Starting Module 3

Hi everyone!

I've been very slow getting started on the module because life is a bit hectic at the moment, which I'm sure everyones is. To begin, I have re-read my Module 2 inquiry to remind myself of my ideas and objectives. Below I have written a summary of my project so far as suggested by the handbook, taking into account the feedback I received from Module 2.

Working title: 'Initial study into establishing a Dance school and improving my knowledge of teaching'

Research Inquiry Questions:

1. What Preparation is needed to start a Dance School?

2. What are the roles and responsibilities of a Dance teacher?

3. What are the different teaching styles and techniques?

I realise that as part of my final piece I will have to define the terms, dance school, dance teacher and explain in detail what I have been researching. 

Ethical Issues:

The ethics Board has approved my research and I am aware of the ethical procedures I have to follow to ensure my research is carried out correctly. As a researcher I will ensure participants autonomy, keep data protected and make sure everyone is treated equally and with respect. Before my participants are involved in my inquiry, it is my responsibility to inform them of the nature of the inquiry, how I am going to use the data that I collect and why their involvement is necessary and how I will protect them as a source of information. Each participant will need to sign a consent form before I start my research and any questions that they have I will answer. My participants will know their right to withdraw from the inquiry without it affecting my research.


In addition I will be re-reading Reader 5 to refresh my memory on ethical considerations to ensure my research is structured accordingly. 


Literary Review:

My literary review is in the process of being expanded from the items I found in Module 2. After reading my feedback I am interested in looking into Gardner's theory of 'Multiple intelligence' as I believe it will further my inquiry questions. Furthermore, the nature of my inquiry requires me to look more into statistics and figures, which I haven't explored yet. 

Changes:

I haven't got any major changes to my inquiry as off yet, but I will be keeping my options open for any possible changes depending of where my research takes me.

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Any comments are welcome as I'm sure everyone is feeling overwhelmed about this Module!

Award Specialism title

Title: BA (Hons) Professional Practice in Arts (Performing Arts)

My rationale is as follows:

When deciding on questions for my professional inquiry, I wanted to do something that would not only help my profession but my professional colleagues and anyone else in the performing arts sector. I wanted to choose something that I have knowledge on, like the dance world, but also extend my knowledge to all of the performing arts so that I can learn new things. I have chosen to focus on funding in the arts because I feel that it is something that some students struggle with after they leave college if they want to start their own projects, with regards to where to find it, if they are eligible to get it, how to receive it and what are the terms of the funding. It will also be beneficial for me to research for future reference if I ever wanted to start my own dance school or performing arts project.
The purpose of the inquiry is to find out what performers and non-performers know about funding, how I can get more information out there about funding, how funding cuts are affecting the arts council and other funding establishments and hopefully give all artistic professions more of an idea of what help they can get.

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This is a draft version of my rationale, any comments or advice about how to improve it would be very helpful.
Thank you!

Task 6a- Finding the right Inquiry tools for me

It is crucial for this Inquiry to find the right tools that work for us. The tools that we can use are; observation, interview, focus groups, surveys and questionnaires, diaries/journals and literary research. Of course we can't use all of the tools because it would be too time consuming and we probably wouldn't have time to analyse it all.

Observation 

This involves watching, recording and analysing events of interest. The observation method can be very time consuming because you have to observe classes or have to fit into someone else's schedule. It can be difficult to collect all the data that you need because you may not see anything of interest when you are observing. On the other hand it can be a very useful tool because usually in observation the participants aren't talking and therefore you can pick up on the behavioural side of things. 

Interviews

This involves asking questions to people that have experience and knowledge of your subject. You can have varied interview types like; semi structured, open interviews and informal interviews. You have to pick which one is most beneficial for your inquiry and which will give the data that you need. Before you do an interview, you have to consider where it will take place? What information do you need to collect? Why have I chosen this person to do the interview? How will you record the information? Is everything going to be on the record? Will all the interviews include the same questions, if not why not? What is the structure of the interview? So there are a lot of things to take into consideration and it can be very time consuming. But also you can uncover data that you didn't think was there.

Focus groups

Focus groups are similar to interviews. You have a group of people all with knowledge on your topic area and you ask the questions. The positive thing about focus groups is you can collect a lot of data because of how many people are giving their opinion. It also allows people to debate within the group giving you ideas you didn't have before and you wouldn't have got with a one on one interview. The down side is it can be hard to control. If lots of people are talking at once it could be impossible to analyse the data and the group could be taken off topic with the flow of the conversation. If you choose this method, you need to know how to control the group and keep on topic. Maybe you want participants to state their name before they talk so there's no confusion. 

Surveys and questionnaires 

Surveys and questionnaires are a good way to get quantitative results. To ensure that you get feasible data from these surveys you have to make sure you ask a range of people. Surveys are usually quite a popular tool because it is relatively easy for participants to do. Surveys aren't time consuming and it isn't an ongoing process. With surveys you need to make sure your questions make sense, they are in the right order and it looks presentable. You also need to know which type of questions you're going to use e.g. yes or no questions or questions where the participants are given the option to write their opinions. The participants need to know why they are taking part in the survey and need to be thanked after. The down side of surveys and questionnaires is you may not get in depth answers to help with your inquiry or enough people to take part which will affect the reliability of your data. 

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To help me know what tools I want to use I have decided to do a pilot survey. I have included yes or know questions, questions that give participants the option to give their opinion and questions that have more narrative responses. I would really appreciate people taking part, it will only take a couple of minutes because it isn't that long. 

My Survey

Any feedback would be very helpful! Thank you.

Bibliography

Reader 6 (2015-16), BAPP, Middlesex University 

Task 5b and 5c- Ethics

Task 5b-

After thinking of what ethics there were relating to dance based solely on my own thoughts, I researched professional sources to see what else there was. I found a very interesting article on a website called Dance Archives written by Anna Malitowska called Dancers' Professional Ethics. Malitowska writes 'Fulfilling professional duties may not, in such a case, be justified by ones own moral expectations but by social expectations'. I think this is very important to understand because when you are in a professional working environment you have to obey the rules that are set out to you, not the ones you set out yourself. Malitowska's list of a dancers duties include;

• A duty to improve one's skill
• A duty to care for the image of the profession
• Building trust between fellow professionals and care for their reputation
• A duty to respect other individuals, including their freedom to create
• A professional dancer is obliged to support and actively help others realise their professional goals
• To not blindly follow someone else's steps but to use someones advice in agreement with one's self-knowledge. 

I think that these points are very useful and have helped me see more ethical and moral duties of a dancer. I also wanted to research the ethical issues of a teacher. I found this website Ethical standards for teaching that talks about the purpose of ethical standards and what they are. It is a flyer written by Ontario college of teachers. The purpose of ethical standards include;

• To inspire members to reflect and uphold the honour and dignity of the teaching profession
• To identify the ethical responsibilities and commitments in the teaching profession
• To guide ethical decisions and actions in the teaching profession
• To promote public trust and confidence in the teaching profession

Their ethical standards for teaching are;

• Care-Compassion, acceptance, interest and insight for developing students potential
• Trust-Fairnesss, openness and honesty, professional relationships are built on trust
• Respect-Members honour human dignity and emotional wellness and cognitive development
• Integrity-Continual reflection assists members in exercising integrity in their professional commitment and responsibilities.   

I feel that this further research has expanded my knowledge on ethical standards and will help me approach my inquiry with the ethical standards that have been written by me in the previous task and researched in this one. 

Task 5c-Reader 5 Ethics

Reader 5 is quite a lot to take in but I feel that I have expanded my knowledge of ethics and will be able to confidently apply it to my Inquiry. Ethics is a difficult subject because it is not black and white, it isn't as easy as saying this is right and this is wrong. It is open to interpretation and what the moral standards of society are, may not be the moral standards of your personal life that you like to live by. There's a sort of grey area in the middle where there is a lot of uncertainty. The development of ethics can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. The Greeks code of ethics was concerned with the 'good' or the 'right' way to carry out actions and keep a civil society. The evolution of ethics involves digging deeper into what is perceived as 'good'. 

For Aristotle, ethics is manifested in 'habitual actions'. For example it is not good enough to be honest every Friday but instead you must be honest everyday. Immanuel Kant (1779) believed that moral rules are absolute and you should help people in need no matter what you feel or want. He also believes that lying is always wrong in any situation. This contrasts with JS Mill's view, who believes that if the overall outcome is for the greater good then it can be done, even if the action is questionable in terms of morals. For example if you need to kill one kitten to save 12 kittens, then your action is justified. 

Therefore morals and ethics are interchangeable between each person and what I find acceptable other people may not. The moral structure of society and your personal views can change and what morals you live by now may not be the morals you live by in 20 years. For example, up until 1967 homosexuality was illegal but now the position has changed and homosexuals rights are protected and since March 2014 same sex marriage has been legalised. On the other hand same sex marriage is still not legal in Australia. So even though we as a society in the UK have moved forward, what we accept as our cultural norm, is not accepted everywhere.

Another issue which Ethics is when our personal ethics conflict with our professional ethics. There can sometimes be tensions between personal ethics, professional ethics and employers expectations. For example a Catholic nurse is asked to assist in terminating a pregnancy but the rules of the Catholic Church say she is forbidden. It puts people in impossible situations. At what point do you let your own moral standards slip in order to keep your job? It's an impossible question to answer and thankfully not one that I've had to answer yet but definitely something that I will take into consideration when writing my inquiry.

Planning the our inquiry includes planning what ethical considerations we will take into account. We have to think about who it is benefitting, what we hope to gain and how we will go about handling our data and our treatment of the participants. This includes addressing our participants with respect and writing about them in a respectful way. Making sure our participants know that they can leave the inquiry if they want to. Making sure our questions aren't biased or urging the participant to give the answer we want to hear. I will be expanding on these points in my Inquiry and in my Ethics form.

Any feedback or thoughts would be very helpful!

Bibliography

Anna Malitowska (2012) Dancers' Professional Ethics, Dance Archives

Ontario College of teachers https://www.oct.ca/-/media/PDF/Standards%20Poster/standards_flyer_e.pdf

Reader 5 (2015), Middlesex University

Literature Research

It has proved very difficult to find any literary research based on my topic of Inquiry. I have decided to expand my questions, so that I can find more information about funding in the UK.

What funding is there for all the Arts from the Government and other funding companies?
How easy is it to get funding for a project e.g. opening up an arts school or company?
How are funding cuts affecting our economy?
How many non artists/artists go to watch theatre, singing, poetry or dancing? And how often?
How many arts organisations are being affected or shut down by government funding cuts?

I found this interesting article by The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/arts-funding-cuts-regions-badly-affected-econom-ic-stupidity

The article concentrates on Birmingham and Newcastle but still gives an insight to government cuts. In 2010 the cuts in Birmingham to arts organisations was 17% in 2010 and 20% in 2013 (The Guardian, 2015). In Newcastle 2012 the council threatened to reduce its budget by 100%, in the end they were still cut by 50%. This reveals along with other statistics I have found that government cuts happen every year and they show that the percentage goes up each time.

Clare Brennan, who wrote the article, pointed out that 'flourishing arts attracts attention, signal prosperity and encourage investors...cities with high tourist numbers have flourishing cafes, shops and theatre'. George Osbourne recognised the importance of putting money into the arts "£1bn of funding adds a quarter of a trillion pounds to the economy-not a bad return". So isn't it in our best interest to put money into the arts and fund new projects?

With regards to my question about how many people are there going to watch arts productions, I'm going to set up a survey for my fellow students on Survey Monkey, so lots of participants would be really helpful. I will then give the same survey to non artists and compare the results. I will put the survey up on my next blog post and I hope to find some more literary research surrounding my topic.

Task 5a- Ethics

I'm still in the process of researching my three pieces of literature so I thought that I would continue with task 5a and then come back to my research.

I have a part time job as a waitress but this does not relate to my topic of inquiry, so I thought I would draw some experience with the teachers that I shadow. I'm looking to do my PGCE after Middlesex, so I thought it would be helpful to shadow some teachers where I live and gain some experience. The task said that we should rely solely on our thoughts and experiences, so this is what I believe you have to take into consideration when teaching:

• Child protection and safe guarding (no sexual, physical or emotional abuse)
• Reporting anyone who you see abusing a child/children 
• Making sure you have parents consent with anything that you are planning
• Keeping yourself at an appropriate distance from the child 
• Being appropriately dressed
• Keeping your language clean
• Treating all children equally 
• Making sure all health and safety checks are up to date
• Being responsible for the childs wellbeing e.g. appropriate warm up and cool down and response to injury
• Making sure they have the correct information about how to look after their injury or giving them access to a physiotherapist
• Keeping on top of all dancers injuries
• Making sure other staff (if any) know the rules and are abiding by them
• Monitoring staff to make sure rules are being followed 
• Keeping your personal life separate
• Keeping physical touching to a minimal/only when necessary to explain something
• Noticing behaviour changes in a child

That's all I can think of for right now but I'm sure in the next task I will find out more!

Part 4- Further development and Breeze session 14th March

Developing Lines of professional Inquiry-Part 2

What do we mean by Research?

Research- 'Seeking through methodical processes to add to one's own body of knowledge and, hopefully, to that of others, by the discovery of non-trivial facts and insights' (Bell, 2005, p.2).

We are lucky on this course that our research can be a mixture of literature research and research within our professional environment. We can use our journals and previous blog entries as evidence of our experiences in the professional world and then see if we can find previous practitioners that have felt the same way and then we become more informed. Martyn Denscombe says when thinking about what we should research for our inquiries does you inquiry:

Forecast some outcome?
Explain the causes or consequences of something? Criticise or evaluate something?
Describe something?
Develop good practice?
Empower a particular group? (2002, p4)

This started my thinking process into what my area of interest is for my inquiry. I'm interested in finding out what financial support there is for dancers with regards to setting up a company or a dance school. Hopefully the outcome will be that I can help dancers look for financial help and what websites they should use e.t.c. Even if the financial support is minimal then I will still have raised awareness of this. It will also help me to research, in case I want to set up my own dance school in the future. I saw that a couple of people had done spider diagrams to help them with what they were researching and what their questions are, so I did one as well.

Special Interest Groups (SIG)

Lily Grundy has kindly set up a SIG for us and there has been a lot of interaction on there and I think everyone is finding it very helpful. So far I have used the SIG to comment on Lily's line of inquiry and hopefully gave her some information that will help widen her research. I have also posted on there today, so any feedback would be great. I'm also thinking about starting my own SIG because Paula said it would be useful if you're part of more than one so that you get different people's perspectives and opinions.

Breeze Chat with Paula

On Monday I had a talk with Paula, Zoe and Sophie on the breeze space and it was very comforting to hear that we are all in the same boat and pretty much had the same questions. We each talked about where we were within Module 2 and we had all thought about what our line of inquiry should be or the subject area. It was important for all of us to find out that our line of enquiry doesn't have to be just one question, it can be up to six. Obviously you don't want to put too much on your plate because you do have a lot of research to do, so take on as many questions as you think you can handle. Other things we discussed was the importance of the SIG's, library sources and summon (which I have never used before). I think mostly the chat helped me with where I need to go next, which is researching my inquiry using summon, thinking about my key words (which I did in my spider diagram) and setting up another SIG to expand my knowledge and get input. 

BAPP Part 4-Developing Lines of Professional Inquiry

Developing Lines of professional Inquiry-Part 1

It's been a long time since I've made a blog entry and I'm just getting into the swing of starting on this next module. I feel like it's a lot to take in but I say that every time, probably because it takes me a long time to process and understand things so I have to read through them a couple of times. I will do this section in 2 parts because I feel like it's a lot of information to take in.

Task 4a- Asking the right questions 

With regards to developing lines of my professional inquiry, I feel like I touched on some subjects that I maybe wanted to explore more at the end of module 1. For instance, my favourite topic in Module 1 was reflection, as I had never actively thought about reflection in my profession and it changed the way I approach tasks. I also want to incorporate something to do with teaching because that's something that I want to do. So I've got a few ideas but nothing solid yet which I think is a good thing because it'll most likely change and I'll have new ideas after completing all the tasks in Module 2.

The goal is to create a question which will benefit not only myself but fellow dancers, so we can all learn something from each others inquiry questions. So what I have done is gone through Reader 4 and at the end of each section I have thought of a question that relates to it and I will hopefully find something that interests me so I can research it further.

Work based learning

Throughout the course we have all been trying to use what we've learnt in the modules and apply it to the workplace so that we can improve our practices and further our learning. We all have different ways that we work best and working environments that benefit our learning, which is why it's so important that we share our ideas so that we can work together to improve our workplace.

I was interested to learn about Argyris and Schon's concepts of 'theory-in-use' and 'double-loop learning'. From what I understand the former can be split into 'theory-in-use' and 'theory-in-action'. If you give someone a situation and ask them how they would handle it, the answer that they give you is theory in action. Once they act on this theory, it becomes theory in use. But the question is, is the theory of action and use consistent? What you plan out in your head doesn't always happen, in other words the consequences may be unintended and there was a mismatch between your intention and the outcome.

Argyris and Schon suggest two responses to this mismatch which are single and double-loop learning. Single loop learning is where you have a plan but something goes wrong and you have to think of another strategy but you stay within your organisations chosen goals, plans, values and rules. I think that single loop learning applies to big businesses and people that have a variety of strategies that work for them. Reflective learning is minimal here because you have already used the same sort of strategies before, so you're not learning anything new. It is a very safe strategy, you know you can get the results that you set out to achieve. Double loop learning is much more risky, it involves thinking outside the box and rethinking what you've learnt about the rules and regulations of how things should be done. But in the process you could come out with something so much more. It can be difficult to convince others that your new idea will work out though because it has never tested or put into action and therefore how can you be trusted to get the results that your workplace needs? It is a hard to overcome but I think as artist we should strive to be double loop learners and be more creative in our workplace so that something great can come from it.

My question for this section is: Is being a Double loop learner always beneficial for your practice, or is it sometimes best to stick to a method that has proven to consistently work?

Knowledge and Skills in the Workplace

I recently attended One Dance UK launch in Leeds where graduates and professionals in the dance industry talked about their experiences and what to expect from the dance world. There were a variety of people from the industry from choreographers, to activity coordinators and freelance producers so it was a very helpful insight to the world of dance and  how many aspects there are to it. I think it particularly helps me with this section because we are focusing on the difference between disciplinary and transdisciplinary learning.

Disciplinary learning can be seen as wide knowledge on one particular subject. You are an expert in your field, you know the characteristics and procedures of your community. You don't really stray far from what you know and sort of similar to single loop learning, you don't explore new ways to do things. The up side is that you know which strategies work well and what gets the job done and also people know who to go to for expert advise with your level of expertise. However, Raelin describes why competence might not be enough, it means that people aren't looking for new ways to tackle things because their managers or bosses have told them a specific way that the company has been doing it for years and they just want to do it right which is generic competencies.

Workplace knowledge doesn't always fit into categories so is described as transdisciplinary. I understand this as someone who knows a little or basic knowledge about lots of different things within their practice. It makes you a versatile worker and someone that can be put to any task. Kate Cox who attended Launch Leeds is a Co-founder of Gracefool Collective a contemporary dance company in leeds which incorporates dance, comedy and theatre. When Kate spoke about her company she explained that she had no idea how much time she would spend sending emails to funders, setting up the website, advertisement and all the things that come with setting up your own company and being self employed. This is a perfect example of why you need to be transdisciplinary in the Workplace. This is why when we were at the Launch we learnt about a variety of things you need to do when you're in the dance industry e.g. if you're self employed you need to do your own taxes.

Therefore my question at the end of this section is: Is it more beneficial a disciplinary of a transdisciplinary person in your workplace? (specifically thinking about Your situation)

That concludes the first part of Developing Lines of my Professional Inquiry part 1. I hope to interact with a few people on the course and get their ideas.