance; ii) Understanding the formats of this offer (extracurricular activity, school sports, dance clubs, among others); iii) Understand who is responsible for the initiative of creating these spaces; iv) Understand the young people who participate in these spaces, as well as the realities that inform their lives, outlining socioeconomic and sociodemographic 'profiles', and articulating them with dimensions of well-being. The second main objective is to explore how dance experiences are seen by young people in terms of their well-being and their construction as citizens. This implies: i) Exploring social dynamics that occur in dance spaces; ii) Understanding how knowledge, experiences and aptitudes emerging from dance can be mobilized to improve individual well-being; iii) Understanding how these support the construction of young people as citizens, in their views. To respond to the first major objective, I started by mapping schools that offer dance in the Porto district. Next, questionnaire surveys will be administered to young people who attend these spaces, to understand the realities that inform their lives. A later and longer stage will address the second major objective. Participant observation will be carried out for 3 months in 6 schools identified, so to explore social dynamics that occur in these spaces. This will lead to identifying 2 schools where the last stage of the study will be developed by means of Focus Group Discussion and Photovoice, which will allow understanding how knowledge, experiences and skills emerging from dance can be mobilized to improve well-being and support citizenship construction by young people.

The mapping stage showed that the access of young people to dance in school contexts in the district of Porto is not sufficiently democratized. Only a few public educational institutions have this offer, and these are fewer if we move to the interior of the district. The mapping of educational institutions that offer dance at the level of the country's second largest metropolis shown the low expressiveness of dance at the upper-secondary school level. It is expected that this research can make a scientific and political contribution to support reflection and action on the place of dance (body, expression, emotion, creativity and spaces of equality) in the formulation of educational agendas. It recognizes the urgency of countering the market-oriented views that have conditioned national and European education. The aim is to join the European debate to think about 21st century education, towards the construction of a political agenda and an educational practice, based on emancipating and democratic principles, that recognize young people and their citizenship, ensuring their well-being.

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