Module 3760

My research is going well and i have started to get some interesting findings
i am now researching the adolescence brain development and finding it fascinating
it seems to me to shed some light on why girls seem to loose direction from 14 plus in the rigorous and discipline area of ballet and move over to less demanding and more free flowing forms of dance for example hip hop. The research now points to the biological in a fundamental changes to brain structure.

When i started to research the lack of retention in ballet  i had no idea of the myriad of reasons and motivations that point to an often underestimated central shift in teenage physiology

Where did the summer go!

Times gone far to quick!!!
Well here goes the final module! Good luck everyone x

Critical Reflection in summary: Digital Portfolio

Critical Reflection Portfolio

I need to develop my survey to ask the same students about the perceptions of examination in both ballet and other genres to see if examinations are an issue. The holistic nature of my survey perhaps was not narrow enough to get a clear picture of the final problem, but from eyeballing my results I can see this will help me to identify other trends I had not considered before such as examination difficulty and achievement. I feel although my questionnaire gave the option of being anonymous students may not have answered truthfully as I was present in the room, students may have felt as they handed the questionnaire to me intimated. With my next survey I am going to repeat some of the questions about my teaching and get a critical friend to deliver to the students and also collect the raw data so the students don’t feel they have to respond positively to questions about my teaching. I need to focus on the vocabulary I use to promote a longer term career view and show ballet as being more than just ballerinas. I also need to work on body confidence body dismorphia with the class I plan to achieve this by being more open in the class.

I found the workshop I presented to the students extremely helpful to my teaching. I teach both subjects and my approaches to the two are clearly different. By eyeballing I can see results show my ballet students had a deeper understanding of technical vocabulary which on reflection I feel is from the way I deliver this subject. I need to translate my good practice from ballet in to the hip hop lessons by using Pilates to gain strength good body awareness and stamina to the students which will in the future help to retain students in ballet by not using words like “to be a ballerina” and to focus on the strength and the benefits in studying ballet.

Examinations failure is a massive area which again comes down to motivation low self-esteem and confidence. The British Ballet Organization (BBO) free style award schemes do not fail students the results are given on the day with a result grading Pass Merit Distinction. Students receive a certificate and a badge on the same day which to the students is an immediate confidence boost and immediate gratification. I know want to explore and research this further using a survey to students and also interviewing a teacher at The British Ballet Organization.

 My Next Steps:

Things I intend to do to promote and motivate my students in ballet further are;

1. To develop the use of language in relation to ballet to prevent pupils having a narrow view of what ‘ballerina’ is and develop aspiration and eliminate the fear of failure.

2. To develop the use of technical vocabulary in Hip Hop lessons to improve vocabulary attainment

3. To be aware and perform more research around the image of ballet in the 21^st century

4. Look in to examination boards marking criteria

5. Survey to students about examinations and my teaching

6. Visit a local dance school

Task: 6b

I found all methods extrmely useful in different ways but all helping my research. I found the survey opening many other questions but was good to see the outcome of the questions clearly, i would now like to develop my survey to ask about the students perceptions of examination in both ballet and other genres. The holistic nature of my survey perhaps was not narrow enough to get a clear picture of the final problem, but it helped me to identify other trends I had not considered before such as examination difficulty and achievement. I will now look in to this matter more closely through student survey. I may am alos going to get a critical friend to deliver the survey to the students and collect the raw data so the students don’t feel they have to respond positively to questions about my teaching. I feel I need to focus on the vocabulary I use to promote a longer term career view and show ballet as being more than just ballerinas. I also need to work on body confidence body dismorphia with the class I plan to achieve this by being more open in the class.

I teach both subjects and my approaches to the two are clearly different. My results showed my ballet students had a deeper understanding of technical vocabulary which on reflection I feel is from the way I deliver this subject. I need to translate my good practice from ballet in to the hip hop lessons by using Pilates to gain strength good body awareness and stamina to the students which will in the future help to retain students in ballet by not using words like “to be a ballerina” and to focus on the strength and the benefits in studying ballet.

Task: 6c

Literture

Howard Gardner displays an interesting theory that the attempt to succeed with any intelligence will come to nothing if students are not motivated or attentive within a class:

‘to train any – indeed, all – of the intelligences are like to come to nought in the absence of proper motivation and sufficiently focused attention.’ (Howard Gardner, 1993, Frames of minds, Pg. 288)

But how do we achieve this, according to Wikipedia there are two forms that best describe motivation: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation which refers to self-motivation and motivation from reward schemes:

‘Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Motivational_theories accessed 1st April 2012 ‘Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the individual……… rewards like money and grades’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Motivational_theories accessed 1st April 2012

  ‘…as children grow, their passion for learning frequently seems to shrink’ http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/Student_Motivatation.html accessed 1st April 11th 2012

If this is the case and the desire to learn and progress is shrinking we need to home in on how to continue to motivate students and reignite their passion to learn through extrinsic motivation.

These set of scholarly ideas that at best represent a small fraction of what is written on motivation of young people. There is little consensus in this area apart from young people need to receive praise and reward to build self-esteem.

Task: 6a

Please see the link below on another survey I conducted
Your thoughts on this would be appreciated
I apologise ....It is slightly long
Thank you
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1VQIPPhrUFdsyiEo1OMHW73Wsyb26YZJ_nxHJH5kZ5Dg

Task: 6a

Focus Group Findings:

The findings to the question “what do you think ballet is” showed that with the ballet students at the beginning of the workshop their perception of ballet was ‘posh, flexibility, strength, hard, fun perfection’ whereas the Hip hop perception of ballet was ‘boring, strict, leotard, slow, tutus, perfection’. The word perfection repeated which was interesting to me because an informal discussion of these spider diagrams showed they did not think hip hop had to be perfect, this made me aware that, was this just students picking the ‘easy option’ in terms of discipline. The Ballet student’s responses use of vocabulary was more technical reflecting a deeper educational understanding of dance. My use of language in both lessons are different, I use more technical terms within ballet classes and I am less strict about using these terms in the hip hop class. These finding made me reassess my language and perception within both classes suggesting to me that, is my use of language and lack of communication with the students the reason students are turning to hip hop.

Through the development of the workshop when looking at body images, my finding showed pupils misplaced them showing that another reason for this decline in ballet could be their perception of their body image having a low self-esteem is resulting in the students not being motivated because they don’t feel like they can be a ballerina or why they need it to study ballet at all. This was interesting to me as the results from the survey questions (16/17) were about confidents with peers and self-assessment backed up my reason to believe that image is an issue with the ballet students.

A student also brought to my attention through a passing comment that ‘examinations are way easier in hip hop’ this is an area that I never would of considered if she had not spoken out. This was very interesting to me as examinations are taken annually at the dance school although they are not compulsory students do want some gratification of achievement through their study and do seem to take the examination. 

By the end of the workshop both the ballet and hip hop students showed a much deeper understanding of ballet and the career opportunities ballet offers. The ballet students responses were ‘Good knowledge for auditions, jobs’ this relates to question (4/12) of survey because it shows that these students have a longer term view of the dance career. Hip hop students began to recognise its importance but one commented that it was easier to get it wrong in ballet which showed me students had a fear of failure in ballet as it becomes more complex which again comes back to motivation self-esteem and confidence.