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

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Date

2018-11-21

Authors

LaFrance, Cheryl Lynne

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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.

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Pedagogy

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