Looking into My Inquiry Question

My question:

'Enhancing practice as a dance teacher by combining pedagogy and creativity, with my students from my theatre school within the studio.'

From looking at my title I need to make it more specific and shorter so people understand the question quicker with it being more to the point. I also need to change it as my ethics have slightly altered which may have an impact on certain words within the question.

Whilst looking into literature and doing a couple of literature reviews I feel that the understanding of my inquiry is becoming easier to visualise and the intentions and goals are becoming clearer. To help with shortening my question I am going to write down the intentions of my inquiry and the goals of what I would like to achieve to gain further vocabulary for the question.

Whilst reading books about pedagogy/ dance teaching and creativity I believe that my knowledge will become greater about previous work others have already done. With this I would like to compare, liken or disagree with this knowledge/opinion, to my own opinions and findings I have gathered over the past 6 months.

Literature Review - Teaching Dance in the 21st Century

Taken from:
Anu Sööta*, Ele Viskusb, The European Journal of Social & Behavioural Sciences (eISSN: 2301-2218), Teaching dance in the 21st century: A literature review, from University of Tartu, Estonia, pg 1.  

It is now widely accepted that transformation of dance content knowledge into knowledge for teaching and learning involves far more than dance technique and control, and that teachers need a wide range of teaching strategies to motivate and engage their students (Chappell, 2007; Shapiro, 1998; Smith-Autard, 2002; Sööt & Leijen, 2012).

Here it agrees with my understanding of needing a range of teaching strategies  to engage students within  the dance class. Within the 21st century dance classes have changed their approach to students as they are more accommodating to include students of all backgrounds.

References
Chappell, K. (2007). The dilemmas of teaching for creativity: Insights from expert specialist dance teachers. Thinking Skills and Creativity 2, 39–56.
Shapiro, S. B. (1998). Toward transformative teachers: Critical and feminist perspectives in dance education. In S.B. Shapiro (Ed.), Dance, power and difference (pp. 7–21). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Sööt, A & Leijen, Ä. (2012). Designing Support for Reflection Activities in Tertiary Dance Education. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 45, 448 - 456.  Here I believe

Literature Review - Pedagogy in Dance

I came across this video which links to my Inquiry question on how I would like to influence my  students in dance.

How to use Pedagogy in Dance

Uploaded on 22 Mar 2011

Education Director Yvonne H. Chow talking to her students during the BLADE Dance Technique® Class (Dance Theory and Dance Heuristics) lecture. She prefaced this starting with the heuristic process and learning styles of different people and then explained how to use the pedagogical approach in relation to dance classes taken outside of the conservatory:

 

 

I believe that the way in which people approach dance is completely individual and dependent on their knowledge before hand or lack of knowledge. This dictates the varied approach within the class by all students as they all see, understand and experience information, instruction, movement, choreography in different ways.

The part that strikes me the most is when Yvonne H, Chow talks about how no one is taught how to learn dance. This encouraged me to look further into my inquiry question of how to explain/put across dance in a variety of learning styles for students to find their preferred way of understanding and learning dance.

As a student I remembered struggling with rhythm and their were so many ways in which I have found help me later on in my career from trial and error. However if those tools are put in place at a young age there will be less confusion and more understanding dance students.

In some cases the idea of trying to cater for everyone is tough and you may not have the answers and tools for specific students, but by having a presence an informative approach and by asking questions at the appropriate time, something may shift in the students mind which may unlock a certain part of confusion to understand a small part of what they are trying to achieve.

 

I believe that as a dance teacher the pedagogy within dance is varied and can be hard to teach if other students have had previous training under a different pedagogy. Nevertheless, with the different learning styles and tools I hope to look further into, this could be understood, stripped back and changed in a shorter space of time.