Reflections on Literature

Task 6c - Continued

I have been reviewing in depth three other pieces of literature and reflecting upon the contributions there angles and approaches can have to my enquiry topic of exploring what the meaning of Dance is to a specific community local to me.

Both ‘Understanding Dance’, Graham McPhee, ‘Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Enquiry, Sandra Horton and Penelope Hanstein, and ‘Dance As Education’, Graham Folwer have been my choice pieces of literature.

I have had to consider when reading literatures that the suggestions they introduce are coming from dance enthusiast’s points of view. Recognising this is important as writings may edge towards being bias. Acknowledging their opinions and collaborating them with my own thoughts has developed my approach to researching my topic. I cannot use their writings as fact, only supporting evidence as to why I plan to do the things I do. It seems both authors cannot remain entirely objective all the time, this would seem impossible considering the literatures titles and topics. But, the pieces seem to seek a greater understanding on what is involved when trying to understand the meaning of dance, and in what ways having this knowledge may be valuable.  Intensions from all three authors seems to be one of  having their view heard, but that any claims they cannot prove are merely ‘suggested’.

(Online sources are available to both books through Google Books, they are however only previews of certain exacts, still useful oversights though.)

In more general terms, all three books have developed the approach to my plan by suggesting angling my research to focus on exploring the relationship between human behaviours that one may consider ‘Dance’, and how these behaviours define the meaning of Dance to the person partaking in it.

Both literary pieces support an approach that to understand the meaning of Dance, one has to consider their own actions and behaviours to identify with the personal significance of what dance is and what it means to them. This is where I feel I have learnt how ones personal circumstances – their background/culture/shaping life events/personalities and personal experiences determine can determine how they dance in terms of the steps and movements created, and that this then relates to dance being something of very personal and individual significance.

Now having a better grasp on this concept, a workshop I recently gave really benefited from a new approach to creating a dance experience to a group of community dancers. The participants had free reign on choosing their own theme, the focus for the movements evolved directly from the topics THEY chose to explore, not suggestions of my own. Upon reflection, I saw real relevance to how the reason for dancing (in this case creating movements to a chosen theme of the Olympics 2012) facilitates the behaviours which produce movements, these movements then create a piece of meaningful and significant choreography. Participants felt a sense of ownership to the piece they created, in this sense, practising in this way gave the workshop experience for both myself and the participants a new level of personal significance. This will defiantly be an approach I intend to repeat when facilitating future workshops.

I wonder how the motivation levels witnessed during the workshop may have differed if I had chosen the theme to work on? Would this approach have been met with such enthusiasm I wonder? Does one become more enthused and perform at a higher, more complex level when dancing choreo that has personal relevance or ownership?

This has also drawn my attention to where literature on my topic for enquiry actually falls short in addressing what dance means to any specified community. Being such an established dance company for the North of England, I have been surprised to find no other research projects of similar nature have taken place at the Ludus. Ludus dance is fairly local to me, and its community of practitioners I am envisaging will play a part in my future practise while I develop my freelance work experience with them. Therefore, it seems logical to undergo my proposed enquiry not only for the benefit of my personal stance, but also to other establishing freelancers in the North of England specifically.

There also seems to be a gap in any researched evidence to support the idea that whatever ‘it’ is that dance means is irrelevant. In the future, I aim to promote awareness of dance opportunity, therefore encouraging participation in dance through working towards increasing its accessibility. It seems necessary therefore to angle research to support teaching dance in a way that stimulates any opportunity for participation in dance, regardless of the dance subject or style, regardless of the dancers backgrounds, and regardless of the subject or theme of the work covered or choreography composed.

Gathering all this together,the range of key texts I have reviewed seem to cover three main areas, the research itself, the topic of education in dance and finally understanding dance and dance philosophy.

Time Management...

I have been advised to think about effectively time managing my enquiry plan. It has been suggested I use a Gantt Chart to clarify time allowances for each part of the enquiry.

I was wondering if anyone else has used this tool before? Or, come across other effective methods to display a clear time plan perhaps?

Because of my inexperience of creating such a chart, I did a bit of research on a few examples. I thought I would share this link should anyone else be wondering how to approach this part of the plan too.

Gantt Chart - Wikipedia explanation

'A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project.'

It seems quite difficult to accurately predict how long a specific task will take, taking into consideration all the factors which could effect a tasks completion is a lot to think about.

For my enquiry, I am envisaging leaving ample time to compose questionnaires/receive feedback and analysis the data will be hugely time consuming. Also, at this stage I think my research may involve working with minors, so I need to allow ample time to gain parental consent from parents before undergoing any observations or interaction with them.

Piloting some of the tools for enquiry has been an eye opener as to how we must allow adequate time to conduct the use of the tool initially, but considering the additional time needed to collate all the data and apply it to concluding research findings.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated as always!

Literature Reviewing - Task 6c

No doubt we are all trying to tackle writing our Enquiry plans, it seems a big section of this is applying the theories we have come across during reading and researching various forms of Literature.

This in itself is quite a task, I have found giving myself enough time to read, analysis, learn from, perhaps re-read and apply the information is really crucial, is anyone else? Often things I have read come back to me at random points in the day, similarly, something 'clicks' and I have been able to make links between suggested ideas and theories that support the way in which planning my enquiry develops.

I have found consulting initially a methodological text really helpful to 'plan how to plan' in a sense.

Practitioner Research and Professional Development in Education

Campbell, McNamara, Gilroy, (2004)

Chapter 5 of the book itself states consulting 'professionally focused research guides to get advice on how to go about identifying and refining research area, devising planning any analysing enquiry' is an important step to efficient planning.

It covers many angles on tools for enquiry including particularly helpful suggestions for how to manage and review literature. Although the book is not directly related to my topic for enquiry or any 'Dance' specifics, it gives plenty of examples of other situations where I am them able to relate to my own dance teaching environment.

It also has enlightened me as to how useful it is to establish a clear and functional procedure for reviewing and managing literature, (specifically how to record a book, and also how to efficiently record specific chapters or journal articles for examples)

I now feel much more well equipped at depicting  the relevant information to develop the stages of my plan from more Dance related literature's .

Pilot Observation

Pilot Observaion

Having read various other blogs from fellow BAPP students, and focussing on which direction my enquiry plan should take next, I have decided it appropriate to pilot an observation with the intension of using this tool a way of data collecting for my enquiry.

I have decided, with specific help from Stephanie and Adesola, to focus my observations on a group of dancers who use Ludus dance on a regular practise. They are members of the Ludus Youth Dance troupe, a mix of female and males, the youngest being 19 and the eldest being 21. (Although Ludus works in conjunction with much younger age ranges a swell, conducting an pilot observation involving under 16’s was inappropriate without ensuring the correct ethical codes are adhered too. I simply did not have time to gather parental consent before conducting this observation – (however this will be something I need to consider for my actually enquiry.)

The group itself were taking part in a workshop class which took place over a few days, my observations were things I noticed during the middle day of the dance programme. Perhaps to gain a more in depth analysis of behaviours and attitudes observed I could have compared observation notes from day one until day 3, to note any significant changes as the programme went on.

The group were made a wear I was observing them, but it was stressed that it was not meant as an invasive process. I was not there to observe them, or their abilities, the aim of my enquiry being one where I hope to establish an insight into what dance means to them as the grounding foundation, and that as a researcher who only works for Ludus on a monthly basis, I may be able to expose new/fresh ideas which one often does not see when a structured day to day practise consumes them.

Explanation to the members of Ludus (both teachers and students and the company’s organisational team) was given about my ethical stance remains in the boundaries of the organisations code of conduct and in my application of my knowledge of their official child protection policies.

Important to remember when conducting observations, as an ‘insider researcher’ who had personal interest in dance, I may be inclined to want to pre-judge behaviours and assume people will act in a similar way or share attitudes similar to mine. Thought needed to go into how I remain un judgemental and objective. The benefits to being an ‘insider’ however are important to my enquiry’s effective development, often insiders understand the significance of what is happening because ‘they are very much in tune with the context’. (Campbell et al, 2004, P94) Being relatively new to the Ludus company, keeping an unstructured approach to observations seemed to be the most beneficial. Being a new face, establishing that my aims are as a researcher are ones of ‘good will’ prevented me from not witnessing normal practise in the workplace.

I used a method of taking field notes for the pilot, noticing behaviours on how the group walked into the room to their inter interaction to each other, their attitudes to the dance tasks set, their behaviours and how they changed at the day progressed to finally noting mood and attitudes upon finishing their busy dancing day. To really define what dance means to them, making record of interactions with the movements tasks during the dance class was really revealing, I would want to expand on this further to develop my enquiry in the future.

Observing as an enquiry tool will be beneficial to me to use in the next module, relative to the theory of triangulation, the beauty of the efficiency of the observations is that they facilitate means to ‘gather field notes which can be contextualised by background notes and are often supplemented by gathering data by other methods such as interviews’ (Hitchcock, 1989: 67). As I am already envisaging conducting interviews for  my plan, piloting in tandem these two tools has given light to how they can help each other to research and record broad ranges of mixed data.

Has anyone else conducted an observation? Have you seen links between the benefits of using observations and interviews hand in hand, research from one informing another?