Module 3, getting stuck in!

I have been conducting my interviews this week for my final inquiry looking at how different teachers approach the idea of creating an environment that promotes students developing the ability to ultimately be autonomous. It's been really interesting seeing the conflict that we all have, particularly in vocational training, between promoting student-lead ideas and using the more direct, disciplined and authoritarian approach to dance teaching that most of us have been familiar with at some point.

It's been interesting seeing the clash between the idea that we are seeking technical mastery in our students (which lends itself to repetition and drilling of work), while at the same time wanting to inspire them to be creative and be able to work things out on their own to give them the tools to be successful once they leave our studio. In speaking to my interviewees, the ideas of fear (of a teacher or being wrong), the modern education system and how our own training backgrounds affect our own teaching styles have all been raised.

I'm also collecting literature to look at alongside this, looking at the history of different dance genres and how dance education and it's purpose has evolved. If anyone knows of any books or articles that touch on this subject, I would love to hear from you as I want as wide a scope of ideas as I can get!

Comments

  1. Hannah Lindsay8 October 2018 at 11:59

    I don't have anything to share offhand, but I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your research. It's an area I'm much interested in myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown19 October 2018 at 12:21

      Hey Hannah, how’s yours going? Are you exploring something similar yourself?

      Delete
    2. Hannah Lindsay1 November 2018 at 16:58

      It's going well, thanks! I'm researching methods for teaching musicality to dancers, but embedded in that is the tension between learning what I give them and learning to make their own choices.

      Have you searched "feminist pedagogy ballet (or dance)" on the Library Search? That brought up a ton of stuff for me. Melanie Aceto's article "Developing the Dance Artist: The Alteration Task" (or some similar title) has stuck in my head, and there's an author I found last module, I think her name is Gretchen something, that's written a lot about feminist pedagogy in the ballet classroom. bell hooks' work about class as a "coming to voice" experience for students might be useful too. If you're still looking shoot me an email at... l i n d s a y d o o d l e s 1 0 (at) g m a i l (dot) c o m.* I took a great course on this stuff in my earlier grad work and have quite a bibliography I can send over. I have no idea why I didn't mention that in my earlier comment; what was I thinking??

      *Ha, hopefully that'll keep it out of the bot crawlers' grasps! Just take out the spaces and it should work.

      Delete

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