callies project

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by Mason Wilson0 views·Updated Dec 12, 2020
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  1. Hello, everybody.
  2. I'm here to present to you my action research project,
  3. which was over dance for special education students, specifically in
  4. a high school public education setting.
  5. So to begin, the background of my study really is
  6. the whole reason I selected it because I am a
  7. dance teacher in a public high school and I see
  8. a lot of students without the opportunity to take my
  9. class. And these students are typically the special education population.
  10. Out of a program of 150 students.
  11. I have three that get to come to my class
  12. from our a C C self contained program.
  13. Okay, not all high schools in Texas have dance programs,
  14. and I think it's really important to advocate for those.
  15. And that's what I selected as tthe e importance of
  16. my study.
  17. Like to use my data to advocate for inclusion of
  18. dance programs into special education programs in curriculums, be it
  19. I come to them and within their own classroom or
  20. they come to me.
  21. Yes, three questions I searched to answer were, if the
  22. three participants in my study improved in communication both verbal
  23. and nonverbal, their confidence and their motor skill and physical
  24. ability. My literature review covered three different sections, the first
  25. being the research done on benefits of dance and general,
  26. in which there is countless of research done on the
  27. physical, cognitive, emotional, all the source of benefits of dance,
  28. mostly health related.
  29. Moving on the next section of my lit review WAAS,
  30. the studies done on special education and the needs of
  31. students with disabilities to experience movement practices.
  32. And the studies show that the benefits are even more
  33. prominent in those with physical or learning disabilities than n
  34. able bodied students.
  35. And lastly, the need for this curriculum in high schools.
  36. Their studies show that thes sort of elective offered at
  37. the high school level can improve graduation rates.
  38. Yeah, so my participants in the study were three special
  39. education students who are currently in my program at Camera
  40. High School.
  41. There in the same class period, all female and sophomore
  42. students. Two of the students are had been in my
  43. dance program before and one of them was the first
  44. timer. They all have very broad, a very broad range
  45. of their level of ability in communication and skill.
  46. The materials I used to collect data were simple surveys
  47. for the students and mostly my notes and my own
  48. personal writing systems.
  49. My procedure for the research was I simply collected data
  50. by what I observed in my class.
  51. So as I was teaching, we performed different parts of
  52. the class and I took notes and ended up grading
  53. them on a scale from 1 to 5.
  54. So one being well below typical performance and five being
  55. well above typical performance in many different skill sets.
  56. I did link my data here, but I don't think
  57. it's going to show you, so I'm just going to
  58. keep moving on a group.
  59. So I took that data for 10 days in a
  60. row and I had certain skills that I have them
  61. do every single day so I could track those areas
  62. I was looking for.
  63. I first looked for the physical component components of wth
  64. e motor skills, so things like coordination, balance, strength and
  65. weight shifting.
  66. The second area I looked up was the more cognitive
  67. abilities of dance, which included memorizing movement and also following
  68. or mirroring movement as it was being demonstrated.
  69. Lastly, the area I looked into was the emotional growth
  70. So I kept track of their mood and demeanor before
  71. and after class each day.
  72. And based on my knowledge of the students, I was
  73. able to give them a rating on how much they
  74. were willing to participate that day.
  75. Okay, the analysis of my data, O C.
  76. We got a broken link.
  77. It's okay.
  78. I'm gonna keep going.
  79. What I did to analyze the data is I simply
  80. put all of their ratings into a line graph.
  81. So the line graph.
  82. I was easily able to find the trends in each
  83. category to see where there was growth, to see if
  84. they remained stagnant throughout the 10 days and to see
  85. on which days it might have fallen a little bit
  86. lower. Fan usual.
  87. I separated the line graphs into the three categories of
  88. motor skill, cognitive and emotional growth.
  89. Mhm for my results, I found that there were consistently
  90. upward trends at some point during the 10 days in
  91. for each of the participants in each of the categories,
  92. What wasn't necessarily consistent waas if they maintained the growth
  93. or if they correlated to each other.
  94. What I found was that there are so many variables,
  95. especially for these specific students of how they perform that
  96. day. I tried to correlate.
  97. Was there mood low that day?
  98. And that's why they didn't perform a swell and there
  99. was really no correlation there.
  100. I had days where the students, one of my students,
  101. I might have rated at it, too, on their willingness
  102. to participate.
  103. But they had one of their highest scoring days in
  104. the motor skills.
  105. I think it's just because the variety of what their
  106. disability limits them to do between all three participants.
  107. One of them has already great balance and strength, where
  108. another has little to no string but can memorize choreography
  109. really, really well.
  110. So I think it just depends on the individual kid.
  111. But what I can say for certain is that they
  112. each grew and showed days or they did improve on
  113. their skills, so I can only imagine what they would
  114. be able to dio moving forward.
  115. If this research research lasted longer than 10 days, that
  116. leads into my conclusion and the limitations of the study.
  117. The small sample size was a huge limitation of the
  118. study and that there's only one of me I wish
  119. I could have conducted this research with all the dance
  120. teachers in the district to accommodate for not only more
  121. students but for the different teaching styles of the students.
  122. Secondly, like I mentioned before the amount of time for
  123. the study in dance, it typically takes weeks, if not
  124. months, to really improve on skill for mastery or substantial
  125. growth. My implications for educational leadership began with developing a
  126. checklist of the qualifications that allow special education students into
  127. general ed classes for electives.
  128. I know for us I don't know of a system
  129. that's decided, but who gets to go?
  130. I just know that there are over 10 Children in
  131. our A C C program that do not currently attend
  132. an elective class of their choice.
  133. I think part of this is due to staffing, as
  134. each of these students would need an aide to attend
  135. the class with them because I have three in my
  136. class in the same period, they're able to send one
  137. aid with three kids, and it really works well.
  138. Implications for future research.
  139. I would like to see the study done with more
  140. kids, of course, and I would like to broaden it
  141. to include different genres of dance.
  142. I would like to see how ballet would compare to
  143. jazz to tap to creative dance and movement and see
  144. if each genre of dance had a specific result for
  145. the students.
  146. Overall, I really hope that this research can show that
  147. dance is a benefit for all but something that special
  148. education students can really benefit from.
  149. The most important change I saw over these kids was
  150. talking to them about their confidence level, and I could
  151. see and they could tell me that they felt proud
  152. of their dancing and they loved to show their classmates
  153. they're dancing.
  154. And so, regardless of you know, if they really did
  155. learn the skill, it's important that in that social setting
  156. they felt accepted.
  157. And I think that's something that all special education students
  158. should be able to experience in schools.