The “Shadow Movements”: Teachers’ Profession and Performance in the Arts-Based Research Perspective
Author(s):
Conference:
ECER 2016
Format:
Paper

Session Information

29 SES 06, Artists and Teachers

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-24
15:30-17:00
Room:
NM- J114
Chair:
Lara Soares

Contribution

Educational research, in recent years, focusing its attention on different ways of acquiring and transmitting knowledge within educational contexts, has focused a special attention on practical experience of teachers (performance and efficacy). This interest became valuable material for the understanding of the whole teaching-learning processes.

It is especially the Practice Based Studies that have exerted a new influence in the reading and understanding of teachers’ work. The attention to the concept of practice allows a different interpretation of the work that is now understood as a space, as a context (in the broadest meaning of the term) in which specific skills are created, transmitted, and stored (Shilling, 2003; Schatzi, Knorr-Cetina, von Savigny, 2001).

The study of body, movements, and relationships in the workplace then becomes a turning point in the educational research. Questions such as what it could mean to be, to practice, and to learn as a professional become significant. The importance of the body it can be recognised in the attempt of practice theorists to describe embodied human activity as know how, dispositions, skills, and tacit knowledge (Landri, 2012). «Practice and expertise are always embodied, in ways that are not always discernible to traditional research» (Green, Hopwood, 2015: 5).

In this perspective new interpretative categories such as performance, choreography, and dance can be identified and used. More specifically, the category of choreography has enabled the study of working practices as improvised, structured, contextualised, and embedded activities, highlighting the main actor staged: the body. Studies on choreography and on the analysis of choreographic style (Bagley, Cancienne, 2002; Duerden, Fisher, 2007; Eliot, 2007; Foster, 2011) highlighted the crucial features that this kind of analysis can reveal. Adshead et al. (1988) define a choreographic style as «the typical selection of materials by a choreographer, with regard to movement vocabulary, dynamic range, use of space, structuring devices and so on, in relation to thematic material». Besides, Duerden and Fisher (2007) consider the “choreographic style” as an attitude that the choreographer has with regard to dancers and dancers’ representation of self within the dance. This constitutes key issues in defining how we perceive the dances and how we understand them.

This perspective becomes even more relevant if we consider also theories in support of a research oriented towards movement analysis. R. Laban, one the most important theorists of the movement, based his studies on the assumption that every movement and every part of our body reveals something that goes beyond the mere behaviourist reading.

This study takes place in the teachers’ education field and it is aimed to study teaching practice as choreography, as an artistic practice performed by teachers in the classroom.

Research questions stated to develop the project are as follows:

  • Is it possible to identify a choreographic style in teachers’ activities?
  • Can Art help to understand strengths and weakness points in teachers’ work?
  • What kind of knowledge do teachers convey with their body?

 

Method

The analysis both of the body and of the choreography staged by teachers in their classroom will be realised using the art, and specifically, the dance, as a “lens” to observe the reality. The dance according to the approach of the Arts-Based Research will be also considered as a “dress” to acquire a posture in order to manage and organise all the research phases. Arts-Based Research (ABR), defined as «a systematic use of the artistic process, the actual making of artistic expressions in all of the different forms of arts as a primary way of understanding and examining experience by both researchers and the people that they involve in their studies» (McNiff, 2007: 29), has recently proven to make a significant contribution to the knowledge that researchers may have of reality. We are speaking about the need to adopt and follow new and unreleased paths of knowledge construction. «Art based research is an effort to extend beyond the limiting constraints of discursive communication in order to express meanings that otherwise would be ineffable» (Barone, Eisner, 2012: 1). Despite takes his training to the wider qualitative paradigm, taking borrowed several methods and tools, ABR has become something else that goes beyond mere methodological connotation. The challenge is to understand how the ABR, in its complexity, can help open up new areas of knowledge that will enable researchers and practitioners to take new awareness through a wider vision of reality. Following these considerations, in this study, dance and choreography (Foster, 2011) will be used as concepts to interpret teachers’ work. For data collection both quantitative and qualitative instruments have been used in order to perform a mixed-method path for analysis. Data analysis provides field observation (with video recording) to a sample of teachers during their daily work. Labanotation has been used in order to analyse teachers’ movements analytically. This notation has been analysed more deeply, thanks to interviews with expert choreographers, in order to identify key characteristics of teachers’ movements. Besides the analysis of movement, an analysis of teaching activities has also been performed in order to contextualise teachers’ movements. The match of the two analyses has provided the teachers’ choreographic style.

Expected Outcomes

The importance of a study on body and its role in a working practice becomes relevant if we consider the meanings that the body might convey in today’s society. R. Laban (1920) affirms that any phase of body movement reveals something that cannot be said in other ways. Art, in general, and performing arts, in particular, can help researchers in this sense. «Artists have potential to significantly contribute to the generation of new understandings, not only on artistic practice, but also on knowledge and society in general» (Barbour, 2011: 86). Different ways to knowing needs different ways to study that knowledge (Barbour, 2011). New approaches not only can help teaching-learning activities, but they can give an important contribution to researchers in order to implement new ways to understanding (Janesick, 2000; 1994). Furthermore, this kind of studies could change the way in which teacher education is thought and practiced. The focus on the body awareness and its “shadow movements” could have important implication not only for the teacher education paths, but also in the way in which teachers, researchers, and professionals in general, develop their professional knowledge.

References

Adshead J., briginshaw V.A., Hodgens P., and Huxley M. (1988). Dance Analysis: Theory and Practice. London: Dance Books. Bagley, C., Cancienne, M.B. (2002). Dancing the Data. New York: Peter Lang. Barbour K. (2011). Dancing across the page. Chicago: The University Chicago Press. Barone, T., Eisner, E.W. (2012). Arts Based Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Routledge. Booth D., Hachiya M. (2000). The Arts Go to School: Classroom-based Activities that Focus on Music, Painting, Drama, Movement, Media, and More…. Ontario, Canada: Pembroke Publishers. Bräuer G. (2002) (Ed.). Body and Language: Intecultural Larning through Drama. Wastport, CT: Ablex Publishing. Brown A. (1986). Elementary school dance: teaching rhythms and educational forms, Journal of Physical Education Recreation and Dance, 57(2), 39-45. Brown C. (1999). Un packing the body. Dance Theatre Journal, 14(4), 12-16. Duerden R., Fisher N. (2007). Dancing of the page. Integrating performance, choreography, analysis and notation/documentation. Hampshire: Dance Books Publications. Foster S.L. (2011). Choreographing empathy. New York, NY: Routledge. Green B., Hopwood N. (2015). Introduction: Body/Practice?. In B. Green and N. Hopwood (eds.). The Body in Professional Practice, Learning and Education (pp. 3-14). Dordrecht: Springer. Harrison K. (1993). Lets dance: the place of dance in the primary school. London: Holder and Stoughton. Janesick, V. J. (1994). The Dance of Qualitative Research Design. In N. K Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 209-219). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Janesick, V. J. (2000). The Choreography of Qualitative Research Design: Minuets, Improvisations, and Crystallization. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research. (pp. 379-399).Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Laban R., L. Ullmann (2011). The Mastery of movement. Humpshire, UK: Dance Books Ltd. Landri, P. (2012). A return to practice: Practice-based studies of education. In P. Hage, A. Lee, and A. Reich (eds.), Practice, learning and change: Practice-theory perspectives on professional learning (pp. 85-100). Dordrecht: Springer. McNiff S. (2007). Art-based research. In J. G. Knowles, A. L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Schatzki, T., Knorr-Cetina, K., von Savigny, E. (Eds.) (2001). The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge Shilling, C. (2003). The body and social theory. London: Sage Publications.

Author Information

Monica Pentassuglia (presenting / submitting)
University of Verona, Italy
University of Bari, Italy
University of Verona, Italy

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