3,979 research outputs found

    Metacognitive Writing Strategies for Emerging Dancer-Scholars: Uncovering Supportive Links Between Academic Writing and Choreographic Processes

    Get PDF
    Canadian graduate programs in Dance at the Masters level frequently accept students with long professional careers in dance but limited academic background in writing essays. Writing term papers, with perhaps only dim memories of high school writing instruction to draw from, can pose challenging experiences for such emerging dancer-scholars. While long standing metacognitive reading strategies are commonly available to assist those new to graduate studies with interpreting their academic readings, no comparable metacognitive writing strategies appear in the literature to support an academic writing process. However, metacognition theory regarding the role of affect in monitoring and controlling ones progress through the completion of a task offers potential applications to support academic writing. Furthermore, re-imagining academic writing as an experience deeply informed by affect resonates with recent research into articulating the affective or felt sense understanding of ones creative processes in composing a choreographic work. Investigating connections between how dancers process composition tasks in the two disciplines revealed metacognitive processing parallels. The findings implied several considerations for designing a writing pedagogy specific to the needs of emerging dancer-scholars. This dissertation research with graduate dance students in Canada and the US incorporated ethnographic and educational action research approaches for identifying, addressing and documenting participants perceived essay writing problems. Initial group workshops prepared the participants for individual Case Study research sessions, which were characterized by practice-led research/research-led practice methods of generating, developing, performing and theorizing. The research investigated the howness of each participants writing process across a series of analytical writing assignments. Participants and I collaborated in uncovering the focus and potential structure for each paper using visual-spatial-dialoguing techniques. Participants expressed affective experiences during these video- or audio-taped sessions and in emailed reflections. Their gestural and verbal metaphors generated metacognitive knowledge about the source of writing frustrations versus the support provided by using familiar processing techniques from their choreographic practices. Their retrospective analyses demonstrated the participants metacognitive evolution from personal awareness to co- and self-regulated learning about the characteristic processing traits underlying their writing and choreographic practices. A comparative analysis of three Case Studies suggested metacognitive writing strategies for supporting emerging dancer-scholars

    The Image as a Communication Tool for Virtual Museums. Narration and the Enjoyment of Cultural Heritage

    Get PDF
    The challenge of contemporary museums is to make content accessible to a wider audience; in this way information related to the good becomes more communicative and usable in order to enhance its uniqueness. Accessibility goes through an innovative communication of content: the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that are increasingly part of people’s daily lives. Communication in most cases occurs visually, so ICTs are increasingly focusing on a rethinking of this expressive form; images become a better support for high-quality data transfer

    Art Making to Inform Dialogue Across Spiritual Otherness in the Therapeutic Space

    Get PDF
    This research was a preliminary pilot study meant to encourage further exploration on the intersection of art therapy, art making, spirituality, and dialogue. This study topic is an important area of investigation due to the long-standing challenges of interfaith dialogue, both historically and currently. An abundance of reviewed literature linking interfaith dialogue and dialogue through art making guided the research hypothesis, which states that the act of viewing and being viewed by the spiritual other through art making could deepen one’s own spiritual practice, increase empathy, foster dialogue, and inform clinical work as psychotherapists. To explore this, the researchers held an explorative arts-based workshop, encouraging participants to use the art individually and in pairs to further reflect on their spiritual beliefs and experiences. In addition, the workshop allowed a space for participants and pairs to share and discuss their reflective art and personal spirituality, then create a dyadic art piece together. The qualitative findings revealed similarities for all eleven participants in both the art and written experiences, with universal themes and shared visual elements emerging. The analyzed data connected the universal themes with the participants’ stated spiritual identity and evidenced experiences of connection in dyadic pairs. As future therapists, and art therapists, the researchers intended this preliminary pilot study to be a basis for further research and inspire wider exploration

    Finding the Taste of Knowledge: The Orphan in Indigenous Epistemologies

    Get PDF
    Following the suggestions of my indigenous consultants, that to better understand their theories of knowledge one has to start from myth, I take here their myth, “The origin of education” as the starting point for analyzing the alchemical processes of embodiment in indigenous epistemologies, and I do so in dialogue with information produced through an ethnography of learning, and with other, Western, theories of cognition. The myth relates the story of the “Orphan”, a central character in the People of the Center’s moral and mythical narratives. The Orphan searches for the “taste of knowledge” through a demanding personal quest that is simultaneously a process of self-discovering and self-shaping. The quest involves experimenting with different plants and technical procedures, which are evaluated by the effects produced on the Orphan’s “physical-spiritual body”. Shunning the Cartesian distinction between the physical and the spiritual, the People of the Center’s epistemologies emphasize the poietic processes that link knowledge to the ongoing fabrication, and maintenance, of personal and collective selves, and of the world in which they live. The People of the Center make the relationship between knowledge and well-being explicit: true knowledge shows in the ideal state of generalized well-being, an issue that acquires critical significance in indigenous debates concerning the recreation of authoritative knowledge, and of authority more generally

    Men, masculinities and young people: north–south dialogues

    Get PDF
    Dialoguing across national borders and specifically global North-South centres and margins has increasingly been viewed as a way to enhance critical and feminist studies and engagement with men and masculinities. This article draws on narratives levels, both in interpersonal and intergroup relations, as well as in public representation of collaborative work. generated by a group of researchers in South Africa and Finland who have been engaged in a transnational research project that included a strong focus on young men, masculinities and gender and sexual justice. The piece provides an account of the nuanced and complex experiences and dynamics involved in transnational research collaboration, particularly within the framework on historical and continued inequalities between the global North and South. While obvious benefits are raised, this experience also foregrounds a range of challenges and constraints involved in transnational research collaboration within this field and possibly many others. Key learnings gleaned from this analysis of reported experiences and thoughts include the importance of careful, considered and critical reflexivity at all moments and at al

    Experimentation and Representation in Architecture: analyzing one’s own design activity

    Get PDF
    Architects materialize ideas on physical supports to register their thoughts and to discover new possibilities from hints and suggestions in their own drawings. Uncertainty is inherent to creative processes encouraging the production of different ideas through testing. This research brings to light that the re-examination of artefacts from new points of view allows for the review and generation of design ideas and decisions, capacitating students to make yet new discoveries from what they have done so far. Tacit knowledge aids specific decisions. Student reports become analytical records of their material registers (sketches, physical and virtual models) making it explicit that which is implicit in those artefacts. This apparently confirms previous studies that suggest that knowledge per se not always triggers or controls decisions in design. Many physical as well as perceptive actions actually lead the initial steps and play a crucial role in the whole course of production. Besides serving as external representations, sketches and models provide visual hints that will be checked later, favouring the upcoming of the unexpected, stimulating creativity. The intent here is to point out how these different means of representation and expression contribute in a peculiar manner to the whole process of discovery and solution to problems in architecture. The authors propose here a reflection on the process of design and its uncertainties in its initial phase, concentrating on sketches and real models as experimentations. They consider these means not from a graphic and physical register stand point, but in terms of conception and concepts they embody, as records of students thinking and knowledge. Keywords: Experimentation; Uncertainty; Representation; Design Process; Cognition; Education</p

    ‘Tír na Scáile’ (Shadowlands): an exploration into the intercultural dimension of the therapeutic relationship

    Get PDF
    This study is concerned with the intercultural dimension of the therapeutic relationship, the main research question being: “How, in an English context, is the therapeutic work between a ‘white’ Irish client and a white English therapist/counsellor conceptualized or understood?” Due to a tendency in transcultural literature, training, research and practice to define racial and ethnic difference in terms of skin ‘colour’, underlying historical, socioeconomic and political racialization processes have remained largely unexamined. In addressing this gap, the study specifically explores the transgenerational impact of a joint colonial history on the present-day therapeutic relationship between ‘white’ Irish clients and white English therapists/counsellors from a client perspective. The ‘white’ Irish clients’ lived experiences, perceptions and understanding of cultural difference at interweaving societal, interpersonal and intrapsychic relational levels were captured. Using a constructivist grounded-theory approach, a cooperative inquiry was undertaken with seven ‘white’ Irish therapists/counsellors who lived and had therapy in England. The data were systematically analysed to produce findings grounded in the clients’ words and lived experiences. The findings were presented to a group of white English therapists/counsellors during the course of a dialogic workshop. They indicate that the historical-colonial relational dynamics and the legacy of the associated racialization processes live on unacknowledged in the present-day therapeutic relationship between the ex-colonized and ex-colonizer. The findings have implications for training, research and practice. They clearly indicate that the experience and effect of felt racial and ethnic difference reach far ‘beneath’ that which is perceived. Particularly significant was the identified need to reexamine constructs such as ‘race’, ‘colour’, ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘difference’ in light of the deeper historical, socioeconomic and political processes that produce them. Importantly, the study highlights the need for psychotherapists/counsellors to incorporate the greater cultural and historical context, together with its inherent power processes and structures, into the conceptualization of their client work. In doing so, the capacity to integrate information from multiple disciplines is deemed essential

    Self Determination Theory and Expressive Arts Therapy: A Path to Needs Satisfaction and Mindful Autonomous Motivation

    Get PDF
    This literature explores supporting mindful autonomous motivation by meeting basic psychological needs using expressive arts therapies. Self-determination theory was created from the extensive research of two psychologists, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. The theory proposes that an increase in well-being and personal growth can be achieved by meeting the psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy (Reeve & Lee, 2019, p. 102). This paper investigates how various theories in expressive art therapy can be used to support psychological need satisfaction. The examination includes the therapeutic relationship, the expressive therapies approach and examples of populations impacted by frustrated need satisfaction. The populations discussed in this literature review include ex-cult members, nonbinary youth, hospitalized children, and incarcerated women
    • 

    corecore