Task 5A.

Task 5A. ethics in my workplace

 

In my work setting there are a variety of categories that come together to complete the ethics of my workplace working together in harmony and without one the balance would be tipped creating an unsettled working environment, the sections I have thought about are as follows;

 

My personal ethics as a teacher;

-make sure I am fully capable to take the class I am about to teach.

-that I have the correct insurance, crb check and any other forms that may be needed.

-to make sure I know all the health and safety regulations of the building.

-to be respectful to all pupils that attend my classes.

-to notify parents of out of character behavior from the pupils.

- make sure everyone in my class is capable of the class structure.

- to maintain a basic structure of the class is kept each week.

-professional boundaries are kept between me and my pupils.

 

Ethics of the students;

-To be respectful of me as the teacher and others in the class.

-To be aware of safety hazards whilst in the class.

-To be wearing the correct uniform.

 

Ethics of the parents of the students;

-To have given consent for me to teach there children.

-To be respectful of my class environment and not disrupt the lesson.

-To be respectful of my teaching methods and decisions as a teacher.

 

Ethics of the work place (the owners of the space that we rent)

-To ensure all health and safety issues are clearly marked and know about.

-Ensure fire exits are clearly sign posted.

-Make sure the facilities are clean and well maintained.

 

Looking at these points I have noted it is not one thing or one person that makes up the ethics of a workplace it is a collective, and can be an object of change or viewed differently by varying individuals. Things that I view as ethically important from my point of view as a teacher may not be viewed the same by that of a parent. I think that it is difficult to pin point the actual ethics of another person without actually being in the roll myself. What I have as ethically correct the may not be what someone else thinks or the reasoning behind it could be different, As the view point of the eithcal issue could be viewed via consequentialism, Deontology or Virtue all have different meanings but could all be discussed around the same ethical issue.

Developing my questions.

After been given feedback from alun and reading his blog post;

The art of asking

I began to think about my questions again and redefine them so that they are more focused and not so general on a wide scope.

How essential is it to have performance qualifications to run your own dance school?

Could become

What qualities does holding a vocational collage performing arts qualification give to teachers running their own dance school based in the north west?

Here I have given the questions an agency as I would be specifically looking at the teachers viewpoint, I have also stated a location that I would be looking into so that I could narrow my research field to something that I would be able to fully look into given the time scale and my location.

 

)With so much of this year being focused on the olympics and fitness i wanted to question how fitness based and conscious a dance class should be?

How much of a ks2 after school dance class for girls is geared towards fitness?

 
With this questions I first took away the ‘Should’ so taking away an underlying truth, I then went on to state a specific age group and gender thus closing in the scope and giving me a direct focus group to look at.

 

How beneficial is dance not only to our physical but also our mental state, in the recreational and the professional sense?

This question was a very wide question that I could not possibly have the time or resources to look into properly so I needed to scale down the inquiry more.

I decided to split it into two sepertate questions;

How benificial is dance class to the over 40s for physical and mental well being?

Here I have gave a specific age group and stated that it is a dance class that they would be partaking in narrowing my scope down.

In what ways does being a professiona femalel dancer just starting her career effect the mental state?

With this question I have geared it more to a specific topic ‘mental state’ and narrowed it down by stating the gender and stated the age range I would also be looking at.

 

I feel this is just the beginning of my redefining of questions and even developing new ones but I wanted to blog my thoughts so that I can see that I am on the right path and see my progression as I go along.

 

Interesting Article.

An interesting article that I found is posted in my SIG group

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/BAPP-dance-education-4664320/about

Or find the link at the bottom of this blog, i found it a particularly interesting read as I began to think about my task 4A and more questions that I could take from this.

 

How beneficial is dance not only to our physical but also our mental state, in the recreational and the professional sense?

 

I added the recreational and professional to that question as recently with my I.S.T.D DDI training I have been looking at the health and safety module a part in that we discussed the physical and mental health of professional dancers some interesting research points are listed below;

 

• 80% of dance professionals and 80% of vocational dance students reported at least one injury in the previous year of dancing.
• 17% of professional ballet dancers, 13% of professional contemporary dancers and 10% of vocational dance students overuse drugs and alcohol.
• 9% of professional ballet dancers, 5% of professional contemporary dancers and 19% of vocational dance students have eating problems.
• 43% of professional ballet dancers, 32% of professional contemporary dancers and 42% of vocational dance students suffer from depression.

                                                                                                                             Laws,H,(2005)
I find this question particularly interesting and one I personally would want to research more as I feel there are lots and varying lines of inquiry I could take on this.

Your opinions or comments would be much appreciated.

Thanks steph.

Reference: Laws,H,(2005) Fit to dance 2, Report of the second national inquiry into dancers’ heath and injury in the uk, Dance UK, ISBN: 0951563181

 

The article

http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm

Task 4D.

When beginning to think about my award title a few things came into mind that I needed to think about so I scribbled some notes down onto paper to see what I was thinking more clearer. My main passion in life is Dance and is something that will always be part of my life and career past present and future, so of course that had to be in the title, At this current moment I am still performing as well as teaching so here I struggled slightly, the performer is who I am and the teacher is what I want to be in the future, should one override the other or both be thought about?

 

I found an interesting quote in

chapter 'Developing the Knowledge Base: A Process Perspective on Professional Education' which frrst appeared in Learning to Effict edited by Ronald Barnett, 1993 (Society for Research in Higher Education/Open University Press).

 

A simple line of

‘The knowing how is as important as the knowing that’

 

Which I thought was relevant to my line of thought at this moment, struggling between the performer and the teacher, the knowing how being the performer and the knowing that being the teacher, meaning I should not forget about my performance knowledge as it is what has got me to this teaching point today.

I then however moved on to think about why I did this degree and what I wanted it to gain for me in the future, which was to open more path ways to teaching and owning my own school in the future.

So in conclusion I came up with three award titles;

BA Hons Professional Practice in Dance.

BA Hons Professional Practice in Dance Performance and Education.
BA Hons Professional Practice in Dance Education.

Out of the three I feel I am leaning more towards the last one it is simplistic and straight forward. I have decided not to use the one with performance in as even though performance is my present it will at one point not be my future and the education side is so I would like an award that I can take with me into the future.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

 References

chapter 'Developing the Knowledge Base: A Process Perspective on Professional Education' which frrst appeared in Learning to Effict edited by Ronald Barnett, 1993 (Society for Research in Higher Education/Open University Press).

Task 4C

i have began this task so wanted to document it on here so that i could keep up to date with my progress, i work as a freelance dance teacher and performer at the moment so i have i variety of people to develope my questions with i have decided to go with my three main employers at the moment.
person A; runs there own musical theatre school in three different locations.
person B; owns there own dance school with there own studio.
person C; runs there own performing buisness but is also a teacher themselves.

i am awaiting the reply to my topics and there responses ect as obvioulsy people have busy lives and cannot work around my time plan, so witht his question i feel i do need to have a little patience as i am so used to doing the BAPPS work on my own terms it feels a little alien to have the time limit taken out of my hand however this is something i need to learn and become acustom to to develope as a professional.

So for now i have documented the types of people i have began to develope my questions with and shall report back when i have more information.

steph

Task 4B.

Task 4B

 

With the task of creating or developing my SIG group I decided to use linkdIn, I decided to use this because it is a site I have been wanting to make use of for a while but have never got round to it. So with setting up my SIG group on there I have also set up a profile hoping that in the coming weeks I will begin using the site more and hopefully gear it toward some positive networking for myself.

            There are obviously many ways I intend to share ideas with people for our SIG groups, through emails and our blogs however I wanted a separate section that I could also add people that aren’t on the BAPPS program to if I wanted to get an ‘outsiders’ perspective on certain topics if I wished.

            The link below is to my SIG group which is titled BAPPs SIG dance and arts education, I titled it this as dance is my passion and the profession I am in at the moment and the education of dance and arts is what I am beginning at the moment and the path I am hoping the BAPPS program will lead me down.

            Please feel free to join my group and share your opinions look forward to hearing from you.

 

Steph.

 

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/BAPP-dance-education-4664320/about

 

Task 4A

I first read this question before reading the first reader and my initial reactions was 'omg i have no questions!' my mind went compleatly blank and i started to panic! i calmed down and read through the reader, after that i began to think why did i start this course and what i wanted to gain from it?

i started the course to gain further education and qualifications and to hopefully in the long run gain better jobs and progress within the teaching profession.From this thought questions started to emerge in my mind;

1)how relevant is education and qualifications to propelling yourself in the world of dance teaching.

From this i also thought about the elements of owning your own dance school and thought about these questions which relate to the above;

2) how essential is it to have performance qualifications to run your own dance school?

3) To own a dance school is owning a business should business qualifications be taken into consideration as well or get over ruled by performance ones?


From these initial questions i began to look more into education in dance as this is what i have and intend to focus on during my degree so then also thought about these questions.

4) in todays society today should a dance class be geared more towards education and exams or fun based as a hobby?

5)With so much of this year being focused on the olympics and fitness i wanted to question how fitness based and conscious a dance class should be?


These are just afew ideas that have came into my mind, they may not be perfect or a great path to go down in the long run, but at the moment they are a starting point for me and i intend to research into them in more depth and see what my outcomes are.

Back to Blogging.

Well after a long and busy summer break, its time to get back to blogigng! i feel it will take me a while to get back into the flow of blogging but it is something that i am looking forward to again.

I briefly read through the handbook on monday, and again i had that slight moment of panic when i felt omg can i do this! however after that i realised that yes i can, i got through the first modual and each aspect is a learning experience that i just need to take one step at a time, and to take a step back and go through it again if i feel i am struggling and of course seek out help via blogs ect!

At the moment its looking pretty busy for me i am doing some part time teaching aswell as being part of a show company at the moment, and aswell as starting back on BAPPs i have also began doing my i.s.t.d DDI teacher training. So a lot of work to fit into a week!

Having spoke to Alan on skpye this week i feel there is no point in panicing as that will not get anything done. I feel my main priorty at the moment is to PLAN PLAN PLAN!! by making a layout or timetable for myself where i can allocate a space for everything and make sure i stick to it.

I am looking forward to getting stuck into this modual and getting back in touch with you all! im now off to read through reader 4.

Happy blogging people and speak soon :)
xx