Base it in your practice - but don't use anyone that is involved in your practice...

After this evening's MORE zoom discussion, I am really struggling with where I want to go with it all.

How do I a research project on my practice without using the people who are involved in my practice?

I feel like without discovering my students experience through their journey with dance education through the exchange of knowledge and learning from myself, then the information I am collating is still only from a practitioner perspective. 

I appreciate the ethical implications of speaking to students, but surely speaking to teachers means they put their own interpretation and understanding of a situation. As an example, can a teacher tell me that the student's mental health improves when they participate in an activity? The teacher/practitioner might believe it does (through observation, I as a teacher, might conclude it does) but surely the truth lies with the student?

Yes the MA is in Dance technique pedagogy, however surely the reason most get into teaching is not for our own benefit. It is to help students reach their full potential and by discovering and tapping into each avenue that could affect this journey and improve it. 

To find theses avenues do you not need a mixture of both our own experience, other practitioner experience and knowledge and also how that knowledge is being taken on board and felt within the body and minds of our students.

I saw a nice quote on Linked In by Adam Grant today and it sums up for me what I wanted out of this Master Programme.

I suppose it was naïve of me to think I could create a piece of research that would change their lives for the better in such a short amount of time. 

Rome wasn't built in a day. I was just hoping at least for a small wishing well in the corner of the land to be completed, but I suppose this Masters in now building the foundations of the well rather than completing it.

I am at the place where I feel pretty stuck, slightly disappointed and as always with this, incredibly overwhelmed. 

Best wishes everyone

P.S In regards to these feelings, I have been struck with the lurgy that seems to be going around. I'm definitely looking at it through the lens of an extremely, non human feeling entity at the moment, which doesn't help. Hopefully the world will clear along with my sinuses and be a better place!

Comments

  1. Paola N.October 12, 2021 at 2:52 AM

    Hi Charlotte, this sounds like a great turning point in your research. Although you may feel it as if it's at an embryo stage, as you said, you are building the foundation of your well. I am struck by Grant's definition of meaning making. It is subjective, as for the mental health progression of a student. I am personally trying to dig into what truth is, and how our phenomenological approach to our practices makes a difference to other students lives. If you look at research just as an expedient for changing angle, then this feeling of being overwhelmed may ease perhaps. It's all about the process and not the final product that adds taste and color to your own experience.

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    Replies
    1. Charlotte DavisOctober 13, 2021 at 8:38 AM

      Thank you so much for reaching our Paola with your comment. It definitely has given more of a journey and process to unpick for the artefact section of this project.

      In regards to your approach I thought this was a fab quote...

      "The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.
      Maurice Merleau-Ponty"

      ...especially with the reference to art and education. It’s bringing the truth or possibly the technique into the being of each body, through which way you see fit?

      Delete

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