Module 2: Task 5a - Codes of Practice and Regulations

For this task, I thought it would be best to mind map a few ideas on codes of conduct and policies that I believe my place of work has. Being a school, there are a huge amount of policies in place to ensure the school adheres to the National standards. The task asked to do this wholly based on my own thoughts, so I have not turned to any documents. 

Safeguarding 

Safeguarding is ensuring you do everything in your power to the keep the children safe. At school, teachers are responsible for the welfare of their students. Not only is this in the case of making sure the environment is safe, but it's also observing any changes in children's behaviour and being sure to report anything you suspect could be an issue. This includes any suspiscion of bullying.  

Health and Safety 

Obviously within a school of young children, health and safety has to be extremely thorough. It is the staff who must ensure that all children stick to health and safety guidelines within individual classrooms, the school premises and on any school trips. This involves regular risk assessments to keep all areas danger-free and the responsibility of immediately reporting anything potentially dangerous to the site manager. As well as this, the staff are trained to have the correct conduct in first aid situations. 

Privacy 

Privacy is a very important part of being a teacher and working in a school environment. This includes the use of social media and keeping a professional stance in which speaking to pupil and parents though the use of Facebook etc. is not permitted. As well as not giving out your own personal information to the children, it is important to keep any information about them confidential and within the school only. 

Appropriate Behaviour

It is important as a teacher (or for anyone working in a school) to uphold a level of appropriate behaviour. This means keeping relationships between students and staff professional at all times as well as using the appropriate language, music, videos and other resources to suit the age of the children. 

My next task will be to compare the thoughts I've had with the actual legislation that I was given when I first started my job at the school. 

Module 2: Task 4d - Literature Reviews

At first, I found it very hard to find literature that was relevant to my lines of inquiry. However, I quickly realised that I was probably being too specific with my searches on Summon and that I needed to search topics more generally. Realistically, I'm not going to find a book that coincidentally answers all my questions. I am going to have to pull lots of different thoughts from many different resources in order to give me the information I need to discover and expand my knowledge of these inquiries. 

I've narrowed it down to the following four articles that over the next week I will review:

The Value of Performing Arts Education in Our Schools - by Cathy Hess Wright 

A Youth Performing Arts Experience: Pyschological Experiences, Recollections, and the Desire to Do It Again - by Jan Trayes, Niki Harre and Nickola C. Overall

Towards a Growth Mindset in Assesement - by Geoff N. Masters

Studies Suggest Way to Instill a Growth Mindset in Students - by Holly Yettick 

I am really looking forward to reading these and broadening my knowledge of these topics that will hopefully spur more questioning. 

Module 2: Task 4c - Developing Questions for Employers and/or Professional Associates

Using the questions I initially came up with in Task 4a, I am now developing specific questions to ask those within my professional community outside of the BAPP Arts course. I have professional associates in mind, all of whom have different experiences of teaching within different contexts. Taking this into consideration, I would moderate the questions accordingly to make sure they are relevant to the chosen interviewee as not all questions apply.  

In bold are the initial questions from Task 4a and numbered below that are the more specific questions I would use in order to hone in on the information I wish to discover.

How do schools and dance schools manage behaviour? Is there a difference with how it is managed between school and extra-curricular? Do children behave differently in comparison between the two? Do children who attend extra curricular performing arts behave better at school? Why? 

Can participating in performing arts as an extra-curricular subject affect children's learning in school? Is there a correlation that suggests this is a positive or negative effect? Can it improve/certain aspects of their development? 

1. How does your school manage behaviour in your classes specifically?
1a. Are these methods affective?

2. Having taught in both a school and performing arts school, is there a difference in how behaviour is managed? 

2a. If so, what are those differences?

3. Do you know the children in your class who take part in extra-curricular performing arts?

3a. How does their behaviour in class compare to those students who don't take part in extra-curricular performing arts if different?

4.Do you know how what your performing arts students are achieving at school? 

4a. Do you think the performing arts classes they take part in outside of school have a positive or negative impact on their education and behaviour?

4b. Why do you think this is?

5. Do you think Performing Arts can have an affect on children's development?
5a. What sort of affect do you think this is? 

External performing arts schools (not for further education purposes) aren't assessed by any external board (e.g. OFSTED). Therefore, how do performing arts schools measure their success? How do they know they're adhering to certain codes of conduct? Is there a board that could come in and observe these? How do performing arts schools know what/how to improve without this? How do they create their expectations and set their standards? Could having something like OFSTED have a positive impact on such schools?

6. How does your performing arts school measure success?

7. Does your performing arts school have certain codes of conducts that you must adhere to?
7a. Are these codes of conduct that you have created or are they from an external board (such as OFSTED for schools)?

7b. If there isn't an external board, could performing arts school benefit from having something like this to regulate performing arts schools across the country?

7c. Why?

8. Is there an external board that has any control over what or how you teach?
8a. If so, does this board ever come in and observe or assess these aspects?

9. How do you know which elements of the school need improving?
9a. How do your pupils know what the expectations from the staff are?Do performing arts schools encourage a different mindset in children? Is determination and effort given more emphasis in performing arts schools over actual schools? Are children who attend external performing arts schools more prone to a positive attitude and are therefore more hardworking? 

10. As a performing arts teacher, do you rate effort and determination more highly than technique?

10a. Do you think effort and determination are recognised less in schools?

11. As a school teacher, do you think determination and effort is less important than grades and the final product of work? 

12. Do the students that partake in extra-curricular performing arts in your class, have a different attitude towards school work? 

12a. If yes, in what way?

13. Do you think performing arts can have an impact on children's attitudes in school?
13a. If yes, in what way? 

14. Have you found in the past that students who took part in extra-curricular performing arts were more hard-working in school?

How beneficial is a PGCE to a dance or performing arts teacher? Could the job be done based purely on experience? How does that compare to the importance of a PGCE for a primary school teacher or secondary school maths teacher? Do some schools take on dance or performing arts teachers who don't hold a QTS? 

15. Do you think your PGCE prepared you with the relevant tools and skills to teach?
15a. If so, how did it do this?
15b. If not, why not?

16. Do you think to be a teacher that experience and qualifications have equal weighting of importance? 

17. When employing new staff for your performing arts school, do you look at the experience or qualifications on their CV as more important?
17a. Why? 

18. Do you think a PGCE is more beneficial to an English or Maths teacher over a performing arts teacher?
18a. Why?

19. Do schools take on performing arts teachers who don't hold QTS?
19a. Is this ever the same for english or maths teachers?
19b. Why do you think this is? 

A Growth Mindset

As I mentioned in my previous post, the school I'm currently working for are trying to implement a growth mindset.

Here is a video we were shown on our most recent training day that really resonated with me. It's a really great outlook to have on work and life in general. I urge you to watch it and comment below your thoughts.

Module 2: Task 4b - Special Interest Group (SIG)

On a distance learning course like BAPP Arts, it can be very easy to feel isolated and alone in your study. So I am very optimistic about the benefits that having Special Interest Groups will have on igniting thoughts and keeping the ball rolling in my mind! 

In order to find out who shares smilar thoughts and questions to myself, I referred back to the Module 2 blog list. I opened up each blog and had a quick read through the most recent blog posts to see if I could find any similarities in the thoughts and inquiries other students were having. From this, I made a list of those who were focusing on topics such as teaching or education. These are blogs that I will be referring to on a regular basis and will be commenting on in order to broaden the blogger's ideas as well as my own. 

I am now part of two SIG groups withing the BAPP Arts community (both education based) and I am already finding common threads between my own inquiry ideas and others. These will be a really great way to get different opinions and create important and interesting discussions relating to these topics. 

Module 2: Task 4a - First Thoughts on Professional Inquiry

After finishing Reader 4, my mind has been buzzing with thoughts! Here are the very beginning of some draft questions and how I initially came to these ideas. 

Work-based learning is obviously what the BAPP Arts course is all based upon. But what I've already discovered within my new job as a Teaching Assistant is that the job itself is all about work-based learning. I constantly learn new skills not just from practically doing them myself, but also through observing the class teacher I work with. There have been many times where I have been thrown into the 'deep-end' and had to discover and learn things for myself without much help or guidance. This has forced me to learn things about myself as well as what the job entails. With my experience from working in lots of different schools over the past year as well as my current place of work, I have built up a large network of different colleagues who all work within different realms of education and performing arts. This will be an interesting tool for practitioner research and will give me great scope over a wide range of different topics within schools in general and teaching performing arts specifically. With this in mind, I tried to think of areas I find particularly interesting within teaching and attempted to put these into questions that could be developed into inquiries. Behaviour management and the affects that performing arts can have on children are two topics of interest that appeal to me. Therefore, the following questions are what spawned from these initial thoughts. 

How do schools and dance schools manage behaviour? Is there a difference with how it is managed between school and extra-curricular? Do children behave differently in comparison between the two? Do children who attend extra curricular performing arts behave better at school? Why? 

Can participating in performing arts as an extra-curricular subject affect children's learning in school? Is there a correlation that suggests this is a positive or negative effect? Can it improve/certain aspects of their development? 

My next questions came out of reading about Argyris and Schon's single loop and double loop cycles and it made me question how my current place of work look to change and improve for the sake of the children's learning in line with OFSTED. It also made me think about how I look to improve my work as an individual. I would like to think I'm very flexible and adapt to new methods in order to improve. This lead me to my next train of thought with my questions...

External performing arts schools (not for further education purposes) aren't assessed by any external board (e.g. OFSTED). Therefore, how do performing arts schools measure their success? How do they know they're adhering to certain codes of conduct? Is there a board that could come in and observe these? How do performing arts schools know what/how to improve without this? How do they create their expectations and set their standards? Could having something like OFSTED have a positive impact on such schools?

I then took a particular interest to theories that Peter.M Senge had about 'The Fifth Discipline' and how teams in the workplace can only thrive when open minded and flexible with change and when this is done together. It made me think about how my school are currently working on keeping a 'Growth Mindset'. This is the idea that children should never be labelled by their abilities and should understand the power of 'yet' ("I can't do this yet, but with more practice I will achieve it"). Ranking children on ability and using certain words when praising good work can let them forget that putting in effort and determination is just as important as getting things 'right'. The emphasis should be placed on the idea that if they keep trying hard at something, they will excel eventually. The growth mindset theory resonated with me and my time as a child when I attended an external dance school. A lot of the praise given to me and the attitude that was had towards dancing was all to do with hard work and determination and how that was more important than always being 'perfect'. It seemed that the school I currently work in (and schools across the country in general) have not always had this outlook. These thoughts lead me to question...

Do performing arts schools encourage a different mindset in children? Is determination and effort given more emphasis in performing arts schools over actual schools? Are children who attend external performing arts schools more prone to a positive attitude and are therefore more hardworking? 

I went on the read more about acquiring knowledge in the work place. I am confident that the knowledge I have and am still collecting is 'transdiciplanry'. Skills that I have learnt from working as a performer such as discipline, time-keeping, memory, resilience etc. are used everyday during my time at school. The techniques I used during my hours of dance teaching such as planning, behaviour management, etc. have also been carried over to my job as a teaching assistant. This lead me to consider the amount of teaching experience I have actually acquired over the past 3-4 years. I've had a lot of positive feedback in that time and have supported children through dance exams nod performances where they have been very successful. As a teaching assistant, I feel I do as much teaching as the class teacher just in different settings and contexts. However, I would be confident in teaching a class of 30 children and do the job to a good standard (especially if this lesson was in dance or musical theatre). Which leads me to some other questions that I have constantly thought about...

How beneficial is a PGCE to a dance or performing arts teacher? Could the job be done based purely on experience? How does that compare to the importance of a PGCE for a primary school teacher or secondary school maths teacher? Do some schools take on dance or performing arts teachers who don't hold a QTS? 

In conclusion, whichever question I choose to develop further, it will be some form of comparison between the teaching/school of dance/performing arts in comparison to teaching/school in general. Please feel free to leave comments below on your thoughts and how I could take these questions further. 

Beginning Module 2

It has been a terrifyingly long time since I have written on this blog. But here are a few things that my readers need to be updated on!

The summer holiday was wonderfully exciting and marked the beginning of lots of new things for me. I have moved from Kent to Surrey to live with my boyfriend. The area is very different but we have both settled in very well. As well as a new living situation, I have started a new job as a Teaching Assistant in an Ofsted 'Oustanding' infant school. I am absolutely delighted to be working with a class of year 2 children and have already gained a great amount of experience. Teaching Assistants have much more involvement in the planning, teaching and marking of children's learning in schools today, so this is an incredible experience for a potential PGCE. I still get to teach dance on a Friday afternoon as part of the children's 'enrichment' time. This is one hour a week where the children partake in different activities that are not part of the curriculum. I am hoping to start some more extra-curricular dance teaching in the new year, once I have completely settled and organised my life!

Due to all this change, I feel my degree has been forgotten slightly in the chaos and I am already feeling behind. However, half-term is just around the corner and this will give me some quality time to really get my head down and get the ball rolling with module 2. 

Thanks for reading and good luck to all other students embarking on the next step!