Exciting Prospects...

Yesterday I officially completed my Zumba Instructor training to be able to teach Zumba and also a speciality programme of Zumba Gold....
What I took away from the day was great! As most people have heard of zumba the fast paced latin dance fitness class I won't explain it all but specialising in the Gold Programme aswell was a highlight for me purely because I work with the older generation of people at my current job with Warner Leisure Hotels and essentially I gained two licenses.... one for active fit young people, the other a class of less impact for those people of an older stage, those people who are beginners and those people who may have any disabilities- mentally or physically.

One other plus to the completion of the course is I can now go and take a course to teach zumba kids.... helping me push my teaching career to get into schools even further.

The reason I'm writing this blog is to talk about the learning experience for how we compared teaching a normal fast paced zumba to a slower paced zumba built for people of an older age.
- COMMUNICATION: In zumba Gold verbal and non verbal cues are used for the choreography, things are broken down slower.. whereas in the other zumba there are no verbal cues and no breaking down of choreo.
- MOTIVATION: the motivation for zumba gold seemed to be at a higher level
- SOCIAL: we were explained that most zumba gold participants are there for the social, dedicating your time to them is of a big importance, whereas the other class are mainly here for one reason - to get fit and they have places to go and things to do after.
- USE OF SONGS: older guests are more experienced through life... their favourite songs arent played as much anymore.... zumba gold relives their youth all over again whereas current zumba we use a lot more current material.
- STYLE: most of zumba gold guests are baby boomers: they want to relive the rock n roll days, the swing days, we do that through zumba gold. #

There were plenty of other things I took from the day but I wanted to be able to use this as experience as one for my inquiry, I am now going to experience teaching a mature adult vs a younger adult... it will be interesting to see the differences and use the differences as evidence perhaps for my inquiry.

I became a member of the ZIN network and I can't wait to wear this funky top I got! ;) I might even think about making a small career on the side with it when I leave my job in entertainment.

Literature 3 - Pedagogy vs Andragogy

LONG POST ALERT
I have been looking into just the sector of Adult Learning for some more Literature.... WHERE TO START?! There are just endless amounts of it! I came across 3 websites all of which have their own reasons as to why/how adults learn....I have copied in the articles as well as attaching the sites they are from....
Opinions are definitely accountable for most of the literature in this post that I have attached and I would be interested to host a survey on how many adults believe in it.
One thing that certainly springs out of the literature is Adult experience... They have their own mind. I think the below 5 statements about adult learning are so relevant to my inquiry because if I don't know the reasons behind why adults learn a certain way I can't inquire about the best way to teach them.


1. Adults have a wealth of experience to draw on, and like to do so. There needs to be opportunities for adults to connect learning to their own unique personal or work situations, and opportunities for them to personalise the learning in this regard.
2. Adults aren’t used to taking direction in education like children are. Children learn because they are told to learn things that will have some relevance in the distant future and will do so without questioning why. Whereas adults need to be explicitly told what they are doing and why so they can connect the desired learning outcomes to their own goals and progress.
3. Adults need specific opportunities to self-reflect and internalize their learning. Children are more social in classroom settings than adults and talk to each other about their experience. Adults need to be offered these opportunities to reflect on new learning or else they won’t internalize and retain as much information.
4. Adults have preconceived notions about education, learning styles and subject matter. They prefer to learn a certain way, even if it is not the most conducive to their individual needs. Unlike adults, children will try most new tasks and see them through, regardless of how well they do. To overcome this adult learning barrier, we need to appeal to many different learning styles and present information in a variety of ways.
5. Adults are (often) afraid to fail. Children don’t have the same social filters and are more willing to experiment. Adult learning needs to be scaffolded (built on in small pieces and supported with extra learning) or they risk losing their intrinsic motivation and focus.

http://learnkit.com/2016/01/13/adult-learning-needs/

• Adults are self-directed learners, whereas younger students are adult-dependent learners. The traditional learning model naturally requires that children depend upon adults for the next lesson, the next assignment, and the next subject matter. Adult learning turns this paradigm on its head, by making the study of most subjects a self-directed endeavor. For the adult learner, less structure and oversight is required by the educator.
•  Adults challenge new information, but younger students implicitly accept it. We’d have a problem on our hands if our nine-year old students questioned the legitimacy of their multiplication tables, or were skeptical about the spherical shape of the earth. For adult students, however, skepticism is part of the path to learning. It’s not just expected; it’s encouraged. The way that adults learn best is by challenging new ideas, comparing them to preconceived notions, life lessons, and other information, thereby cementing the new information into their minds.
• Adults pursue education with immediate application and relevance, whereas younger students simply engage in education without a clear sense of direction. It’s obvious that a fifth-grader hasn’t pegged his career path, thereby applying his geography lesson to his future job as an airline pilot. By contrast, most adults are already well into their career path. Thus, their education has immediate application to their daily life. Being able to walk from the classroom into the office makes one’s education truly applicable. For this reason, adults enter degree programs and areas of education that will immediately enhance their career, meet their needs, or solve their current problems. For the adult, education is relevant.
• Adults accept responsibility for their own learning, whereas younger students attribute educational responsibility to a parent or guardian. How adults learn is how adults live—according to their responsibility. After a childhood or teen years of dependency, the adult must now make his or her own decisions, even in education. Thus, the adult student will accept the responsibility—pass or fail—for his or her education and learning

The Table above is a Tool that compares an adult learner and a child learner.... This is a chart I am going to create in my next blog to show the differences between my classes of adults and children through performing arts, comparison tools are the best for visualising what areas need researching.

http://www.ccu.edu/blogs/cags/2011/10/how-adults-learn-compared-to-younger-learners/

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/awesome-chart-on-pedagogy-vs-andragogy.html

Literature 2

The second piece of Literature I am going to analyse is 'Do Children and Adults Learn Differently?' by Deanna Kuhn and Maria Pease.
This piece of writing is definitely relevant to my inquiry if not on the very same lines of my inquiry so I needed to see how far the topic got explored as there wouldn't of been a point in doing an inquiry of a similar nature to one that has already been proven. The literature stated that the inquiry had been abandoned when the interest declined....

This piece of literature shows a study/ inquiry very different to something I am interested in but I want to focus more on the teaching differences than the retention rates. Perhaps my inquiry should be pushing more along the performing arts side of teaching rather than just general. Reading this article has shown me that the subject of just learning in general is far too big to break down for an inquiry.

The inquiry written in the literature is based on a case study experiment.

http://www.mx1.educationforthinking.org/sites/default/files/pdf/04-04DoChildrenAndAdultsLearnDifferently.pdf

Literature 1 - Task 4c

 Task 4d requires us to find out some literature and review it according to the topic we have chosen to research more about.....

The first piece of literature  I want to talk about that I found whilst researching into adult learning was 'The cone of Learning' the article I read includes the history of the cone of learning to how we see it today and why it is perhaps misconceived......I printed it off and annotated what I thought were relevant points to my studies of how we the learning process changes as we age.The literature has also pointed me in the direction of some other interesting sources I wish to have a read of.

Before reading this article I had heard of the 'cone of learning' or the 'pyramid of learning' and I thought what an amazing image to show that maybe we all learn the same even as we age. The article has completely changed my opinion and created an argument in my head as to whether it is the same at all has certainly proved that not all the numbers are 100 percent accurate. It's opened my mind to explore whether we should be even using the image now to visually show our learning retention. When I realised how the current image we see today has been misconstrued from previous images by 'Edgar Dale' I can see how we were originally supposed to understand the image as 'The Cone of Experience'  As the piece of writing states there is actually 'no conclusive evidence to back up the average retention rates' down the side of the new image produced by others since 'Edgar Dale's' first image. Instead as stated in the article 'Dale did not value one mode over another, but argued for a wide variety of modes depending on context'

I believe the article is very relevant to my inquiry as I was going to use the image as a big piece of evidence to show that maybe all ages through learning do have a large connection. This literature questions it may not! I can still use this visual representation but need to remember to try and find proven information when doing my inquiry

Shown below is the link to the article

http://acrlog.org/tag/learning-theories/

Literature

One thing I have done this week is focus on literature on the MDX Library, I have registered as a distance learner on there so I am able to request books to be sent to me that I want to read and use as sources. Doing this has created an extra resource for me to use to find literature other than online as my local library doesn't really stock much in terms of specialist subject books.....

I recommend anyone on the course struggling to find literature to get online and get registered with MDX for distant! It's free and you only have to pay postage fee to send them back. This week I am going to be requesting literature to help me with my ethics side of Module 2 :)

More blogs to follow of written up annotations of some interesting literature I have found into my line of inquiry! |I will also be sharing this with my SIG. Stay Tuned!!!

My own SIG

I have created a special interest group for people interested in how we learn....

Now that I have a direction to go with a topic inquiry, I want to start getting more information and using this to develop my inquiry further.
I have chosen to study how everyone learns... through different age groups and also perhaps how a style of learner can develop through age....
I ask that anyone interested in primary education or teaching of any form could join this group and have discussions about how different ages learn best and how we teach different subjects best etc?

I created the group on google communities and would love as many people to join as possible!

https://plus.google.com/communities/112879565805875881970

Thankyou!

1-1 with Adesola

Today I had a 1-1 skype chat with Adesola. The session answered some of the big questions I had!

Firstly I was worried that I was moving too far away from my practice and focusing too much on what I want to do as a future career. Adesola confirmed that my ideas were still within my practice as I am a performer.

One of my main topics of inquiry was 'The transition from Performer to Teacher' I thought this a too general subject. Adesola explained that finding depth to this general subject using ethics and tools would help me define this topic of inquiry. One interesting way to visualise this was that my inquiry was a piece of clay.... the tools and the ethics were the knife and spatula... therefore I use the 'knife' and 'spatula' to mould my inquiry into something more defined. I can't define the inquiry before finding the depth.
This was something I was definitely doing, I was trying to find an answer to my inquiry question before I go ahead and search for knowledge and use the tools and ethics to gain depth.

Another question I had was finding the SIG groups, did I have to create one or as long as I was a part of one is that all that I need to help me find the information and ideas I want to find,,, Adesola explained that the sig groups is about finding keywords... for example a big keyword for the general topic above would be the career change of a performer. - There is a fantastic book called 'Exit Stage Right' by Ciara Pressler that is made for performers unsure of where their career change is taking them or unsure of what they want to do....

After having another look at all my previous notes of topics etc. I have decided I am going to collaborate all the ideas I had around education and those within my practice to use my tools and ethics to look into the general topic of  'How do different age groups learn differently to one another?/ How does teaching differentiate between different age groups? 
I feel using this topic relates so much to my current career and future... at the moment I teach adults of different ages dance classes and choreography from shows etc... further on in life I want to be teaching children of a younger age through primary education.

I think choosing an inquiry line of something like this makes me able to use my current practice as a dance captain to ask questions within my workplace and also gives me the freedom to use inquiry tools to find knowledge outside of the work place too.,... The question is both suited to my current workplace and my future one which I think is more beneficial than focusing on just the future pathway. If the question changes as I begin to look into the ethics and tools of inquiry then that's fine, its part of the process.

Having the tutorial with Adesola really helped me realise that I was looking too far into the future.... I won't get an answer for my inquiry within the 12 weeks as there are people who have been wondering this for years.....but I am looking foward to finding more out about it as it's something I am really interested in. I feel much better knowing I have a direction to go in now for Module 2.

http://www.popopics.com/quotes/image-download/science-quote-by-thomas-berger-9k.html