The importance of context in professional backgrounds

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 a really interesting statement about the idea that a good class creates a sense of community without the necessity for the teacher to facilitate this. The context of Roger's teaching is in a small independent gym where a sense of community is felt overwhelmingly. There are good inter-personal relationships between staff and members, social events are organised throughout the year and the atmosphere in classes relaxed, welcoming and informal; in agreement with the answers from the majority of my sample.

I felt Roger answered this question due to his work environment. This is not a negative reflection but what made me interested in this answer was thought about how his answer might be different if he was placed in another environment, and how this concept would affect the results of my inquiry. For example Greg, who worked in large corporate gyms and leisure centres, did not see the importance of social groups at all and felt it was all teacher interaction which made the class enjoyable. 

Accessbility in the fitness industry also showed similar patterns. A lot of the teachers in the sample taught at community settings with various special population groups which could included mobility issues, mental health issues or obesity. I theorised this would affect their thoughts regarding accessibility in the dance and fitness industry and links in with Sara Houston’s (2005) ideas on how participation is meant for everyone from professionals to grass roots. The benefits of dance and exercise on wellbeing is now well evidenced (Mind.org - 'How to' physical activity, 2015 and Charlotte Veal, 2017), and it was clear that the teachers who felt most strongly about this worked in a community sector.

I was glad at this point I had decided to ask a range of different teachers in different sectors to take part in the study and I  reflected that if I had only worked with a sample of professionals from one sector, my inquiry might have had a completely different outcome to what it is now. 

Which reinforced the idea me that this inquiry would have benefited from being large scale to get a better and wider response from even more sectors of the dance and fitness industry. It would of course be more difficult and time consuming to analyse however it would provide great qualitative data to interpret. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help! I need somebody... (to discuss AOL's with)

Hey everyone - hope you all had good weeks. I started my new teaching role this week so I am pretty tired now and haven't managed to do as much work as I had hoped to this week. I wondered if anyone would be willing to talk about the Areas of Learning essays? I have a few brief ideas so I'm just looking at how to develop my ideas a bit more in a sense of getting my original subject titles off the ground and to start writing! I have two ideas for subjects of the essays, the first being Nurturing students as a teacher - I feel the broad range of people I have taught have allowed me to develop a strong sense of nurturing students during class and trying to help them become the best they can be. I think this could be partly down to my own training where I felt I could have been more nurtured during my experience (of course this is just my perception of it) and also down to teaching smaller children and then teaching adult from specialist population groups who were not trainin...
Read more

The impact of social groups in dance and exercise classes

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 ...
Read more

Task 1: introducing myself

Hi everyone - I already had my blog up and running from my undergrad so these posts have been a bit backwards apologies! My name is Chrissie, I am currently working part time as a dance and vocal lecturer at a Southampton based college and the rest of the time I work as a Health Practitioner at a cardiovascular prevention service. I trained professionally at The Hammond School of Dance where I disciplined in Musical theatre, various dance styles, acting and singing. I have taught freelance dance and fitness classes for many years and have taught adults up to 60 and children from pre primary. I have worked with specialist population groups and vulnerable adults, and children with autism. I have worked in community centres, colleges, schools, universities and dance centres, each with its own unique learning experience for me. I did my undergrad distance learning at Middlesex and I really struggled with it until the last module we did. I did not do well at engaging in blogs and ke...
Read more