TASK 3B: Theories Relating to Networking

TASK 3B- Theories relating to networking

Cooperation

When looking at the idea of cooperation my initial reaction was that of mixed reviews. It discusses the idea that to co-operate effectively is where “one player succeeds at another’s expense’’ this view is that of a very selfish one where the need to succeed is to do anything within your power to be successful. I believe that within the Arts for professional work this is a trait that we have all experienced at some point in our lives where we would have the need to stand out to get chosen or to impress your dance teacher in class. While a certain degree of competition is good as it creates a sense of wanting to prove oneself, however I am of the thinking that if I am kind and supportive to those around me then I will get the same degree of support in return.

Which leads me onto saying I completely agree with Katie Hurley’s idea that why we can’t work together to achieve what we wants as appose to taking advantage of someone to achieve what you want.

I am in two minds about the theory of Cooperation as my thinking of cooperation is to combine, join together and share ideas as appose to in a sense steal the idea’s of someone else to achieve what you want. However the need to suceed in buisness does sometimes mean that you need to be a little ruthless to achieve what you need. I have seen and reflected from the negatives and the positives of each aspect.  

Affiliation

The idea of Affiliation is that humans “enjoy and benefit from affiliations with others and why humans form relationships” and that the “network of support will help us when we are in need” I can completely agree and relate to this theory in that I bounce off so well within a team and work best when surrounded by people I know, love and get on well with. Working within a strong team who communicate well is vital in the key to maintaining a successful business. For example when doing a show I previously worked well alongside Jo Dilly, the Ballet Teacher. We were working within a school that had a majority of smaller groups within each class. We worked together to create a story entitled “The Toy Shop Journey” that would focus more on them as characters than dancers due to the mixed abilities within the group.

O’Connor & Rosenblood discuss the idea of “preferred levels of social stimulation”. Which combines the idea of the ‘’individual needing to maintain privacy at preferred levels’’ To relate this within the Teaching aspect I feel that I come across as a very confident well together individual and struggle when people are sometimes not so engaging and open minded. Particularly when teaching some quiet more shy students I find it difficult to sometimes bring them out of their shells and communicate with me. This has made me review myself as a teacher and times when you need to be more sensitive to an approach or a particular child to adapt and relate to them.

I completely agree from looking at Kym Walton’s view of not gaining to close and allowing a certain degree of distance from student to teacher. I have always tried to remain professional however create a close bond with the students I am teaching but a certain degree of ‘’privacy’’ is important when teaching.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that in the past I have formed friendships with people who I feel I could gain something from to improve my career or future job perceptions. It was purely done as a means of improving my own technique skills and experience as a teacher however sometimes realise that the opposing view did not always see it that way. However sometimes this may work in your favour without even realising it. I once offered a position within a show from knowing a director of a show I had appeared in the previous year. This could relate to the idea of “its not who you know it’s what you know”. Which I strongly believe can be the key to success within this profession.

Social Constructionism

One of the key principles of this is that it is done so by the thought of ‘Social Interaction’ and the idea that humans construct meaning of the world and their experiences of it. The thought that the world is ‘out there’ however they way we understand it is construction or a creation of our own making. It describes the importance of social process plays a huge part in how we come to understand professional networks and networking. It explains that through “interactions we can make meanings”.

To relate this to my own practise I found this to be quite a difficult task however my understanding is that through working together you can create an idea or meaning. From my previous experience I know that through working alongside someone; particularly on show choreography is so effective and worthwhile. It is relating to the old saying “a problem shared is a problem halved”. Also that the way in which we understand and view the world is different but can relate and share these varying ideas through interaction.

To interact with other members of the BAPP students is paramount in gaining the understanding and meaning of ideas that I may have not known previously.

TASK 2C-Critical Reflection

Boud explains that Adult Educators may write a journal to ‘record an event, explore our feelings and make sense of what we know. It can be used to improve what we do and the way we go about doing it. Within the Arts I believe that as we are constantly being judged whether it is through an examination, within a class, on a stage production we continually need to be self motivated and self critical. Something which I feel we as people are not naturally comfortable in doing. Within the profession we need to accept critism as a way of learning. Personally I feel that by writing a journal then we are able to write down our positives and negatives thoughts as a way of progressing. He describes the importance of journal writing as a form of ‘self expression, a record of events and a form of therapy’ it is a way of recording events and increase our understanding of what we do and they way we go about doing it.


Boud continues to discuss the theory behind the theory of the way in which an experience can link with reflection and learning. Learning has been described in the Reader as a new idea not as simple as it seems. Reflection includes looking at the aspects of the event and drawing on trying to make sense of what happened including any thoughts, feeling or emotions that occurred along the way. The way in which we can use reflection can be used in many different ways and activities such as workshops, events of the past and of the present day. Relating to learning conditions the journal is the place in which the events are processed and transformed. This is therefore intended to make sense of the learning, reflect on the experience to form future effective reflective practice.


The value of having the ability to personally reflect on your professional practice is paramount for self learning. As I previously stated within the Arts one is constantly being judged and criticized that learning to record one’s personal perspectives on the event would help to improve skills as a performer. The recording of the corrections given within a class would help dramatically if you had written them down than just from relying on memory alone.


Personally I always struggled to retain information and whilst training as a dancer if I had recorded my own information of the corrections given or the exercises learnt in the lesson I would have progressed quicker within my training than I did


The way we learn all stems from previous perceptions of our understanding. As Learners we bring our own personal perceptions of an experience. Past experiences can play a significant role in what we count as important, they can make us become very susceptible to some features and dismiss us from others. He describes the thought process that Learning from experience is an active one, involving us as learners to be engaging to these events of which they are part of. However the advantage of engaging in any event can change our perspective and the aspects of what we think as important.


Relating journals to aspect of education can be encouraged by the use of having a day to day diary format, a chart, a picture or a video extract. Particularly within the Arts if the student doesn’t have access to a mirror then the most effective way of reviewing and reflecting on their work is by a visual aid. Boud discusses the importance of establishing the difference between writing for learning and writing for assessment. Thoughts, frustrations and feelings they may develop along the way could be considered inappropriate for an assessor to overview, however important in them engaging in their experiences upon reflection. To maintain an effective way of journal writing as a teacher you could focus on three aspects they wish to reflect over a period of time. For example it could be their group interaction, self motivation and the way in which they learn. This could be used as a group interaction activity as a tool to illustrate their own personal struggles and aspirations


Moon describes a number of reasons of the importance for writing journals. To enable learner’s to understand their own way of learning which I feel is a valuable tool to understand how you learn as a student. She also discuss’ that it enhances professional practice’ for example when preparing for a show or an examination is vital in sustaining the knowledge of the choreography. As I previously wrote us as individuals can sometimes not be good at being self critical. Moon states that it can ‘’deepen the quality of learning, in the form of critical thinking or developing a questioning attitude’ through using question and answer to write down your thoughts and emotions you are engaging and self reflecting at the same time. To encourage a way of drawing the group together and engaging with each other moons view is that it acts to ‘foster reflective and creative interaction in a group’ as it may be a very interesting and useful tool to perhaps share each others journals, thoughts and reflect together.

Task 2C-Relatrionship with Reflective Practise

Relationship with Reflective Practise

            The Relationship I have with Reflective Practise within my profession came when I was doing an Observation Module. Initially I began observing another teacher to understand and gain the knowledge of the varying aspects of a class. I would then have to plan a lesson and evaluate at the end of the lesson whether my plan was successful, if I had covered everything I had intended on doing and if I had achieved my aim. If it was not achieved I would need to evaluate the reasons why and make any alterations for the future. There would be different aspects of the class each week that I would need to pinpoint and then reflect on. This provided me a far clearer understanding of how to reflect on upon myself as a teacher and the effect I would had upon the students. At first I found this to be a very difficult task, as you have to analyse yourself of the positives and negatives of the way in which you teach. To develop the need to allow sufficient time for each aspect of the class to be delivered effectively.

TASK 2C-REFLECTIVE THEORY

Looking Outward

I choose to combine all of the Theories I have reviewed and discuss them as a whole....

The elements I will be reflecting upon of my Professional Practice are my Teaching and Performance based work. Definition of Reflection- The day to day activity we engage in gives information that we can draw from experience. Experience is observation of facts or events practice in doing something. From looking at the Reader many thinkers have looked at how we turn experience into learning and written about the tools they feel we should use to do this.

The key to Reflection is that we are learning from the experience and extending our own knowledge and understanding of the ways in which we reflect. John Dewey was interested in experience and said there were different levels of experience. He felt that the educational process is a ‘’continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience’’ which I feel whilst at school one does not fully appreciate and should be seen as a learning curve for all involved. It demonstrates that his theory is that we are always learning, engaging and changing from our experiences. His theory behind a reflective thought is that you should be engaging repetitively and with cautious concern. He felt that people who had a full experience and would be fully engaging within their lives that they would become a better part of society and have a better understanding to be able to deal with worldly problems.

This is a vital tool for engaging fully within the experience, I feel that it’s a vital tool for us to always try and fully engage to the best of our ability in whatever the experience may be and that school should be viewed as a learning curve for all involved. I felt that I was always learning from experience when you could view that I learn through my mistakes and to this day am still learning. I can remember viewing school as a chore as at the time you’re mentally very young and don’t have the capacity to appreciate it for what it is until you leave. In this current day school is so focused at getting the right results for the schools reputation when they should actually be focusing all of their time and energy into motivating the students to draw out the best of their individual ability.

In particular he felt that the integration within the Arts led to a ‘unique and valuable experience’. This is a fantastic view of being involved in the Arts whether it is within the Public or Private sector. There is so much experience you can gain from being involved such as self confidence, skill, ability, focus, self motivation, socially interaction and enjoyment. In the sense of Education I am so grateful that the curriculum has improved in its subject offering a wider variety of options for students wishing to pursue a career within the Arts as so many students are not academically minded that having the option to choose a more creative subject is excellent. 

I always do try and remind my students that until they are physically doing the movement repetitively they will not fully grasp the understanding of it at times. Therefore I feel that the students will learn kinesthetically, by physically doing the movement as appose to logically or mathematically.  Gardener also talked about the idea of VAK, Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning.  He also introduced the idea of ‘multiple lenses’ meaning the way in which we learn are like looking through the lenses at ‘learning and being a learner’. These theories were designed by Gardner to provide to the reader a clear understanding of the way in which we learn and engage. Within the lesson you could improve on each others way of learning by putting two students together; one who may learning logically and mathematically and the other musically to improve their learning skills

Twyla Tharp explains the idea of Muscle Memory where ‘‘her memory of the movement doesn’t need to be accessed through conscious effort’’ she has a physical understanding of the way in which to perform the movement ‘nonverbally’. I always use this to encourage my students who are struggling when learning a particular skill and to be able to perform something through the use of muscle memory only comes through the use of repetition

Relating in particular to dancers the practitioners Tufnell, Tharp and Moon show that the way we reflect does not have to happen through a written method. However they emphasize having the ability to communicate these ideas by means of poems, journals, sketches and drawings. The ability to be able to communicate the reflective process verbally is vital in gaining the understanding of the knowledge that has been learnt by the student within the class.

Schon’s introduced the idea of ‘Reflection in action’ where you are reflecting on it whilst it is happening. For example when one would be demonstrating a combination of steps across the floor and something is going wrong you would adapt on the spot to make improvements. This tends to be the ‘Hands on’ approach. He also had the thought of ‘Reflection on action’ whereby you would evaluate the process afterwards. To relate this to the dance class I feel that amending on the spot is difficult task to grasp and one that you may do when you are older as you have to have the complete understanding of knowing what is right or wrong. However to reflect on it afterwards is a functional way of digesting the movement for self correction and at times one may not be aware of the fact that you were wrong.

Kolb’s Learning Cycle

            Kolb’s view on Reflection is a cycle format. He believed that it is important to have the ability to recognize that you have had an experience and having the tools to be able to reflect on that experience. Relating this aspect of learning to teaching dance is essential in establishing the reason behind the way in which we learn and the reason for it. The cycle begins with the Concrete experience meaning the student is leaning whilst actually doing the movement. The Reflective Observation is where the student would learn by seeing others around them doing it and then reviewing and reflecting on that experience throughout. The Abstract Conceptualization is having the need to work it out in their heads first before applying it. The Active Experimentation is to conclude and learn from the experience and to try and plan out what they have learnt. He stated that the point in which you would learn and enter the cycle would differ from one person to the next and this is known as your learning style.