While students attend elementary and secondary dance classes, they develop the internal characteristics such as self-regulation, positive attitude, creativity, cooperation. Such characteristics help students grow as self-motivated human beings, leading development by themselves. This process in dance classes is very similar to the empowerment process in the business organization, where self-efficacy among organizational members is enhanced and their behavioral patterns are changed. With regard to the empowerment process in dance classes, the role of a dance teacher as a leader is important. Then, this study purposes to analyze the leadership model of elementary and secondary dancer teachers in order to enhance their capabilities to affect the empowerment process in dance education. The main results are as follows. The leadership model of dancer teachers consists of three components. First, dance teachers need to be self-empowered through a change in attitude. Such self-empowerment help dance teachers enhance self-esteem, and confidence in others. Secondly, dance teachers need to recognize such roles of a leader as the cooperator, the creator, the coach, the counselor, the mentor, the provider of challenging opportunities, and the capability developer. Thirdly, to enhance empowering abilities of students, dancer teachers may use the implementation skills of leadership such as coaching, counseling, mentoring, and participative decision making. Because the leadership model suggested in this study is analyzed theoretically, the future study should be focused on the empirical analysis of the actual leadership program in order to verify the effectiveness of the theoretical leadership model, and develop the leadership program of a high degree of completion.

The purpose of this research is to provide insights into the essence and value of dance education by describing the teaching experiences through an auto- ethnographic method. It is difficult to find researches on the overall teaching experience ranging from early childhood education to college education. Having experienced child dance class, elementary school dance class, and college movement class, I seek to find the desirable education and its significance for students while reflecting on dance teaching method and its meanings. Students get interested in their body parts, and they learn how to communicate and share their feelings with others through dance education. The performance experiences as a dance teacher are as follows. First, a natural culture at home or a home atmosphere has formed through learning-by-playing. Second, my first part-time class has led to my lifelong workplace and developed functionally. Third, I have found that a strict discipline in a dance class could give difficulties for students to express freedom. Fourth, a dance class that gives joy and pleasure changes students’perception of dance, makes them more interested in their bodies, and have more confidence with dance. In conclusion, I have realized that a dance class enables students to widely understand various emotions expressed by the body, discover ‘self’ through this process, and it can be developed into a means of communication to form a community spirit.