The Reading Begins...

I'm finishing up a flurry of administration details still, which is a pain, but I'm enjoying the start of research, which is decidedly not a pain. I've been tackling Judith Bell's Doing Your Research Project  and am about halfway through. It's a great read.

I've also been starting to let thoughts percolate about my project in general. I've known since I started module one what direction I wanted to take it in generally, but I do mean generally. I want to do something with dancers learning how to think, collaborate, and take responsibility for their own learning--so in the vein of how does one teach dancers to think? What does that mean? What is the value of it?

One of the papers that I did for my graduate pedagogy class several years back was about the authority structures in the classroom and the differences between ballet (authoritarian, usually) and modern (more collaborative) class atmospheres. It was absolutely fascinating research, and ever since then I've had it on my radar as something I want to look into more, as one of my key goals as a teacher is teaching my students how to think and evaluate their own technique and artistry and learn how to grow themselves forward.

Currently the first problem I'm running into that all the ballet lessons I'm teaching right now are private lessons and my modern class is the group class. So if I wanted to do any kind of research on ballet classrooms, my sample size is really too small. That means hunting for more classes to teach next year, a time-consuming process, but one that is going to affect which way I can take my research.

How is everyone else's week going? For module twos, what thoughts are beginning to percolate about your project? And for module ones and threes, how is the start of the module going? I'd also love to chat about teaching thinking skills in the classroom, so by all means comment on that too!