Teaching Philosophy

Research and the Expressive Therapies

by Robyn Flaum Cruz, PhD, ADTR, LPC

Academic preparation of dance/movement therapists and expressive therapists is an area of great professional interest to me. The landscape of healthcare has changed significantly in my 25 years in the field, and now more than ever, expressive therapists need excellent preparation to stay vital and included in the new healthcare arena.

Since 1984 I have been registered as an advanced clinician (ADTR) by the American Dance Therapy Association, and earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology with a specialization in measurement and methodology from The University of Arizona in 1995. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Pennsylvania (LPC) and a National Certified Counselor (NCC). My 30 publications span a range of fields from dance/movement therapy and psychiatry to neurology, and include a recently published book that I both co-edited and contributed to on research methods for dance/movement therapists. Service is a professional activity that I value highly, and for the last 10 years I have served the American Dance Therapy Association in many capacities including those of Co-Editor of the American Journal of Dance Therapy ,listerv manager, and conference co-chair. I currently serve as Vice President. In addition, I also presently serve as Editor-in-Chief of The Arts in Psychotherapy.

My teaching philosophy and practice are grounded in a professional collaboration model that reflects skills I developed in my first clinical training experiences and honed teaching statistics to doctoral students from many disciplines at the University of Arizona . This model is based on my knowledge and belief that students learn least from an instructor's oral recitation of information and most from engaging the subject matter themselves. Engaging with subject matter includes experiences with the subject matter, practice with new learning, and creating new understanding as a result of engagement.

Practicum experiences are an important vehicle for students to explore practice with new learning generated by such discussion with supporting selected readings. Integrating the information gleaned is vital to creating a new and informed understanding of the population or issue and can take place through writing, presenting orally, or via an art form. In this process, students should continually challenge each other and the instructor to examine their epistemologies, knowledge, and theories in order to avoid the pitfalls outlined by Williams and Irving (1999) for clinical practitioners: (a) epistemology - reliance on personal knowledge that may be shared with no one thus making it difficult to judge its validity; (b) preciousness - reliance on non-axiomatic truths, beliefs, or emotionally held ideas to the exclusion of information to the contrary; (c) lack of theoretical rigor - looseness with which constructs are construed rather than using them within a defined theoretical framework; (d) non- Popperian logic - a tendency to work within a theory and defend it regardless of other evidence; and (e) personalization of theory - seeing evaluation or evaluative thinking about practice and theories as criticism. I believe that this approach creates thinking clinicians who continually strive for valid and reliable therapeutic practices that support their survivability in a changing and competitive healthcare arena.

The creativity involved in critically reading research, and designing, analyzing, and presenting research results never fails to amaze and excite me; I strive to convey this excitement to students!