MA Professional Practice in Dance Technique Pedagogy

1st Skype meeting for module 2 La st Friday we had our first skype meeting for module 2. In this skype meeting, there were people from module 1, 2 and 3. Each one expressed his/her opinion and feelings for the previous module(s). It was a "what to expect" discussion as each one gave his/her tips to others in terms of work load, time-management etc. For sure, it was positive and reliefing to hear that others have experienced the same feelings or they had the same thoughts as I have. This discussion led me to think the term "knowledge" and "how we gain knowledge". According to Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, "knowledge is information and understanding about a subject which a person has, or which people have". During the first module, we approached knowledge and understanding through the form of previous personal experiences and reflection. In fact, we tried to analyze and evaluate each experience and understand which aspects of the exp...

1st Skype meeting of the month Yesterday morning we had a very enlightening discussion about four main subjects: Multiple professional identities in dance, mental health and psychology for those who work in the dance field, flavor-technique and discipline inside the classroom. The multiple professional identities in dance are the subject that I brought up. I was really amazed to see that some of the participants had the experience of transition from one identity to another (dancer to teacher). During the discussion, one said that being a dancer is "all abouτ you", correcting your own body and learning; on the other hand, the teacher pays attention to others, does not receive any feedback and sometimes he/she maybe feel lonely through this reflective process of transfering knowledge to others. Concluding, being a dancer is a self-center identity while being a teacher is put into the center the others and what the other need. From all the subjects that we analyzed yesterda...

First Skype meeting  In the first Skype meeting  on October 1st we discussed several important theoretical questions. Firstly, there was a short discussion for the difficulty to explain what we know to a fellow dancer. This led to important questions : how do we prove something we know? is there a need to prove something? These questions rely upon the positivist theory. Positivism : The belief that objective accounts of the world can be given, and that the function of science is to develop explanations in the form of universal laws, that is, to develop nomothetic knowledge. (Punch and Oancea, 2014) However, dance is a subject that requires multiple approaches and inquiry rather than  research that proves something. As a result, we concluded that this MA has a non-positivist stance and generally we are more prompt to use this stance in our forthcoming inquiry and during our reflection moments. In the last part of the conversation, we discussed about frameworks. We...