FEATURE
Circus arts provide students of all ages with diverse , enjoyable , and complex challenges . As circus educators , we witness success on many levels – children who gain better motor control , improve confidence , learn to persevere , and achieve success through repeated failed attempts . Because the benefits of circus are so diverse , and often so individual , circus professionals have had difficulty measuring their programs in a way that demonstrates the strata of success . Several researchers in Canada have proposed the concept of ‘ physical literacy ’ as a way of evaluating activities for their overall impact ( physical , emotional , psychological .) Preliminary studies suggest that using physical literacy constructs can help circus educators evaluate their programs and students , both for increased knowledge of what impact their program is having on their students and as a potential tool for funding and communication .
WHAT IS PHYSICAL LITERACY ? In order to read , we first learn the alphabet because letters are the smallest building blocks of language . Letters build words , which build sentences , which become paragraphs , essays , articles , books , poems , policies , and heartfelt letters . Not every person who learns the alphabet will use the letters in the same way , but everyone will use all of the letters at some point .
Movement also has small building blocks that , once learned , are used to perform larger and more complicated actions : throwing , catching , running , hopping , climbing , turning , and , for many people , variations on wheeling in chairs or using prosthetics or other extensions for independent movement . Physical literacy is the idea that a person can , and should , be able to move in many ways and experiment with many types of movement throughout their lifespan . This concept differs from simply gaining expertise in a specific activity . An Olympic gymnast who cannot throw a ball would not be considered physically ‘ literate ,’ because throwing is part of the full range of human movement . Just as those who learn the alphabet can participate in a variety of writing and reading activities , from the quotidian to the professional , so does learning a diversity of movement enable people to participate in various activities from daily skills to professional pursuits .
HOW DOES CIRCUS DO ITS “ WORK ”? Trying to quantify how learning circus benefits people is difficult , but we have all seen the changes happen – the kid who learns to wait in line because they want to learn circus , the adult who gains confidence as they learn to hold their own weight in the air , and countless other anecdotes that seem to prove that circus WORKS , à la Reg Bolton ( Bolton , 2004 ). But because part of the power in circus performance is the spectacularization of risk , many parents , school boards , and recreation centers are hesitant to choose circus arts . Explaining why and how circus “ works ” in the United States has been challenging , in part because of enduring archetypes in the national imagination . In her excellent book “ The Circus Age : Culture and Society Under the American Big Top ,” Janet Davis ( Davis , 2002 ) describes how the touring circus influenced , and sometimes created , many aspects of American identity . Americans working in the circus arts often have a common experience of using the images of traditional circus to describe what kind of activity we will be doing or teaching ( i . e . – regarding dance trapeze , it ’ s like flying trapeze , but without a net and with only one trapeze ). Davis ’ helps us understand why by describing the longreaching cultural and social impacts of the traditional circus in the United States . How , then , to explain what we are really teaching in circus classes ?
Most of the studies exploring benefits from circus arts are qualitative ; they rely on discussions , observations , and narratives about the impact of circus programs . For instance , participants might fill out surveys about how they feel , if they made more friends , or whether they would like to continue circus activity ( Deslandes , Rivard , Joyal , & Trudeau , 2010 ; Kekäläinen & Kakko , 2013 ; Kinnunen , Lidman , Kakko , & Kekäläinen , 2013 ; Marianthi , 2010 ; McCutcheon , 2003 ; Ott , Doyle , 2005 ; Trotman , 2013 ). Qualitative research is important for understanding how participants experience circus
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