Analysis Day 1

 

For me, the important question, is what does it all mean, what does my personal human experience mean, for myself as a human and teacher. To be able to remove unnecessary excess of information, the open coding method has allowed me to summarise experiences but have selected evidence to break down and interpret. I have only analysed around 15 minutes of footage, I have a very long way to go, but feel little and often will give me a clearer understanding. The following key words seems to be appearing unfamiliarity and familiarity and the difference between the two, where they emerge especially within the student context. Looking through the lens of physical thinking, has provided the most evidence in terms of what physical thinking appears as, where it is taking place and what questions it poses. It is great to find moments of understanding when watching the footage, but then looking at the reflection diary, there is clarity and no bias as what you see is what you reflected after the session in the data collection. There is a clear feeling of when as a student I feel familiar with movement, comfortable to try and experience, in a new environment and new context, and in opposition, unfamiliarity is projected from the mind to body as negative and unfamiliar body language, slouching, sloping, strange facial expressions, all suggesting an uncomfortable experience. 

This then leads to me to interpret an unusual separation between mind and body, which I know the mind and body are connected, but why does it feel and appear they are not? And why does the thinking seem to take place away from the movement and with the movement. What happened between the two? All important questions, ones without an incline or further understanding as I can't see all the data clearly yet. 

I started re reading an important text in my study, one I was really interested at the start of the project, Writing and the Body in Motion: Awakening voice through Somatic practice (Pallant, 2018). Pallant (2018) discusses a student who regained understanding in their senses after experiencing an injury, retraining and regaining his senses which led to him glowing in the dance studio. Pallant (2018) discusses the importance of experience, with the more experience you have the more the body finely tunes into the finer details of motion, expression and calm. An interesting statement, as this is what I couldn't see clearly when first learning the exercises. I couldn't focus on the finer details aesthetically because my body hadn't experienced the movement before. In my reflection diary I was confident I could replicate the style as I could see the links cognitively but when this translated into the body, it wasn't as clear as it seemed. A true reflection of brain disengaged to body. As we are aware dance strengthens the neuronal connections and memory but when we start to make deliberate changes to our experience, the deliberate connecting of mind with body and language of perceptions (Pallant, 2018). It becomes clear I didn't have a perceived experience of the language, I couldn't make immediate connections, as cognitively the brain had no prior experience to draw on. 

I started to think about perception, as this keeps coming up within my project and general thinking and teaching. What is perception? What do I perceive when I am teaching students, I have a perception of how they will be able to try something new, from their actions, responses to our tasks in lesson, how they respond to movement, and I can move forward only from a. evidence and b. perception of the environment, and interpretation based on what I have perceived and observed. Similar to my experience when standing in front of the video I am learning, I perceive what I will experience, because I am a product of my own experiences and memories (Dixon, 2016). We perceive and its becomes our reality, I perceived what I would experience when I first started learning the footage, that became a confused reality, I didn't have the experience but what I did have was I needed to fit into the exam expectations, although I didn't know what the grading criteria was, I knew I would be graded and much like us fitted into the perception of society (Dixon, 2016), I had to fit into the aesthetic society of dance. The aesthetic expectations of the style. 

My next question is when teaching examinations, does how I perceive students from my observation and the direction I provide feedback change the perception of what they are learning, does it become a negative reality or open reality, because our pre conceived notions become our reality. Do we need to actively change this, how do we?

Is there more beyond our perception?

How do we turn perception into understanding?

What we see is not always what it is

Dixon, D. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmqqo1csKTg