In preparing this article I chose six social functions of art and planned three sample lessons for each. The lessons are aimed at helping secondary school students understand these functions by actually trying to put them into practice. Each set of lessons is preceded by a short description of the social function of art the lessons are intended to illustrate. The lessons are intended as samples of the possibilities which exist. A number of these ideas have been tried — with very satisfying results — by some of my own interns here at Church Teachers’ College.

This article speculates that it is possible to over-train teachers, to the extent that there remains little room for creative approaches to teaching and learning in their classrooms. Responding to the pressures imposed on them to deliver a seemingly overwhelming curriculum in schools where the normal teaching day may be subjected to interruptions and lost teaching hours, teachers frequently resort to straight 'chalk and talk' delivery in the interests of time, rather than engaging in a mutually beneficial process of creative discovery and learning with their students.

This paper investigates the challenges dance student teachers encounter in developing their pupils' creativity in dance in secondary schools in Jamaica. This inquiry will consider these challenges from my reflective position as mentor and supervisor to dance teachers in training at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) in Kingston, Jamaica. It draws on direct experiences and observations of six dance student teachers on teaching practicum in urban schools over the past three years.