Monica Pentassuglia

Inside the ‘body box’: exploring feedback in higher education

Abstract In recent years, educational research has paid special attention to teachers’ practical-operative experience. The growing interest in the concept of practice within workplace settings has become a turning point in sociological, anthropological and educational studies. The present study aims to explore lecturers’ perceptions and conceptions of feedback and their daily professional practice, with a focus on the use of body movement while providing feedback during the class. Even though educational research has paid a lot of attention to the concepts of practice and performance, there are very few studies that consider the main actor included in the definition of those concepts: the body. Methodologically this exploratory case study uses a mixed methods approach. Results identified two types of issues: the first one concerns the relation between lecturer and students during the feedback practice; the second one concerns the internal coherence of lecturers between the kind of verbal feedback they provide during the lesson and how at the same time they act bodily.

“The Art(ist) is present”: Arts-based research perspective in educational research

Abstract A growing interest in the concept of practice within workplace settings has been seen in the last two decades in a variety of fields. Although some authors highlighted the importance of this type of research, there is still a poor scientific understanding of this process. The first serious discussion and analysis of the construction of knowledge emerged during the 1900s. In the field of humanities, questions have been asked regarding the use of traditional research paradigms in terms of its limitation of understanding complex subjects. In line with this perspective, the current article provides an opportunity to advance the understanding of new research paths. Specifically, after an overview on the traditional research paradigms, particular references are devoted to the Arts-Based Research (ABR) approach and to the use of arts within the research processes. Then, this contribution provides a deep exploration of dance-based methods for educational research. As a transdisciplinary approach, the ABR can be used in different fields. For this reason, the current article tries to provide insights about the use of dance-based methods in the educational context. An in-depth literature review will highlight the issues linked to the use of dance in research paths highlights different connotations of it within the research process. The author identified and explored three main uses of dance in academic field.

Teaching as Dance. An Ethnographic Pathway for studies on Teaching

Contextualise, identify, and describe the characteristics of the teacher’s professional practice is not easy. Recent researches on work and the influence of the concept of practice have contributed to the budding of studies aimed to explain aspects of the work and to clarify its features compared to the knowledge and know-how. In the Practice Theory perspective, and considering the work as a performance, this article reports the results of a field study. The present paper draws attention to a particular category of analysis, the dance that not only emphasizes the role of the body and of movement, instead proposes a reading of the work as a practical and situated activity.