Rethinking Dance Pedagogy through Multiple Intelligences: A POMAT-Based Conceptual Framework for Vocational Undergraduate Dance Education

Abstract

Vocational undergraduate dance education in China is increasingly expected to move beyond narrowly technique-centred instruction and to support multidimensional professional competence. Yet dance pedagogy remains strongly associated with demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition, while conceptual tools for examining how broader learning opportunities are coordinated across a lesson remain limited. This conceptual review examines how the Multiple Intelligences Teaching Approach (MITA) can be interpreted as a flexible pedagogical orientation and how POMAT (Procedure, Objective, Materials, Assessment, and Technology) can provide an analytical framework for vocational undergraduate dance education. The review synthesised foundational MI and POMAT literature, peer-reviewed research on dance and higher education pedagogy, scholarship on Chinese tertiary dance education, and relevant policy and international framework documents. Rather than treating multiple intelligences as a learner-typing system or claiming that MI-based instruction is empirically superior, the paper adopts a cautious interpretation informed by methodological critiques of MI intervention research. The conceptual synthesis produced three central propositions: dance repertoire learning is multidimensional; MITA is most defensible when used to diversify learning opportunities rather than classify learners; and POMAT makes instructional coherence visible by examining relationships among pedagogical procedures, intended outcomes, materials, assessment and feedback, and technology. On this basis, the paper proposes a POMAT-based framework in which bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal learning opportunities are considered across the five instructional dimensions. The framework retains the pedagogical value of demonstration and technical correction while extending analysis to interpretation, collaboration, reflection, cultural meaning, and technology-supported learning. It offers a context-sensitive analytical framework for dance teachers, curriculum designers, and researchers and provides a foundation for future empirical examination in vocational undergraduate dance classrooms.