Thursday 1 March 2012

Slogging away

After a good solid 5 hours of reading, researching, searching through previous student blogs for inspiration etc etc, I feel I'm making very little progress. I feel a bit lost, and compared to the last module, without any real direction!

However, after reading a couple of chapters from Dance as Education: Towards a National Dance Culture by P. Brinson, it's becoming clearer and clearer that my area of interest lies with dance within public education.

 i.e what is dances value within education? 

Is dance utilised enough within schools at present? If not, why not? 

Is dance still being stuck under the umbrella of P.E rather than being regarded as an independent subject like music or art? 

If it is, why is it not valued as much as music or art, both of which are similarly creative disciplines?

P. Brinson talks about the need for the gap between private and public dance education to be bridged...it seems like such a logical step forward to ensure that children nationally experience dance as part of their education, and yet it still hasn't happened! Why!?

I have no idea where to start researching all these questions...

3 comments:

Jo Bradley said...

Hi Liam,

I think these questions are a great starting point. I think it would be really good if you could speak to some people who started teaching within private schools and then made the transition into public teaching.

Speaking to people who have already made that transition will give you a really clear insight into the differences and how they have already perhaps tried to bridge that gap that P. Brinson talks of.

I hope this suggestion helps :)

Liam said...

Hi Jo,

Yes, that would be a great idea, I'll have to see if I can find someone! I have plenty of contacts within the private sector...I need to work on building contacts in the public sector.

Sarah Pearson said...

Hi Liam,
The school i work in has performing arts and PE in the same department. It's crazy! They just don't have anything to do with each other. Yet another example of how creative subjects are not valued!

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