Identifying My Theoretical Frameworks
I have been trying to pull together my personal theoretical framework over the last couple of days and it has been a real challenge to reconcile a philosophical stance with the act of teaching dance and working with students. I understand that I have a perspective and my own educational theories that run through all my classes but have been finding it hard to articulate this in an academic sense.
I have always held to the belief that dance is hugely subjective both in our understanding and appreciation of choreography, as well as our approaches to learning technique, developing our bodies and understanding movement. In this sense, I definitely fall on the non-positivist side of the line. In this research project I hope to further my understanding of how my students learn and develop but I am aware that my discoveries are likely to only be a general indication and that other students I encounter outside of my research are likely to think and respond to my teaching in very different ways.
With this in mind, I am finding myself being drawn towards an enquiry that focuses on a specific type of student and how my teaching, their background and their mindset affects how they train at a vocational level. I fell that this leaves a broader room for interpretation in the results and will avoid inflexible and dogmatic conclusions which I find detrimental in my classes.
I am still however not fully sure where my enquiry line is headed.
I have always held to the belief that dance is hugely subjective both in our understanding and appreciation of choreography, as well as our approaches to learning technique, developing our bodies and understanding movement. In this sense, I definitely fall on the non-positivist side of the line. In this research project I hope to further my understanding of how my students learn and develop but I am aware that my discoveries are likely to only be a general indication and that other students I encounter outside of my research are likely to think and respond to my teaching in very different ways.
With this in mind, I am finding myself being drawn towards an enquiry that focuses on a specific type of student and how my teaching, their background and their mindset affects how they train at a vocational level. I fell that this leaves a broader room for interpretation in the results and will avoid inflexible and dogmatic conclusions which I find detrimental in my classes.
I am still however not fully sure where my enquiry line is headed.
Hello, I also feel as though learning is very subjective. I am a mirror image dyslexic learner, and my understanding of the world is much different than anyone else's. Also I have found myself through teaching many adult students that everyone has a different life story that leads them to make different understanding of the same topic, and even how it is delivered. When many people learn they let their emotional attachment to an idea influence heavily in their understanding of new material, until we as teachers are able to control or "guide"(?) these emotions, I personally feel as though there will never be any form of universal learning styles. if I am understanding your post correctly. Thank you for the opportunity to reflect.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment on this, it's nice to hear another viewpoint on learning styles. My inquiry has now actually evolved to focus on teachers' approaches to promoting self reflection and autonomy in their students. The scope of how students learn seems so vast that I've been drawn more to seeing how we as teachers can encourage students to find their personal style and be able to take it further beyond our classes. Good luck with the rest of your project! :-)
DeleteI too have had a lot of trouble articulating my own philosophy in terms of matching it to existing belief systems. If you asked, I could pretty easily give you my teaching philosophy, just not in those terms, but it's taken me a while to pull together the -ologies and -ists that my theory and practice fall into.
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the enquiry line! I wish I had something useful to say on that, but I fished around for a while and suddenly found mine like a lightning bolt. It seemed so obvious that it almost popped into my head as a (more or less) fully formed research proposal, which shocked me.
You've summarised exactly how I feel about this! Haha! Glad yours came to you so suddenly. Finally making headway with mine now and feeling much more like I have a direction! Thanks again for helping me realise we're all feeling a little overwhelmed by it!
DeleteThank you for your blog. It is interesting reading on the mirror dyslexia which you experience and my own experience teaching children with dyslexia recognizes how we all have different ways of seeing and interpreting our learning experiences and movements which is our uniqueness. Part of my research inquiry is researching how beneficial different improvisation strategies in a variety of dance genres can assist all learners to find their place and develop their own identity. This when planning the theoretical framework has been challenging but is now falling into place. It will come together for you soon, it just takes time reading, reflecting for pennies to drop and connections formed. That's the nature of the job!! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement, I'm slowly getting there now and have a much more focussed inquiry line. Looking at improvisation sounds really interesting as I think it's something that can get neglected a lot in dance training. Good luck!
DeleteMy inquiry context is on how mindset plays a vital role in the training of dancers and their mental preparation for a career in dance. As I continue to reflect and carry out research the data and all that emerges seems to take on a life of it's now and I find that what I intended has morphed into something not entirely different, but certainly more than I expected. Nice blog!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, yeah mine has really evolved even over the last few days and I have a direction at last. Mine is finally headed down the road of looking at how, as teachers, we can balance traditional methods of teaching with a need to create autonomy in students and encourage them to explore and discover how to learn and develop things autonomously :-) Will be reallly interested to hear how yours turns out :-)
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