MA Dance Pedagogy

Whilst analysing my data I found it very enlightening to look at the context of my professional samples' work and then look at their corresponding answers. There were key links I interpreted as to how someone answered a question and the relation of that answer to their work. Katie was also a really important part of the inquiry as she is currently building her confidence and developing her teaching skills and is attending lots of classes during the week before she takes on her own classes. I felt this gave her answers a lot of weight as she could look at the situation from an almost 'insider-researcher' position. For example she mentions that "being praised and hearing you have progressed is always a nice thing to hear" (Katie, 2017) and I believe this is such an important statement as she is looking at that from how she feels in class, so has noted the importance of her feeling good after being praised and being told she has progressed. Roger also made...

If I am to reflect on who I am now in relevance to my professional practice and who I was when I started the course, I feel I have made massive leaps and bounds towards understanding more about my professional practice. When I first started the course and wrote my first blog, one student picked it apart so much I had to delete it. I felt vulnerable, on display and under qualified to be taking on this work. I was hesitant to write any blogs after this and kept my learning to myself. Even in my critical reflection in Module 1 I tried to point out all the advantages of learning alone to justify my actions. I then took a break from studying for personal reasons and I truly believed I didn't want to complete the degree anymore. I put off talking to my tutor and again tried to work everything out by myself. I eventually did talk to my tutor, and I explained I no longer wanted to study. She asked me if this was really the case and if perhaps I just needed a bit more time out before cont...

Whilst waiting for my draft to be returned I decided I should make use of my rare free evening time and go back to one of my favourite Jazz classes at Pineapple Dance Studios. I chose to blog about this because I felt really aware during the class of the teacher and their gestures, body language and vocabulary use throughout the class. The teacher was extremely welcoming and seemed excited to start. There was no aux cable when the teacher started to plug in their music so the class started a few minutes late, but the teacher was very practical about getting the lead as quickly as possible and there was a sense of efficiency which meant I personally didn't mind the class starting a few minutes late. During the set warm up and technical exercises there appeared to be a real 'buzz' in the room. The teacher smiled a lot and seemed excited as the music came on and we were preparing for an exercise. This left me feeling energised and wanting to put my all into each exercise w...

My first class teaching after doing the anaylsis for my inquiry was really interesting as I felt I held in my head a lot of new knowledge and power for teaching. Whilst a lot of the anaylsis interpretation showed me I understood the answers to the questions I asked and would have answered them similarly, I got a really good insight into other practitioner's thoughts on teaching and some insight into what they thought of dance and fitness as an industry. When I entered my class to teach today I felt like I was in my own little world for a short while - trying to process all the things I wanted to try and all the things I'd learnt. After processing this I decided to implement two important elements that teachers believed to be really important to successful classes in the way of enjoyment; create a welcoming atmosphere for my clients and to treat everyone as an individual (make each client feel important). As people started entering the room I said hello to them all indivi...

I felt like I was a bit behind with where I wanted to be in the inquiry and felt a little lost. I had a good chat with Adesola about some difficulties I had been having. We discussed the idea that perhaps I was looking at doing too much data collection for the project. I had already done interviews from professional instructors and was preparing to do a couple of focus groups with my colleagues at  workplace and then several observations with different teachers. If there wasn't a time constraint on the inquiry then I would have still quite liked to do these observations and I think I will set these up after the inquiry is over because I know it will be good for my own professional practice - in the vast majority of the interviews, exercise and dance professionals stated that to improve professional practice shadowing and observing fellow professionals was key. Adesola reminded me that having too much data collected and then not much time to anaylse would make my inquiry quite sha...

I've been focusing a little on behaviour change whilst reading for my lit review, and I came across some real light bulb moments about theories I already used in my professional practice without even realising! I have been studying the idea that in sports and exercise we normally use operant conditioning to change behaviour. The type of learning where behaviour is controlled by consequences. B.F Skinner looked at the idea that classical conditioning (stimulus + involuntary reflex, ie. the most classic experient where a dog is trained to salivate at the sound of the bell, because the bell is rung every time before food comes out) is too simple to be the "complete explanation of complex human behaviour" His ideas were rooted in his belief that the best way to understand behvaiour "is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences." From the article "Skinner - Operant Conditioning" by Saul Mcleod, last updated 2015 https://www.simplypsychology.or...

After catching up with Helen about where I am with the project, we talked about the possible revision of my title of the project, to allow my to focus on what I am trying to learn. My title relates to styles and approaches of an adult dance exercise class - however what I've really been researching and what has been taking my interest is more to do with motivation, keeping people interested and enjoying classes, how I can improve my practice to create more enjoyment in my classes and the social aspect of classes. We also looked at a couple of my research methods which might conflict with the universities ethical conduct guide. For exampe I had thought about having someone observe me teaching a class, but Helen explained that it would still be a bit of a murky situation in regards to ethics due to the class participants even if they were not being watched specifically. We talked instead about me doing my own observation of my own teaching, alongside observing other teachers in t...

I have just been reading through some of the completed feedback forms looking at some of the issues we face as teachers and how we overcome them. I also wanted some personal opinions from instructors about different parts of class experience. Something very close to my heart being discussed was social groups in classes. I want to have a look at the reason I think this is so important to my work here. Part of my work at my health care company is being a Care Planner. This job requires me to have 1:1 sessions with clients discussing barriers that prevent them having a healthy lifestyle. These barriers can be nutritional, physical, psychological or social. For me, putting someone on the list for an exercise class or course is not just about getting them to lose weight, it is also about giving them access to a social group. A social group that may form naturally or be pushed by a teacher. For a vulnerable or indeed just an independent person out in the community, a social group in ...

Just to ease myself into module 3, I have done a brief summary of module 2 and have noted some concerns I need to address..... Inquiry title :  An inquiry exploring styles and approaches to leading an adult dance exercise class. Research/inquiry questions : How can I as a professional dance teacher plan and deliver classes to encourage motivation? Breaking this down I want to look at:  - what is motivation - intrinsic and exstrinic. Look at concept that I cannot create intrinsic motivation as it in internal, however I may be able to encourage extrinsic motivation which can lead to intrinsic motivation. I can do this by.... - encouraging clients to adhere to classes which may hopefully led them to having instrinsic motivation -delivery of class - personality of instructor, structure of class, music. Ethical issues : Keeping conversations/written work from professionals and work focus group strictly confidential apart from for the use of the inquiry...

*Updated after speaking with Paula* Just wanted to jot down some inquiry question ideas to use in interviews with my fellow professionals...... How do you feel the fitness industry could cater more towards inclusive fitness classes to encourage adherence in classes? What ingredients do you believe create an enjoyable class for participants? What are your view on social groups or a sense of community in exercise/dance classes? Are they necessary - if yes why, if no why? Do you believe lack of social groups within your class would affect the number of people that attend? Or visa versa. Do you believe its important to create a sense of community in classes? (need to word this differently as it plays towards a certain answer) What do you believe is the single most important factor in an exercise class to increase participants enjoyement? What is your personal technique for motivating participants? How would you include specialist population groups into your classes wi...

I just saw a post from 'Get UK Active' on Facebook about a new generation of dance classes where people dance in the dark. See original post here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40043153 It looks at the idea that dance classes are focused on using a mirror and making sure everyone looks the same, whereas the idea of these classes is that its focused on the inner self and good feeling you get from dancing. There is enough light to stop you bumping into the person next to you. I wanted to look at both sides of the argument and challenge my immediate thoughts on the concept. I agree that dance classes in majority can be focused on people at least attempting to look the same in the mirror, so everyone in time doing the same movement. However I would look into my own classes and say for my own teaching I really encourage people just to move and try their best, its about challenging themselves to get better, not to be perfect. And challenging youself can be a positive...

It was an important learning discovery during the planning for my project to look at the limitations the inquiry would have as a small scale inquiry - as much as I would have liked to take on a large number of participants to get a larger amount of exploratory sample data, this would be impractical. It led me to reflect that the whole point of this degree is work based learning - we are working whilst learning, and we do not have the advantages of those who have their whole weeks dedicated to their research projects. So practically I need to do something that will not allow for any dips in my professional performance but instead will only enhance it. Therefore its really useful that my inquiry will be centered around my own work and won't be something I necessarily need to start from scratch to use in the project. However whilst we do not have as much time dedicated solely to our research project, we do have the advantage of working already in our field of choice and having that...

For my inquiry I will be choosing to use inquiry tools to properly and effectively analyse data. The tools I'll be looking at using are; observation, interviews, focus groups and surveys. Originally I like the idea of using all the inquiry tools but I appreciate it will be time consuming and don't want my work to suffer for the sake of trying to fit everything in. I would ideally like to use observation as my main source for collecting qualitative  data. I believe this is most appropriate to my research question and will give me a rich source of data to use. I would also like to use a focus group and survey but perhaps as an additional piece of data to support my findings from my observations. All of the inquiry tools have their own merits and limitations and I need to make sure I prioritize  what I want to find out to pick correctly the tool I will use. Merits and limitations to inquiry tools - Observation  Merits - Observation is a great way to collect qualitat...

A colleague mentioned to me about looking into the theory of arousal in sports psychology. The main premise of the theory in a greater sense in that to keep someone happy they must maintain a balance of the right levels of arousal meant for them as an individual. Some individuals may have low levels of arousement and these may be satisfied by something like reading or sewing. Others may have a much higher level of arousement and need to seek out certain activities which are extremely exciting to them, something like roller coasters, skydiving, etc. People all have different levels that need to be satisfied. I'd like to look at the premise of this in sports and exercise classes. The premise of arousement in exercise and performance in general is that we need to have a high level of arousement to perform at our best  - however when we are over aroused we will begin to lose our technique and our performance will suffer for this. If we looked at say for example, music and arous...

As an introduction to Ethical practice I wanted to quickly look at the 3 main components in ethics and how I personally view them before reviewing the case studies. Personal - my personal ethical practice comes from a place of trying to be kind to others and the world. I try to be kind always to other people in the hope if I was in a less favorable place someone else would be kind to me (so Karma essentially). I try to recycle as much as possible and have recently started to buy skincare that is cruelty free. I try to consider my meat consumption and give to charity. My ethical beliefs and practices have come from a range of people. My parents brought myself and my sister up as kind children and I hope people believe we have remained so. My Grandparents however, and I love them dearly, I don't believe are as ethical - and this shocked me and reinforced my need to practice ethics. Teachers at school also enforced in me a desire to be kind to other people. I have done charity mount...

After speaking to our clinical psychologist - we discussed many elements of different reasons people would come to class and come back to class after as well. The phycology behind how we learn and how we attract people to return to us after we've taught them is a massive subject, one that I wouldn't want to cover alone. I plan to look into all the aspects I discussed with Gabriella and then choose a strand to investigate further. We looked at the idea of attachment and how if a student can relate to some part of the subject and the teacher teaching they will be more likely to return to your class. The class itself is only one part of this. We also need to think about before the class and the lead up - any communication between student and teacher (eg. a potential student emails me and I respond in a way to make them feel like I want them at the class). It can also be that the poster or advert they have seen is relevant to them (maybe it looks fun or more serious ...

I was speaking to Paula about how I feel I engage so much more when talking face to face with someone rather than online - I felt this had really been a barrier to me in module 1 and stopped me enjoying the module to its full extent - I appreciated that a massive part of the module was social media and connecting to people, but I didn't feel I had the same experience as when I spoke to someone with at least a voice attached (phone call) or talking in person. I wanted to have a look at this idea in further detail, especially when Paula mentioned she had that day spoken to two people who were at the other side of the world, something that would not be possible without social media or online communications. Why is it for me I feel like I need to see or hear someone's reactions to feel I'm fully engaging in the topic? Is this more to do with me as a person? I have a lot of empathy and enjoy conversations with people - so maybe its a personal thing to me. Or it could be some...

4a   Review Reader 4 on Professional Inquiry and develop a set of questions that are relevant to your practice. These questions should be blogged and using the Blog ‘comments’ function, develop these questions further collaboratively with other students and if possible, practitioners beyond the programme. Taking these questions to another practitioner (student, friend, co-worker) record (field notes, audio or audio-visual) their response to the questions. Post your reflection of the process on your Blog. Set of questions that are relevant to my practice 1.        Can a community dance class leave a person with positive feelings/wellbeing throughout their week or does the positivity end when a person leaves dance class? 2.        Does the teaching style and therefore teacher of the class become the most important influence on whether class will be enjoyed, or is this still to do with other factors such as en...

For someone who works in community dance, it is very interesting to me to watch and learn how people react to being in a community dance environment. Dance in the community can help to raise self esteem, build friendships with others and create a network of people where a person can feel safe to explore moving their bodies freely without judgement. I think dance in the community is very important to society but also that how a person can be affected by it differs greatly depending on a teaching style. Creating a safe and relaxed environment is essential to my personal role as a dance and exercise teacher and this seems to work for my students. Perhaps others find this environment unhelpful and prefer to not have any connection with other class members - this may allow them not not worry so much about what they are doing because they don't have any friends watching them, it may make it easier to concentrate or it may just be they want to work on their own. It would be interestin...