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.