Combining research genres: Applying complexity thinking to learning how to teach creative dance

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Combining research genres Applying complexity
thinking to learning how to teach creative dance

• Tim Hopper
• Associate Professor,
• Past President Canadian Association for Teacher
  Education (CATE)
• School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health
  Education (EPHE)
• Faculty of Education. University of Victoria
• Website http/web.uvic.ca

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Context of data in this presentation

• Elementary generalist teachers learning to teach
  PE
• Two-term school integrated teacher education
  course
• Creative dance taught in the second term of the
  course in local school by instructor and then
  student teachers

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School integrated teacher education program
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Creative dance as part of Movement Education

• Popularized in the 1960s and 1970s in the
  United Kingdom from the approach called dance
  for all advocated by Rudolf Laban (Wall
  Murray, 1994).
• Four principlesbody concepts, effort concepts,
  spatial concepts, and relationship conceptsdeal
  with what the body does, where it moves, how it
  moves, and with whom or what it moves

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Creative DanceWhat does it look like in school?
Age 5 and 6 year olds Example lesson taught by
beginning student teachers
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Overview

• Research genres for new insights
• Emergence Complexity thinking
• Grade 6 Creative Dance Story
• Complexity learning in the dance
• Reflection from student teacher
• Extension Planning creative dance lessons

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1. What is a research genre?How does it relate
to paradigm?

• A genre is understood as a style or form of
  representing research data.
• Genre refers to how we collect data through
  multiple methods and then analyze that data to
  then represent it in numerous ways in order to
  advance the value of the research agenda.
• A paradigm is a world view, a general
  perspective, a way of breaking down the
  complexity of the world. As such paradigms are
  deeply embedded in the socialization of adherents
  and practitioners paradigms tell us what is
  important, legitimate, and reasonable.

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Paradigms

• their strength in that it makes action possible,
  their weakness in that the very reason for action
  is hidden in the unquestioned assumptions of the
  paradigm.

(Patton, 1978, p. 203, referenced in Sparkes,
1992, p. 12)
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Ontology, epistemology and methodology

• Ontological understanding refers to how we know
  Is reality external to the individual
  (external-realist) or the product of individual
  consciousness (internal-idealist, relativistic)?
• Epistemology refers to assumptions made about the
  nature of knowledge, the claims we make about
  truth(s) and how we come to know.
• Methodology (1) deterministic - theory to
  predict, (2) voluntaristic constructed
  descriptive of reality, (3) plausible
  verisimilitude

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Scientific and objectivity

• Surely there is something out there?

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Reality out there
Truth Correspondence Cause/effect
predict Research instrument
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Practice of scientific
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Naturalistic Subjective and Inter-subjective
knowing

• I been there, done that, talked to the people
  and got a t-shirt

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Realist - Reality is intersubjectively constituted
Truth Coherence Social reality Researcher-as-i
nstrument
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Practice of realist tale
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CriticalInter-subjective to emancipate

• Why do I feel so unimportant? Surely we can do
  it a different way?

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Critical - Reality is in praxis (thought and
action)
Truth Catalytic forconscientization Instruments
and researcherfor change.
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Example Practice of Critical
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Post-modernInter-subjective and Inter-objective

• Who said that? What does it mean? If we can do
  it and then we can see what happens.

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Reality re/constructed in praxis
Truth Verisimilitude Multiple
realities Researched/researcher
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Post-modern practice
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Another example
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What about this one?
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EmergenceComplexity Thinking
(2)
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Learning and Complexity Thinking

• Behaviourism - stimulus leading to certain
  response. Mind learns through body
• Learning-as-mechanical process
• Constructivism experience that triggers
  transformation in learners structure. Body
  learns, mind as part of an embodied process
• Learning-as-organic process

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Emergence How nature learns
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Grade 6 creative dance classThe class from hell
(3)
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Creative dance story

• The following story based on Im late dance,
  told by a student teacher, has been written with
  her permission, based on actual events, but has
  been shaped to provoke a visceral response for
  the listener, a sense of being there in the
  creative dance lesson.
• Creative non-fiction ethnographic genre (Hopper
  et al., 2008 Rinehart, 1998 Sparkes, 2002)

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Im late
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Im Late
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Complexity learning in the dance
(4)
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What is complexity thinking and how does t relate
to creative dance?

• Based on constructivist epistemology
• Focuses on adaptive, self-organizing systems
  where learning emerges from experiences that
  trigger transformations in learners.
• pragmatic implications of assuming a complex
  universe (Davis, Sumara, 2006, p. 18)

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Body as complex structure learns

• Body as a complex biological-and-experiential
  structure
• Mindys lesson sense of embodied learning in the
  comment children burst into action, in different
  directions, their bodies taut and stiff.

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Teaching as creating the condition for learning

• ConstructivismImpossibility of teaching class
  same thing at the same time.
• Teaching cannot determine learning but can only
  create the conditions for certain things to be
  learned
• The children's movements showed a sense of
  control, rhythm and purpose, their movements
  indicated focused, playful vitalitythey existed
  in their own special community place created by
  the imagery and the music. They created the
  dance and the dance created them.

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Students become self-organizing system that learns

• Each student (as an agent of system) is complex
  structure that will adapt to an environment one
  the student in part co-creates through
  engagements with other students.
• The idea of the dance is that you are late,"
  Mindy explained "you have over slept, that is
  why you are in a rush. Now take up your sleep
  positions. Oh nice flop Shaun. Good Kirsty it
  really looks like you are leaning against
  something.
• Identifying body and relationship ideas Mindy
  allowed the system to learn from actions of
  agents (students) within it

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Openness results from tension between stable and
unstable state

• Initially the system almost went out-of-control
  when students initially treated the whole
  episode as a lark, but then with Mindys
  focusing feedback became an open system where the
  children whizzed off into tense walks which were
  ready for another spin.
• Constrained by Mindy's tasks, students were open
  to the energy from the dance they co-created,
  they started to realize a variety of movements
  showing being late.

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Adaptation to environment set by teacher and
other students

• Children closed to start "With a resistance
  stare Oh yeah, going to get us to be clouds are
  you?" and 'forget it lady'.
• "By stressing the dynamic effort quality of
  walking and pivoting with tension and urgency"
  Mindy invited diversity, whilst maintaining
  coherence to the structure of the dance.

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Bottom-up as decentralized control emerges

• Collective intelligence from simple actions like
  fast walk that built into a complex dance
  containing multiple phrases of music
  corresponding to certain actions, each action
  having multiple generative possibilities.
• The children burst into action, in different
  directions, their bodies taut and stiff. "CLAP
  six, CLAP seven and pivot. Well done. That's it
  keep control...but fast!! The children whizzed
  off into tense walksready for another spin.

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Decentralized control

• The teacher, though initially at the centre of
  the lesson, increasingly shifts from this role to
  initiating new tasks and prompts to more of a
  engaged observer, guiding, encouraging and
  showing ideas from one student to others,
  encouraging diversity and self-organizing
  awareness

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Features of complexity learning

• Openness results from tension between stable and
  unstable state
• Adaptation to environment set by teacher and
  other students

• Body as complex structure learns
• Teaching as creating the condition for learning

• Students become self-organizing system that
  learns

• Bottom-up as decentralized control emerges

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Student teacher reflection
(5)

• School Integrated Teacher Education

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Four lessons of creative dance in local school
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Teach peers then teach children
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Ashley comments

• (Realist tale)
• In the peer teaching and the dance unit teaching
  I had the most fun I have ever had teaching which
  really passed onto my studentsteaching to my
  peers I discovered things I shouldnt be doing,
  as well as things that were positive really
  liked getting the feedback from my peers as a
  teacher and a learner.

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She continues

• Working with students in the lesson I learned to
  adapt. When I was struggling to teach the young
  Korean boy who did not have any English how to
  danceinitially felt bitter now more of a
  positive experience for me not knowing how to
  handle situation, it really helped me develop as
  a teacherhow to adapt which is essential for
  every teacher to know how to do.

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• Questions?
• Observations?

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Planning a creative dance lesson
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Challenging

• Scholars note that it is challenging to develop
  tasks that
• capture childrens interest,
• allow for the childrens developmental range of
  ability and
• can be used to develop their movement qualities
• (Weiyun Chen Cone, 2003 Rolfe, 2001 Rovegno,
  1992).

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Basic Task Model
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Mindys lesson
A video created by student teachers showing a
version of Mindys lesson
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Laban movement concepts to refine movement

• Body concepts - what the body does such as
  activities (locomotion or stationary) whole
  action (twisting) roles of body parts
  (supporting) and shapes during activity (wide).
• Effort concepts how the body moves with weight
  (firm or fine), time (fast or slow), flow
  (bounded or free) and space (linear or flexible).
  
• Spatial concepts where the body moves in
  personal space (direction, extension, air
  patterns and levels) and general space (levels,
  extensions, floor pathways and air patterns).
• Relationship concepts with whom or what the
  body moves based on people in the environment or
  objects in the environment.

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Simplify or Extend

• The movement concepts allow the teacher to refine
  students movements, generating different
  possibilities, but also changing the learning
  environment that frames the movement (i.e., how
  to use the space, relate to other dancers or
  imagery idea).
• This focus on an onward orientation,
  simplifying/extending, and also on the each
  childs inward movement ability, refining
  movement quality, allows a coupling between
  students actions and the simple structures of
  the dance. Each extension would lead to the
  application of parts of the dance or the entire
  dance

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Music Analysis
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Looking back

• Teaching the dance lesson really taught me how to
  break down the skills like skippingto refine the
  skillsto get the type of movements you want.
  Loved the experience in creative dance, would do
  again in a heartbeat. Really excited that I was
  able to show my friends and family what I got to
  teach these children and how I affect them.

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Conclusion

• Within elementary physical education creative
  dance has offered a way of embracing the
  qualities of complexity thinking, offering a way
  to include every learner in a collective system
  greater than the sum of the individual parts.

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Video source

• Retrieved Sept 15, 2008. Emergence complexity
  from simplicity (1 of 2 parts)http//www.youtube.
  com/watch?vgdQgoNitl1g

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References

• Boorman, J. (1969). Creative dance in the first
  three grades. Don Mills, Ontario Longman Canada
  Ltd.
• Boorman, J. (1971). Creative dance in grades four
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• Boorman, J. (1973). Dance and language
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• Carline, S. (2005). Children Who Dance A
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• Chen, W., Cone, T. (2003). Links between
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• Davids, K., Button, C., Bennett, S. (2008).
  Dynamics of skill acquisition A constraints led
  approach. Windsor, ON Human Kinetics.

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References

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• Davis, B., Sumara, D. (2005). Complexity
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• Hopper, T. (1993). Learning to teach physical
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References

• Hopper, T., Sanford, K. (2008). Using poetic
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