Your Handshake: Expand your kinesphere and communicate your intention through your physical presence Focus on the Scoring Guide/Rubrics Created and Presented by Susan Gingrasso Professor Emeritus UWSP Theatre and Dance Department Copyright © 2009 Susan Gingrasso Directions for Participant Constructed Performance Task Learning Outcomes ¾ Visibly expand one’s kinesphere to create an inviting environment for another person. ¾ Communicate a clear intention to another person through one’s physical presence by consciously using one’s breath support, grounding, whole body focus, and body flow. The Performance Task As the chair of your department, you will introduce a new, rather radical program of study, Active Listening, to the curriculum committee. You will meet the committee chair, Mr./Ms. Closémindé, for the first time today. You realize that you need to establish a positive working relationship when you meet Mr./Ms. Closémindé as well as your firm commitment to your department’s new curriculum. You want your physical presence, as conveyed only through your handshake, to convey your intentions warmly and clearly. You have only one opportunity to establish this relationship. Questions to ask 1. What does the performance task measure? 2. Is a performance task a valid instrument to use to measure the learner outcomes? 3. Will the performance task allow me to create a scoring guide that provides reliable information about learner success to diverse raters? Questions to ask about the task and the scoring guide 1. What is measured? I think I have devised the task to measure your abilities to select and apply concepts you learn that meet the needs of this simulation. 2. Is it valid? The outcomes explicitly ask learners to demonstrate physical skills in greeting through a handshake; i.e. expand one’s kinesphere and communicate a specific intention through movement only. A performance task provides a framework within which learners can demonstrate the degree to which they have mastered these skills. 3. Is it reliable? Established protocols (standards) for a successful greeting do exist. The scoring guide/rubric developed for this task will provide raters with general and specific characteristics based on the learner outcomes. Theoretically, diverse raters should arrive at the same or similar conclusions about learner success given the same data and evaluation criteria. Scoring Rubric with General and Specific Characteristics For the purposes of this simulation, I have chosen to condense the criteria into two large ones (which correspond directly with the outcomes). In some ways, having fewer criteria streamlines the evaluation/grading/scoring process. On the flip side, condensing all of the movement components into two criteria means that giving specific feedback will be harder. Please notice that the criteria are also specific to this task, which while desirable, may not always be practical given the amount of time you have to develop a scoring guide/rubric. Criteria Needs improvement or Deflated Expand your General: Your kinesphere shrinks as you approach kinesphere to the other person. create an inviting atmosphere Specific: The texture and energy in your kinesphere creates an environment that excludes the other person. Acceptable or Growing Excellent or Encompassing General: Your kinesphere expands to meet the edge of the other person’s kinesphere. Specific: The texture and energy in your kinesphere creates an environment that neither includes nor excludes the other person. General: The person you greet is confused about your intention. General: Your kinesphere expands to include the other person. Specific: The texture and energy in your kinesphere creates an environment that definitely invites the other person into your space. General: The person you greet “gets” your intention. Communicate General: The person you greet is completely your clueless about your intention intention. clearly only through Specific: Your breath Specific: Your breath Specific: You really need to movement support, grounding, support, grounding, attend to your breath whole body focus and whole body focus and support, grounding, body flow need to body flow all work whole body focus and coordinate and together to convey body flow to sort out connect with one your intention clearly how your body and mind and elegantly. are connected to form another to convey and convey an intention. your intention clearly. Glossary of movement terms 1. Breath support: “Includes both cellular and lung respiration and is a key to fluidity of movement, . 2.
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. . a basic sense of trust in Being” (Hackney, 218), and the awareness of the connection between one’s being and how one interacts with the “outside world.” Flow: “The baseline, the ‘goineness’ of movement” (Hackney, 219), the way one regulates the quality of the energy on a continuum of free to bound. Focus: The manner in which you “give your attention” (Hackney, 221), spatially, and the quality of that attention through your whole body on a continuum of direct to global. Grounding: Neuromuscular and psychological support that comes from actively connecting through the whole body, particularly the pelvis. “In everyday language, to say someone is ‘grounded’ implies hat person has a stable sense of him/herself. This presence of self requires an embodied relationship to the earth” (Hackney, 41). Intention: A mental and psychological construct one forms to give shape to an idea. Intentions usually have spatial, temporal and qualitative implications for the action or series of actions performed to achieve the desired goal. Kinesphere: “The mover’s personal space surrounding the body. . . . The kinesphere is defined physically by the distance that can be reached all around the body without taking a step. Kinesphere is defined psychologically by the space the mover senses is hers/his” (Hackney, 223). Gingrasso: Handshake Performance Task‐focus on Scoring Guide 2