Have a look at this link if you have a moment. Beautiful written expression about Siobhan Davies' realisation of her physical expression through the working process on Two Quartets.
http://www.siobhandaviesreplay.com/media2/UserType/00000000/00002000/00002679.pdf
I'm exploring epistemological and ontological ideas in relation to her work at the moment. More coming soon........
Thursday, 20 November 2014
Monday, 3 November 2014
Communication
Hi all,
Yesterday's Skype meeting gave me a lot to think about, even though I had to drop out to feed my little one. Apologies for the sudden exit!
It is interesting to see what issues and questions re-surface for me and other members of the group. One thing for me is our group discussions. Skype sessions are working more smoothly and are certainly always very constructive but it seems to be a difficult thing to do well. This from someone who doesn't enjoy phone conversations! The lack of body language and facial expression definitely cause me some difficulties. There is the video option of course, but as far as I know you can't see everyone's faces at the same time, in real time? That would be really good!
Still on the theme of communication, I notice that often someone else can put into words exactly what I was trying to say, and often say it so much better, effortlessly summing up the ideas. Someone, sorry, I can't remember who, Ainsley? did this when talking about the difference between the communication spaces of Linked-in and blogs. Statements v questions, group v individual, and ease of use were all mentioned.
Thinking, reacting and responding quickly is obviously a key part of teaching (being able to think on your feet) but going back to learning styles, if someone is more of a reflective nature, needing time to formulate ideas without too much pressure, perhaps this need for a fast response is one of the more challenging aspects of teaching practice for them. This might contradict what I was saying in my last blog about responding and just putting some thoughts out there. I think it's great to do that but not always easy in case you reveal your thinking to be confused or lacking in knowledge which can result in feeling vulnerable, or even embarrassed.
Sometimes words, spoken or written, feel inadequate. It could be my language skills of course but a passage in Case Study Research in Educational Settings (Bassey, 1999, p.43)) helped shed some light on feeling unable to make your meaning clear to someone else or the possibility of your meaning being misconstrued....
'language as a more or less agreed symbolic system, in which different people may have some differences in their meanings;'
Here the author is talking about qualitative research and the problem of differences in perception, interpretation and language that which make it unsurprising that we all have different opinions on what is real. What stood out were the words 'more or less' in relation to our shared understanding of language.
Was any of that clear!?
Yesterday's Skype meeting gave me a lot to think about, even though I had to drop out to feed my little one. Apologies for the sudden exit!
It is interesting to see what issues and questions re-surface for me and other members of the group. One thing for me is our group discussions. Skype sessions are working more smoothly and are certainly always very constructive but it seems to be a difficult thing to do well. This from someone who doesn't enjoy phone conversations! The lack of body language and facial expression definitely cause me some difficulties. There is the video option of course, but as far as I know you can't see everyone's faces at the same time, in real time? That would be really good!
Still on the theme of communication, I notice that often someone else can put into words exactly what I was trying to say, and often say it so much better, effortlessly summing up the ideas. Someone, sorry, I can't remember who, Ainsley? did this when talking about the difference between the communication spaces of Linked-in and blogs. Statements v questions, group v individual, and ease of use were all mentioned.
Thinking, reacting and responding quickly is obviously a key part of teaching (being able to think on your feet) but going back to learning styles, if someone is more of a reflective nature, needing time to formulate ideas without too much pressure, perhaps this need for a fast response is one of the more challenging aspects of teaching practice for them. This might contradict what I was saying in my last blog about responding and just putting some thoughts out there. I think it's great to do that but not always easy in case you reveal your thinking to be confused or lacking in knowledge which can result in feeling vulnerable, or even embarrassed.
Sometimes words, spoken or written, feel inadequate. It could be my language skills of course but a passage in Case Study Research in Educational Settings (Bassey, 1999, p.43)) helped shed some light on feeling unable to make your meaning clear to someone else or the possibility of your meaning being misconstrued....
'language as a more or less agreed symbolic system, in which different people may have some differences in their meanings;'
Here the author is talking about qualitative research and the problem of differences in perception, interpretation and language that which make it unsurprising that we all have different opinions on what is real. What stood out were the words 'more or less' in relation to our shared understanding of language.
Was any of that clear!?
Sunday, 2 November 2014
Link to Linked in
Hi all,
Here's the link to the Linked in discussion I've started. It would be really good to hear your thoughts.
It was interesting that Helen mentioned about trust on her blog this week as it's another aspect I was thinking about in relation to the student teacher relationship and the giving and receiving of feedback.
https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&item=5932981799532658691&type=member&gid=4276460&trk=eml-b2_anet_digest-hero-1-hero-disc-disc-0&midToken=AQFwFFz15Gdn_w&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=3hNxTOMhTyRCs1&_mSplash=1
Here's the link to the Linked in discussion I've started. It would be really good to hear your thoughts.
It was interesting that Helen mentioned about trust on her blog this week as it's another aspect I was thinking about in relation to the student teacher relationship and the giving and receiving of feedback.
https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&item=5932981799532658691&type=member&gid=4276460&trk=eml-b2_anet_digest-hero-1-hero-disc-disc-0&midToken=AQFwFFz15Gdn_w&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=3hNxTOMhTyRCs1&_mSplash=1
Thursday, 23 October 2014
Thoughts and progress
Just thought I'd write a short post to keep in touch and not leave it too long since the last one. I want to get in the habit! I'm writing this pretty late, for me, so I might think it's waffle tomorrow but there's only so much waiting for a good time you can do. Bear with me.
At the moment I'm struggling to understand the big philosophical theories and ideas to be honest. I think I do but then if I imagine trying to explain the meaning of Ontology, for example, to someone else, and be able to use it in a context, Then I'm not so sure. Definitions are one thing but really understanding…. Perhaps I actually do understand it or… maybe I'm giving it a different meaning and missing the point.
Any tips greatly appreciated. I'm just trying to read about the same ideas in different books to see if it will come together.
Finding time to keep in touch with and respond to everyone's blogs and linked-in discussions is sometimes tricky, although they're always really helpful and interesting reading, so this week I'm much more in the mind set of just 'throwing my hat into the ring' and writing a quick reply to things. That means that sometimes I will read things I've written and wish I'd phrased things differently or got my meaning across more clearly somehow but I think something is better then nothing, much as I'd like to carefully compose my thoughts! It sometimes quite liberating to just 'nail your colours to the mast' so to speak. A colleague once told me to do that when assessing work and I think she meant 'be clear on your rationale and have conviction' although not 'to defiantly hold onto your beliefs until the end'! I've just looked it up. Nothing like a good idiom!
I'm not teaching dance at the moment as I'm still on my maternity leave and I haven't seen any live performances either so it's quite strange thinking about it all so much without the daily trickle of thoughts, observations and experiences that I usually get at work. It's a bit isolating but I'm teaching some Pilates to adults and many of the things I'm thinking about for my research are relevant to all physical teaching practices. Particularly feedback and it's relationship with confidence and performance. More on Linked-in soon.
Finally, my 9 month old baby daughter had physio today and we noticed a lateral bias which seems to be making learning to crawl a bit more difficult for her. Really interesting to see this so early, and what we can do to help her balance herself up! She cried when we tried to tempt her to roll onto the other side with her favourite toy, as if to say this feels so awkward! I know the feeling.
At the moment I'm struggling to understand the big philosophical theories and ideas to be honest. I think I do but then if I imagine trying to explain the meaning of Ontology, for example, to someone else, and be able to use it in a context, Then I'm not so sure. Definitions are one thing but really understanding…. Perhaps I actually do understand it or… maybe I'm giving it a different meaning and missing the point.
Any tips greatly appreciated. I'm just trying to read about the same ideas in different books to see if it will come together.
Finding time to keep in touch with and respond to everyone's blogs and linked-in discussions is sometimes tricky, although they're always really helpful and interesting reading, so this week I'm much more in the mind set of just 'throwing my hat into the ring' and writing a quick reply to things. That means that sometimes I will read things I've written and wish I'd phrased things differently or got my meaning across more clearly somehow but I think something is better then nothing, much as I'd like to carefully compose my thoughts! It sometimes quite liberating to just 'nail your colours to the mast' so to speak. A colleague once told me to do that when assessing work and I think she meant 'be clear on your rationale and have conviction' although not 'to defiantly hold onto your beliefs until the end'! I've just looked it up. Nothing like a good idiom!
I'm not teaching dance at the moment as I'm still on my maternity leave and I haven't seen any live performances either so it's quite strange thinking about it all so much without the daily trickle of thoughts, observations and experiences that I usually get at work. It's a bit isolating but I'm teaching some Pilates to adults and many of the things I'm thinking about for my research are relevant to all physical teaching practices. Particularly feedback and it's relationship with confidence and performance. More on Linked-in soon.
Finally, my 9 month old baby daughter had physio today and we noticed a lateral bias which seems to be making learning to crawl a bit more difficult for her. Really interesting to see this so early, and what we can do to help her balance herself up! She cried when we tried to tempt her to roll onto the other side with her favourite toy, as if to say this feels so awkward! I know the feeling.
Sunday, 5 October 2014
The nature of questions
Hi to all, good to be in touch again, it's been a while! and nice to talk with new people on the course. So, just to follow up on the Skype meeting today.
Our conversation about questions really struck a chord with me.
It can be difficult to know how to frame a question, what language to use to give a question some clarity, to get your meaning across. But what resonated most is to remember that whatever we ask, every person responding will have their individual take on it. It will mean something different to everyone, sometimes slight differences at times huge ones, because we all have different lived experiences. We all perceive ideas and knowledge uniquely.
So this (above) can help when we want to respond to someone's question but feel we maybe don't have enough knowledge on the particular subject. The fact that we are maybe coming from a different place, and have a unique perspective and body of knowledge is interesting in itself and so our response is equally valid to that of someone who is an 'authority' on the subject.
When we put forward a question we need to explore how others might find different meaning in it to our own. That others may understand it completely differently. This leads to openness in our research and that will lead to deeper knowledge and new understanding.
It's important to remember the idea that we don't have to provide an answer, let alone the 'correct' answer, whatever the forum may be where the questions are asked, it is fine to provide our own response.
We need to learn how to ask better questions in order to gain greater insight and understanding of our research interests. I've put that in bold to remind myself!
And finally, again the idea of openness. When we ask questions, that they are asked without anticipating or encouraging a particular answer. I think that makes for better research. That we do not have to try to prove something that we think we already know the answer to.
This sums it up for me.
"adhering to the presumption of absolute and authoritarian truth is the greatest obstacle to personal inquiry and the scholarly pursuit of knowledge." (Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999)
Thanks and bye for now
Our conversation about questions really struck a chord with me.
It can be difficult to know how to frame a question, what language to use to give a question some clarity, to get your meaning across. But what resonated most is to remember that whatever we ask, every person responding will have their individual take on it. It will mean something different to everyone, sometimes slight differences at times huge ones, because we all have different lived experiences. We all perceive ideas and knowledge uniquely.
So this (above) can help when we want to respond to someone's question but feel we maybe don't have enough knowledge on the particular subject. The fact that we are maybe coming from a different place, and have a unique perspective and body of knowledge is interesting in itself and so our response is equally valid to that of someone who is an 'authority' on the subject.
When we put forward a question we need to explore how others might find different meaning in it to our own. That others may understand it completely differently. This leads to openness in our research and that will lead to deeper knowledge and new understanding.
It's important to remember the idea that we don't have to provide an answer, let alone the 'correct' answer, whatever the forum may be where the questions are asked, it is fine to provide our own response.
We need to learn how to ask better questions in order to gain greater insight and understanding of our research interests. I've put that in bold to remind myself!
And finally, again the idea of openness. When we ask questions, that they are asked without anticipating or encouraging a particular answer. I think that makes for better research. That we do not have to try to prove something that we think we already know the answer to.
This sums it up for me.
"adhering to the presumption of absolute and authoritarian truth is the greatest obstacle to personal inquiry and the scholarly pursuit of knowledge." (Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999)
Thanks and bye for now
Sunday, 15 December 2013
thoughts following group Skype tutorial
My main thoughts after today's discussion were about being in a new learning situation myself and how beneficial this is to my work.
Perhaps one of the best ways to help students is to be a student yourself. I feel I am moving much closer towards empathising with their concerns, difficulties and processes, to a much greater degree then I have been able to in the past. I'm gaining great insights from all involved in MAPPDTP as to how to provide inspiration, through the things I say or do as a teacher to help facilitate this learning process for the students I work with. Others were saying this as well this morning, but it's taken many weeks for this thought to crystallise for me!
Another point that stayed with me was about openness. Allowing for the twists and turns in progress. It's strange as I feel I can be very open in a choreographic process and quite happy not to know what I am aiming for, to accept things as they develop, but when in a more academic process there seems to be a tendency towards rigidity and inflexibility! maybe this is a result of being out of the comfort zone, trying to make sense of new knowledge and skills, and is to be expected and acknowledged.
Regarding practicalities and study tools, something that I've recently been working on is to try and prioritise, or rank, the different sources of information for the course. To decide, or find out, which are the most reliable and important, which the most up to date, which the most useful. This is also something I've been attempting to do with the various texts I've been reading.
Good to clear up the hand-in details today. I get a little confused by differences in university procedures between where I work and Middlesex so great to clarify it all.
Perhaps one of the best ways to help students is to be a student yourself. I feel I am moving much closer towards empathising with their concerns, difficulties and processes, to a much greater degree then I have been able to in the past. I'm gaining great insights from all involved in MAPPDTP as to how to provide inspiration, through the things I say or do as a teacher to help facilitate this learning process for the students I work with. Others were saying this as well this morning, but it's taken many weeks for this thought to crystallise for me!
Another point that stayed with me was about openness. Allowing for the twists and turns in progress. It's strange as I feel I can be very open in a choreographic process and quite happy not to know what I am aiming for, to accept things as they develop, but when in a more academic process there seems to be a tendency towards rigidity and inflexibility! maybe this is a result of being out of the comfort zone, trying to make sense of new knowledge and skills, and is to be expected and acknowledged.
Regarding practicalities and study tools, something that I've recently been working on is to try and prioritise, or rank, the different sources of information for the course. To decide, or find out, which are the most reliable and important, which the most up to date, which the most useful. This is also something I've been attempting to do with the various texts I've been reading.
Good to clear up the hand-in details today. I get a little confused by differences in university procedures between where I work and Middlesex so great to clarify it all.
Sunday, 1 December 2013
positive/negative learning experiences
I'm thinking today about positivity and negativity in relation to the characteristics of a learner and attempting to relate this to myself and my previous learning experiences. I've often felt reluctance to voice more negative thoughts as I worry about how it will be perceived but Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) talk about this in Reflection:Turning Experience into Learning and when reading it I felt a kind of affirmation that what I had been feeling, in relation to past training experiences, was important and should be taken into account. They use the term 'emotional load' to describe the feelings that people often carry with them from previous learning situations, whether, positive or negative, and how these feelings can have a huge impact on someones present ability to learn in certain situations. Teachers will often never know about the past experiences of their students, so I'm not sure yet what to do with this idea but I feel it will help to be more aware of this issue in my teaching practice.
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