Dance Teaching Survey Review

Big thank you to those who took part in my survey! The main reason for my survey was to find out whether all teachers no matter what discipline encountered different levels of ability in their classes, and if so how did they cope this. Also to identify whether there was any other factors that influenced the way they dealt with his issue.

After reading Rosemarys summary of her survey I decided to a simular structure to reflect on my own results. Rosemary states that “..each question should add something to the survey”.  On reflection of my survey and what I was trying to find out I can now see that the question ‘Where did you train professionally’, added nothing to my findings as it was not relevant to my main question. This will really make me think about my questions next time and be sure to only include questions that will add something, especially if using a tool such as survey monkey where you are limited to 10 questions only.

Summary of Findings

On whether teachers found themselves teaching students of varying levels of ability within their chosen field my survey confirmed 100% for me that this is true across the board no matter what ages you are teaching or what subject.

With regards to how teachers deal with this issue, respondents recorded this in writing. The results are coded into types: A. 40% (4) would set tasks according to student’s individual ability, B. 20% (2) would teach at a level suitable to those students with the highest ability, C. 40% (4) did not to answer this question.

Of those respondents that are in type A, 75% talked of a passion for teaching when asked why they began teaching, whereas 100% of those in type B started teaching as a fill in or money maker.

The respondents were predominantly female, with only 20% male. 55.6% of the respondents hold a teaching qualification. 2 out of 10 respondents had been teaching under a year, and the same numbers were seen for those teaching between 1-3 years, 20% had been teaching for over 4 years and the further 40% did not answer this question. With such small numbers there is no conclusive evidence that any of these factors affects how you deal with different levels of abilities within a class.

Evaluation

With the limited about of responses I gathered it is difficult to come to any clear conclusions. I feel I have confirmed that in general teachers all encounter classes involving children of different abilities, and my findings would suggest that as a teacher you either make the decision to teach a group as a whole or to set different tasks for the different capabilities, however I would need to gather further information from interviews and observations to determine whether this is always the case.

Quantitative data was limited with many respondents not answering all questions and so the information collected in a written format was the most informative. A number of respondents did not complete the whole survey and skipped questions and so I will try to gather information on the reasons for this to see if improvements can be made to prevent this from happening in the future.

The feedback I did received from respondents was positive and confirmed that the questions were clear, easy to answer and in a good order. Other positives about conducting a survey online such as this was that it was quick and inexpensive to set up, respondents could participate in their own time and comfortable environment, I could gather a lot of information efficiently within a limited time frame. However this would not be suitable for those without access to the internet and could exclude certain respondents for that reason.