Teaching Philosophy & Educational Programmes
Mark has consistently advanced his practice and expanded his knowledge and interest in new areas of investigation whilst simultaneously challenging those who work alongside him and those who study under him. As a performer, choreographer and dance educator Marks work has been driven by an interest in the exploration of self. This is manifested in the constant challenging and nurturing of the student learning experience.

 

Mark has a wide and broad range of curriculum development and experience as dance educator within the community sector, health, professional dance companies (Rambert), arts institutions (Whitworth Art Gallery) and FE and HE contexts (Liverpool John Moores University, City College Manchester, Barnsley College, South Yorkshire, St Catherines, St Helens, University of Chester and, more recently, at Edge Hill University). Evidence of my support for colleagues and impact on student learning is encapsulated well within the following comments:

 

“Mark Edward has an excellent ability to engage with students immediately and at a deep level. His own enthusiasm and commitment to dance is inspirational. The way in which he has been able so dramatically to build Edge Hill's dance programmes is indicative. As a teacher, Mark has the ability to remain completely and naturally himself in interactions and this authenticity has won him many admirers. There is no side to Mark, no pretence, and this makes for highly effective communication. A particular ability of his is to engage with each student in a group individually in order to develop that individual toward his or her own highest potential, and at the same time to move the group forward as a unified whole in making group practical work. Mark's choreography is less, perhaps, made on, and more made for and made with. Another aspect of his work that I admire is his interest in making dance and dancing more widely accessible. Mark has never forgotten his working class roots, and he is committed to encouraging a diverse range of students to dance and to engage with dance”.
Dr Linda Ludwin.

 

“Mark is an artist who can translate and transfer his passion and make dance accessible to all through his dynamic and distinctive pedagogy. It was clear from the onset that Mark had a vision for applied dance development within the degree and could also see the need for creating an artistically rich student community and this aspect for me was the beginning of one of many opportunities to work alongside him, witnessing Mark bringing his vision to fruition, impacting on artists, students and young people.

Mark inspires me. He offers valued support and he works in a way which enables exciting ideas to be created and taken to fruition. He is constructive, uniquely insightful, understanding and inspirational to work with.

He commands respect from all who work with him and his discipline and drive and striving for quality is paramount to all that he does. What I feel sets Mark apart from so many other practitioners is his generosity of spirit and shared creativity. Mark can see that learning is a life long venture, that it crosses generations and that learning has to be fun and exciting and experienced”.
Karen Jaundrill Scott.

 

Mark’s teaching philosophy is has a strong pedagogic rationale underpinning it, integral to which is the promotion of a knowledge-centred environment in which an emphasis is placed on learners’ understanding rather than mere performance. Through understanding, students and community groups learn how to apply their skills. They also learn the structure of the discipline of dance and creative practice enabling themselves to be empowered. Mark’s philosophy of the dance is that I nurture individuality rather than train; he aims to create the ‘thinking practitioner’: the autonomous dancer, rather than the automatic one. The thinking dancer is a graduate, dance enthusiast who maintains a sense of self and is not a docile body under surveillance with little critical self reflection regarding what is being demanded of their body and how this is best developed.

 

As a reflective practitioner, Mark constantly challenges his practice with a view to enhancing it - laying bare important pedagogical issues for critical scrutiny by himself and others, including those that work alongside me. His research outputs and teaching interests are concerned with the following interrelated concepts:

the gender performative as a constructed cultural agenda which manifests itself in the masculine myth; destructive masculinities; the female muse for the male choreographer.
the socio-political self in performance through the revisiting of political and social movements that have impacted on arts practice: such phenomena include the Toxteth riots and the Watts riots, the Stonewall riots and Outrage, dancing through a pandemic - AIDS and the offshoot aftermath, rave culture /acid house phenomena and the economic decline and subsequent forced evolution of the large dance companies of the 1980s brought about by funding cuts and out of which emerged the dialogic voices of independent practitioners.

embodiment and the flesh as the site for representation/presentation: My preference is for dance class content to join people together in a common corporeal ideal while recognising individualisation by allowing each person space to explore dance techniques that bring about empowerment of the dancing self by each self being an inhabitant of his or her own skin. Thus the student is encouraged to live and breathe the dance, and there is an avoidance of ‘just doing steps’ or becoming a hired body to a specific style that may be forced upon a body and which may be against personal physical inscription.
the hegemony of the aesthetics of no ordinary bodies where I encourage student engagement with discourses in the ‘ideal’ dancing body, body fascism and what constitutes ‘best’ dance practice. Debates concerning who sets the ideals of dance and how best these polemics can be reflexively examined and challenged are paramount to the development of choreographing difference. My ethos as a dance educator is that students can participate, regardless of the level of previous (or even lack of) dance training as long as they demonstrate physical confidence and quirky capabilities. This ethos might be described as personality over plié. In this way, both dance programmes in which I have significant input address and embrace institutional policies on inclusion and widening participation as well as subverting the class systems subliminally inherent in entry requirements that demand students to have had ballet classes since the age of five. The endeavour is to take enthusiastic potential and turn it into individual achievement. This has been the major driving force behind my dance ethos.