Frameworks

In the PM discussion group on Sunday we talked about positivism and non-positivism 

in terms of proof: in the sense that Module One AOLs has an element of proving your knowledge because the knowledge is present in the practical doing of your professional practice but not articulated into the larger field of practice. Articulating this is you’re your AOLs are attempting to do.

Proof in terms of the theoretical framework (positivist / non-positivist you are starting to create in Module Two to create your inquiry framework.

Proof in terms of how you make your data and ideas more meaningful than just a 'proof' of something you already know. 

For me ‘proof’ is not something that I adhere to. Rather I see things in terms of better understanding relationships between things. The relationship between your experiences, other’s experiences (‘The Literature’), your actions and your growth is the ‘living proof’ of the knowledge you are writing about in the AOLs.  The discussion was really good and people risked putting ideas out there to see what other people felt (and in saying them maybe better understand what they thought themselves) –

 '"it made sense in side my head" said Pooh' 

We came to the point where we pointed out that the course is in a theoretical framework - one that allows for multiple realities. It is not just anything goes it is based on Pragmatism and Phenomenology.

You must be aware of:

• Your own frameworks
• Being the framework of the course
• Where you accept, and do not accept, that framework - but still achieve the outcomes of the Modules.

Here is some more about this from a forth coming chapter Helen and I wrote about our theoretical frameworks. It is not complete but an example of how a framework pervades across your whole concept of Self and meaning behind your actions and understanding of how other people and things are in relation to you in the world. – You have a framework too, at this MA level we are asking you to be aware of it and consider how much of it is assumptions or general popular belief you have inherited without thinking / feeling about it. And how much of it is crafted over time and experience as your movement practice is

‘British born our mother-tongue is English but we feel the language itself does not communicate the cultural understanding of the world we have grown up in.

As dance scholar-artists, our sense of ‘reality’ is in the transformation, transaction, interaction demonstrated by movement. Understanding the world through dance, we do not have a perception of stillness/fixedness since heartbeat rhythmically creates constant movement within us. Life is within and between the heartbeat, the breath: dance is within and between these rhythms. Our interest in the in-betweeness of things, (rather than seeking to pin down static identities) finds meaning in movement: meaning in the transitions between, in and through…. For Adesola dance exemplifies this interconnectedness. The artist is both the dancer (perceiver) and the dance (perceived) as such dancers are engaged across and through the reflective process of responding with mind-full bodies in order to dance. Dance is both what the dancer is doing and what they are being. As we consider Dewey, however, his very concepts of ‘interaction’ and ‘transaction’ force us to acknowledge that he must have been shaped by experiences he was having in the community and natural world around him. Dewey’s wider community consisted of a range of pragmatists such as Native Americans - Black Elk[1], African Americans - Du Bois, and women such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Pratt, 2002; Sullivan, 2001). We feel it is these influences of African, Indigenous and female perspectives that resound in Dewey’s work that resonate with us.

Dewey (Adesola) and Heidegger (Helen) are established within the Western canon and are therefore useful because they offer methods for articulating the ‘embodied’ within Western frames…’

 What do you feel?

Adesola

Black, E., & Neihardt, J. G. (1932). Black Elk speaks. New York,: W. Morrow & company.

Pratt, S. L. (2002). Native pragmatism : rethinking the roots of American philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Sullivan, S. (2001). Living across and through skins : transactional bodies, pragmatism and feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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[1] Dewey was alive 1859 to 1952, Black Elk 1863 to 1950 (Black & Neihardt, 1932)  Peirce lived 1839 to 1914, William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born in 1846 and died 1917