This blog is created to support conversation generated from and about the learning process for MA Professional Practice (MAPP) in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries (ACI) at Middlesex University.

Thursday 11 February 2016

Shifting grounds and opening doors - Group SKYPE chat 6th

On Sunday we had our first ‘first Sunday of the month’ skype chats of the term!!!
The AM chat was a little lonely – we want to encourage some more people in morning chats to talk to those whose time zone doesn’t permit the evening one. We also talked about commenting on blogs and getting the Linked-in discussion group moving. All these modes of discussion are important to the learning community you are joining when you are in MAPP. Blog posts and blog comments don’t have to be long to still share ideas and give valuable feedback / insights. It seems to be something a few people are feeling i.e. keep up the communication with each other.

In the PM chat we had more people and we talked about:
The idea of starting back, picking up ideas and observing our own changes and development in terms of how our work progresses and changes through the journey of the whole course.  Learning and teaching is a transformative experience. We talked about how this means things are changing all the time (we hope – we are transforming). A tension is created when you have a hard fast goal to achieve (find out X) using a process (transformative learning) that is designed to be fluid and responsive. We can often shut down openness to the uncomfortable feeling of Flux that fluidity can induce for the safety of achieving X. While preferably (and what I think the uncomfortable feeling is letting you know is that) X is changing. Of course X changes because we are understanding it differently/more with each engagement we have, each experience we have with X. We talked about this in terms of ‘colonizing ideas’ – that patriarchal need to identify, measure and pin-down ‘things’ (that I encourage us to recognize and resist!) We are working with/through movement. Helen talked about seeing study as opening doors.
Ainsely and Louise are going to post about jumping back into study/ the modules
http://ainsleymsudds.blogspot.com
http://louisedubai.blogspot.com
Tara is going to post on the uncomfortable feeling of feeling.
http://dancetara.blogspot.com

We talked about why dance was done by people who do not intend to work as professionals in the dance field. We suggested there were a number of ‘transferable skills’ dance offers, and that dance is a natural expression of Self for anyone.
Joy is posting on thoughts about how dance manifests in people’s lives (Joy please post your blog adrress in the comments below)

We talked a little about the ethics of representation. This is particularly interesting in terms of transcribing. For us working with the knowledge of the notion of Embodiment we are constantly asking ourselves how can you genuinely capture the lived experience. The experience of talking to someone is so much more than their words and then the words themselves are expressing more ideas and feelings that are often limited if only verbal language is used. So how do we choose to transcribe interviews. There is not a ‘solution’ to this. What makes it ‘right’ is not that it is universally a right way to transcribe. What makes it ‘right’ is that what you do fits with the philosophical and methodological framework you have created for your research. In other words what makes it ‘the right way to transcribe’ is that it makes sense in terms of what you are doing and how you are doing it.
Tamzin is going to write about transcribing
http://tamzinhoward.blogspot.com

 Hayley is posting on the conversation overall. (Hayley please post your blog address in the comments below)
Louise talked about how her additional reading on method and methodology has helped her when she feels stuck because she can think about some of the ideas other people have had and notice if and when they happen in her experience. For instance, “thinking about constructing an argument Louise might now be listening to the radio and think that argument is being constructed through…” or “that is not an argument it’s a statement… “Or “we want to get away from arguments and look at how what they are saying would be affected through the lens of discussion and collaboration”.

We talked practicals:
Feedback will be sent in the next couple of weeks.
Submitting date for this coming term is May 9th 2016
Oral presentations by Module Three’s (everyone is encouraged to attend) end of that same week.
Summer Intensive (Dancing & Writing Professional Practice) is August 15th to 20th 2016.
Early Registration for the Summer Intensive will be open from February 22nd 2016

What have you been thinking about these last few weeks? Please comment below.

Adesola