JUMP IN(tegrated) Dance (JUMP IN) investigated whether a learning community had a valid role to play in a Higher Education environment. The project integrated undergraduate dance degree students, community participants, support workers and family members across three distinctive institutional domains. The constructs for the action research intersects three elements of direct influence both on the research area and its paradigmatic framework: Disability; contexts and issues, Learning; teaching and pedagogy and Integration; as a form of inclusion. Each distinct element was influential to model; its modes of representation, and social constructs in both practice and theory. These influenced the use of language and syntax, research interventions and identifiable connections made to individuals, groups and their environment. The primary capacity of a project of this nature was to ascertain what extraordinary things learners could do in this ‘model’ environment and how achievements are accomplished as a result of its shift from tiered learning towards a cooperative paradigm.
Conclusion findings:
There were noticeable benefits in the outcomes of participants learning and development: Language is cleaner and appropriate as a result of being with an actual client group and working with them in a cooperative paradigm. There is a greater mutual respect for the individual and a passion for celebrating the differences we have a human beings as opposed to the labels which identify us. The undergraduate students identified a different agenda in relation to finding strategies for integrated creative practice and finding solutions useful in an educational and community setting which is inclusive. There is evidence within the delivery and its associated responses that learning is encouraging a deeper transformation of the individual through its task based activity. Elements of the project have certainly been problem centred; allowing room for the individuals to reflect and this has often resulted in self actualisation and in turn greater confidence, active practice and sharing or verbalising ideas which in turn bring alternative perspectives to the work.
