Data collection

I am in the process of transcribing some of the video data I have.  Of course it is explained in many of the books I read on collecting data that this is a long process.  I was very worried that with my change of amount of students for the group I was studying that I wouldn't have enough data.  It was through reading the chapter on 'Writing about Data' (Holliday 2008 - Doing and Writing Qualitative Data) that I realise your data is what you make of it.  Now after spending a few hours just transcribing 30 mins of one of my videos its exciting to see the 'themes' emerging and that what I felt initially as being a random and not very organized study is starting to make sense.  Through the 'thick descriptions' of seemingly insignificant behaviours and words  I realise as a teacher I don't often really 'see' what is going on with my students other than what they doing as regards to dance steps.   Still I feel a bit behind now having underestimated the amount of data I do have and hope I get through it all in time.  Starting to feel a bit more confident that I can in fact analyse data.  Thanks Adrian Holliday!  Anyone else working with video data?   

Into the beginning of module 3- many starts!

I liked seeing Adesola's post regarding many starts.  That gave me some hope as this is how I feel my module 3 is going.  

I have started to realising my lack of organisation is a problem.  Taking onboard looking more into Somatics to aid in my inquiry has opened up a huge area where now I feel inundated and overwhelmed with too much information.  I have realised too that many of the suggestions and ideas are geared towards older students, that some of my students need to have experienced a feeling or imagery they are given in order to benefit from it.  I am also dealing with a lot of chatting and playing around as I get through my idea of the day, so not very productive sometimes.

However, using observation and quick journal notes during class has led me to notice that one or two students are ‘getting it’.  I am seeing these students start to put together sequences of steps a bit quicker.  I am not sure if that’s down to me taking more time with each exercise and not trying to teach the whole syllabus by the end of term. 

I didn’t take into consideration making time to set up the video at the beginning of the class – I was going to video three sessions and have so far managed half of one.  Students have been coming and going – a broken arm, holidays etc, so I had to get on with it yesterday and just do some videoing – before teaching a task with my somatic ideas and after.  I again feel that I’m not going to have an answer at the end of my inquiry but it will be the beginning of a much longer one.

For me, teaching with some somatic principles has been very interesting but frustrating too as I am expected to enter these students for exams in the Spring and we are not on track as it stands for us to do this, so occasionally I resort to my command style teaching in order to get steps learnt as quickly as possible.   Interestingly one student commented on this the other day and asked if I could instead 'make it more fun' by using pictures, describing words and video.  They also love working in pairs with one as the watcher and one as the doer. Unfortunately time goes by so fast that I've only tackled 2 of about 5 things I wanted to. Perhaps I'm expecting too much!  My go to book at the moment which seems to help the most with teaching classical ballet to the pre-teen age is Dance and Somatics (Brodie & Lobel 2012).  It has many useful chapters which help to give me ideas as to where to look for information next.  Here again I have to get more disciplined and write, write, write or try and record as I have about 4 books I am writing in and I just grab whichever one is to hand - as a result I have loose papers all gathered in one file in random order; the sort of disorganisation which one my find oneself at tax time when sorting receipts. 

If anyone has come across teaching somatically with children specifically I would love to take a look at that information.  I am hoping my inquiry starts to gel more and start to make sense!  

Ideas for module 2

I hadn't read the module handbook when I came up with the idea of looking into the use of imagery as a teaching tool for ballet students.  I teach a wide variety of ages from 5 to 18 and started trying out imagery ideas which would be appropriate for the developmental stage for each age group as of course you have to tailor your verbal imagery for example depending on their own stage of understanding and experience.  Then I read the handbook and saw imagery and teaching was an example of potential research study.  Would it seem then that I'm copying that? So not sure whether to do something else.

From the idea of tailoring teaching for understanding to the different ages I teach  I also thought of the topic of teaching ballet to incorporate differing learning styles.  Having had two (now grown up!) children who occasionally struggled in school due to their learning style which was primarily visual/tactile I thought this would be a good area to study.  However this could be a huge topic so I would narrow my focus to the group of students I teach most frequently which is the age 7-11 age group.  Still deciding how I would go about this, perhaps using questionnaires to help determine each child's primary learning style? since we overlap our learning styles there is usually one or two ways which seem to dominate.  Then perhaps a questionnaire towards the end of the session of classes to see how they felt/responded.

Any thoughts on those two ideas would be greatly appreciated!