Task 6D- DRAFT COMPLETE

It's safe to say module 2 for me has been the hardest journey of education so far! I have faced so many challenges and difficulties, change of minds etc throughout the whole process.
Today I felt a sense of achievement when I finally felt confident to send my draft and forms along with my critical reflection into my tutor! Although I was slightly delayed in sending it and perhaps a little late I still feel I have produced the best work I can so far.
As I anxiously await feedback so I can develop on it I wanted to reflect on how hard the experience has been for me. After module 1 I was certain that module 2 I would dedicate more time on the final submission. I definitely feel this is a target I have achieved, when I began writing my draft at the end of March whilst still completing the other tasks required of me in the module.
The hardest part of the module for me is the freedom we get to explore. I am so structured in life that I found it hard to just pluck out the research from anywhere with the freedom to research into what was most influential and relevant to our current practice.
I'm glad the experience has forced me to face difficult challenges and the whole module has made me more experienced and confident that there isn't a wrong answer or wrong way to do something.....

I wish you all the best of luck in your final drafts and submissions and the next post I write will be when I've submitted the final work! GOOD LUCK!

6c- Award Speciality Title

This task put me in two minds, I genuinely had to have a long hard think about my choice for my specialism title.
Firstly I was immediately drawn to Musical Theatre, I have my trinity diploma in the subject so why wouldn't I choose for my degree to go in the same direction? After trying to write my reasons for the chosen title I realised that my future career and current career gain no satisfaction from me choosing musical theatre when I already work in a much more expanded world of arts.
This then lead me on to think about my future career and whether I should be choosing my own title....

Ideas for my own titles were as follows....
Performing Arts in Education
Performing Arts Teaching
Primary Education in Arts

Unsure whether I was allowed these titles I still wanted to list the pros and cons of choosing a speciality title of my own. All the titles I thought of were all based around what I wanted to do in the future, but realistically I wont be starting to do anything around teaching until at least September 2018 for a PGCE so I then realised I needed a title that would benefit me for the year after completion of the degree and also my future career.

 I started to do some research into the deeper meaning behind performing arts....

The sentence above says it all. Print screened from google definitions. That sentence is the summary of my career now, and the one I want to be involved with in the future. Although I want to be a primary teacher in the standard maths english science etc there would be nothing stopping me specialising in dance classes within a school or drama classes for the older sector. This then made me want to choose the performing arts title. Why wouldn't I go for the one I am going to get the most benefit out of using. Below is the screenshot of my draft for the form I will be sending in for my submission in May. 

Informal Trials for Inquiry

I have chosen to do two methods of informal trials to experiment with the tools I have been researching and understanding. From evaulating the tools I chose the Interview and Survey route to do my informal trial on. I also think a focus group is a great tool but hard for me to do an informal trial with my SIG as we all live in different parts of the country!!

Firstly I chose to create a survey using survey monkey. I made this anonymous and created two different ones depending on peoples circumstances. I did one for those who have a performing arts background of any form and I also made one for those without a performing arts background. For the informal trial however because I am testing on my SIG group and people close to me within the BAPP course I am sure the data I end up getting back will all be from the survey I created for those who have a performing arts background....
My aim is to get at least 3 -5 responses for the informal trial as there isn't too many people I can outreach to due to the fact this is just an informal trial for the tools. Below are the links to the two surveys I have created for the two different circumstances.

Performing arts background survey

Non - Performing arts background survey

The second tool I was interested to try is the interview type. This is also a hard tool to informally trial as I want someone to be able to do a face to face interview with so I can also reflect on their behaviour, the way they respond and their body language. I thought the closest thing I could do this with is SKYPE.... I have asked two of my fellow students from my old college and also on module 2 of the course to help me with this..... Sometime this week I am going to interview the both of them separate if I can, if not it will be a focus group situation with the 3 of us, and it will be interesting to see how their body language, facial expressions, tone of voice will differ from the answers they respond with in the survey. If I could it would be interesting to do both the interview separate and the focus group with them both to see if anyone else hearing their answers would make them change what they say. Again I will struggle for the other side of the people I want to interview who haven't had a performing arts background for this informal trial.

I think these informal trials will really help me with the development of my proposal because it will help me learn what I need to do differently and reflect on this in the proposal.

I would really appreciate if anyone within BAPP arts reading my blog could give the surveys a quick go as I would love to see if they work or not.... there is only 7 questions to answer :)

6b- Merits and Limits of Tools

Interviews Merits

• False information won't be recorded because you are the one asking the questions and collecting the answers
• I am in control of the questions as the interviewer, I can make them open or closed
• I am able to explain any questions the interviewee may have at the time there and then.
• I can look at body language and behaviour, even have the ability to record with the correct permissions
• I can choose who I interview and control the process of the choosing of people
• I can choose to interview any of the methods mentioned in reader 6.
• able to receive qualitative responses
• The interview is conducted in a private and confidential place unknown to others 

Interviews Limits

• It's not an anonymous process because I am there and I know who it is, they may feel shame or embarrassment.
• Time and work schedules make interviews hard to arrange and also limited time to do them in when they are so time consuming
• I- as the interviewer may misunderstand the participants answer, leading to false results
• participants may lie
• I have to consider not to be bias in any questions I ask

Focus Group Merits

• People can participate with each other and not just the person conducting the questions
• A focus group allows for more questions to be developed 
• again allows for a qualitative approach of research

Focus Group Limits

• A group of people may make others shy and feel exposed and also in turn a group of people may be too confident and cause tension and make others feel unhappy- causing arguments and producing no honest results
• People may speak over one another so if recording the process data is difficult to collect
• The process is incredibly time consuming
• Hard to get everyone together when we all work in the same department 
• It isn't anonymous because everyone is in the room together

Surveys Merits

• produces quantitative data and statistics however allows for qualitative responses aswell
• completely anonymous so people may be more honest
• easy for the participant via the use of Web 2.0 - survey monkey and links on facebook etc
• collaborating data is easy if you use correct platforms to do so
• can collect data of a larger scale so more accuracy and averages

Survey Limits

• participants may leave the qualitative chances to respond blank
• not enough participants may even do it
• quantitative research isn't always the best for small scale enquiries
• the participants may not understand why a question is being asked and I am not there to answer any questions they have
• participants may lie
• behaviour can't be recorded or noticed

Documents Merits

• Able to expand knowledge and not repeat things that have already been studied/ researched
• literature and documents are easy to get hold of
• a good source of evidence to back up your own

Documents Limits

• there may be few resources in your choice of inquiry line
• depends on who the author is and what their conceptions and thoughts were to make the document bias
• incredibly time consuming because you need to find documents of huge significance

I think when it comes to my inquiry that interviews and surveys will become the most beneficial, however the use of documents is something I definitely need to consider as there is more chance for accuracy and evidence!

I'd love to know what all your thoughts and opinions are on the methods and whether I've missed any limits or merits out!

Task 6a- Reader 6

When thinking about the tools for my professional inquiry I already had a basic idea of things I could do. However I wanted to read reader 6 with an open new mind to add or develop any ideas of tools I already had!

Designing Practitioner Inquiry
'In any inquiry design, importance is placed on the validity of the inquiry' - (Reader 6, pg 6, 2016) This is something I had already thought about in the ethical dimensions, not to ask a question unless it is a valid and relevant one. Using the tool interviews to obtain relevant information for example.

'Another concept, reliability, identifies whether you have carried your inquiry in such a way that will gain consistent results...' (Reader 6, pg 7, 2016) This essentially means that if I am asking similar people who have a performing arts background the same interview questions, am I getting the same results/similar answers from them.

Generalisability is also covered within the reader, will the research have relevance beyond its initial objective? Could I use the research for something else?

The research of the inquiry can be taken in two different ways, one being the qualitative, using participants views as a basis for the inquiry and the other being quantitative, using a more scientific paradigm, producing statistical data.
The qualitative researcher must be aware of their own biases and the qualitative research is less likely to be used futher than its original objective (generalisability).
The quantitative researcher is usesful to produce averages but on a small scale inquiry perhaps isnt as reliable?

Data Collection Tools

Observations- Conducting an observation allows you to watch and record/analyse an event, for example noticing behaviour of participants, observations ethically would mean the participants would have to know they were being observed but then does this in turn cmake them act differently. The situation of an observation at my workplace would be if the production manager was to come and watch a day of work , would we deliver the entertainment any different to our guests knowing we were being watched?

Interviews- Interviewing is a qualitative tool where you collect what people say. Interviews can be conducted in many ways, face to face, skype, telephone etc. It allows the questions to be asked , their responses can be used as data in the end result. There are a number of different methods of interviewing...open interviews( the interviewee speaks freely), semi structured (questions set by the interviewer are answered), narrative (a story telling format), informal/guided (covers topics but no set questions) Yes/no answers are closed questions, and open questions allow the participants to give their own interpretation.

Focus Groups- Essentially a group interview but they have interaction with the participants rather than just the interviewer. The atmosphere can open up new questions that you perhaps didnt think of but are very relevant to your inquiry. Shy personalities don't work in situations like this and likewise a group of performers would all be very opinionated strong confident characters so may create tension.

Surveys/ Questionaires- a survey for the participants is relatively an easy thing, low response rates will lower the validity of an inquiry. Web based surveys are becoming increasingly popular. They are a quantitative approach to research however open questions can invite a qualitative answer.

Looking at documents- gathering documents and analysing them can play a vital part to an inquiry, data collection is based on docments of various kinds. Journals/diaries are a qualitative approach whereas documents with existing research would be a quantitative approach. Reader 6 gives a good way of analysing a document and I will use the questions from the reader when looking at documents in the inquiry process.

Looking at all the inquiry tools I think the most useful for me would be an interview and survey situation. I would love to be able to do a focus group but I do think a group of confident entertainers will not be the best way to conduct some research, whereas individually, although time consuming I can get more detailed results. Surveys are also something I want to be able to conduct as I feel that the research doesn't have to be in my workplace, it can be any individual. Perhaps creating a survey with some qualitative approaches will help develop questions I can use in an interview situation.

My next stage of development is asking members of my SIG community some of the questions I am coming up with for my surveys etc. It would be interesting to know your thoughts and ideas on what tools you think are the best approaches for your inquires.

Interesting articles....

It's been a huge blog catch up day for me today! The past week I have found some interesting articles I think you could all enjoy reading if you are on a similar line of inquiry to myself! I am also sharing these with members of the SIG group I am a part of...

The first is a blog I came across asking 'Do we need art in our lives' It wasnt the article that interested me it was the question posed, the article allowed people to comment blog style and it is the comments that created the most interest for me! If you scroll down to the bottom many people have commented with their thoughts and opinions and it is great to see thoughts and opinions from people away from the BAPP arts course.... 

Do we need art in our lives? Article Blog

The second was a recent article posted on the guardian relating to Prince George and his ballet lessons he will be taking at his school in September. 

Science won't future proof our children but dance might!

Another I came across was an older post from Washington Post, discussing how children can develop certain skills from performing arts, what interested me was that most of the skills it stated on the article I felt I have and do include on documents like a Curriculam Vitae. Do you guys feel the same?

What do Children learn from the arts?

Working with the over 60's is something I come across in my place of work and teaching dance classes really brings to life the positives it has on their life... this article definitely shows my thoughts and opinions on the arts and aging are shared....

arts and the aging process

Some other articles I came across also discuss the positives of performing arts and the life skills it can give us.....The social benefits it gives us, and why people like performing arts...

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/dec/15/research-why-people-dance

https://www.nfhs.org/articles/performing-arts-students-develop-skills-needed-for-life-and-work/

I also found some controversial articles to the performing arts benefiting us and our lives

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/11/teens-depressive.aspx

5d - Ethical Dimensions of Inquiry

Because I am using individuals for my inquiry I need to consider the ethical dimensions of this, especially when it comes to interviews and surveys, most of which I will be using for the purpose of my inquiry. I also want to use participants CV's to analyse against the interviews I have with them. This is using their personal data so I have to consider this too...... The main ethical issues I will face are as follows. I still want to be able to discuss with the SIG groups I am a part of to see if they feel the same way with their inquries.

Interview Questions- The questions I develop need to have relevance to my inquiry, there is no point asking pointless questions that I wont use. Consequentialism, do not ask a question unless the question will beenfit the greater good, in this case the greater good is the inquiry. My aim is not to offend any participants either nor be bias in my questions.

The Inquiry itself- I want to be able to use the information form provided to give to participants so they know exactly what this research is and why it's happening. I also hope to use this form to give them the understanding that they may benefit from the inquiry too.

Keeping Data/results- There are many factors that will come into this, I was looking at the ethics release form and I never even thought about having to store my results in a safe way with passwords etc! Any info on the computer and any recordings I will be saving into a file that isnt linked with any of my shared devices or shared networks like onedrive etc.... Any written data and hard copies I will keep in a folder locked away in privacy. Once I have used all of my findings and the inquiry is finished I will dispose of all information.

Consent- I will need to get consent off the individuals themselves to be able to use their Cv's and any recordings etc, this is at their own discretion and obviously they don't have to let me. The same goes for taking part in any interviews etc, there is no forcing them to answer any questions they dont want to.

Morals- There are some ethical morals I believe come into play with the inquiry as well, I need to make sure I deliver my interviews etc with confidence but at the same time respect and also make sure the interviewee themselves are comfortable and happy.

Development of my professional inquiry

Because I have been looking into the learning process for both children and adults for my inquiry I have been asking myself a lot of questions throughout the research process. These questions are controversial to my thoughts on my inquiry questionfor module 2 so I thought the best way to stop the confusing thoughts in my head is to blog the questions and try and answer them.

Ive realised that the question I am basing my inquiry around is a factual one.... I don't want to come out with a factual answer.... I want to explore and find out the controversial answers. This lead me on to think about my own career and how I have got to here...

What I have so far been interested in is the way adults and children learn through performing arts, the experience I have at work with teaching adults dance and fitness and singing workshops is endless but the experience I have with children lacks.... I moved on in the inquiry process to just focus on adults but then when I was reading the literature I requested and searching online for ideas and speaking to guests about how they learn when I am teaching I began to feel somewhat bored of the topic. I then realised an inquiry is never going to be good when I feel bored of researching the results. I want to have something I feel passionate about. - The answer is right in front of my eyes.... My career.....

I love performing arts, the question is, has performing arts enhanced my life experience? Has it made me a better person, does it make people better performers, does it enhance our skill set as people? I believe researching my intial thoughts on an inquiry - How do adults and children learn through performing arts?... has lead me to want to research more into how has the learning process through perfoming arts enhanced my life. 

With all these thoughts in my head I have spent the last week frantically searching the internet for things to help me develop this. The answers are all in front of my eyes..... I work with a team who primarily trained in performing arts, some havent but most have, I speak to guests everyday who have previously studied performing arts in their life, I work with both sides of the spectrum.. the people who haven't done any performing arts and the people who have! Why don't I use these people to develop the questions I am truly interested in. 

I dont see this change of inquiry a failure, I see it only as a developement, at the end of the day the research from the previous inquiry ideas I had have lead me onto this.....

DOES PERFORMING ARTS BENEFIT US FOR OUR FUTURE?

DOES PERFORMING ARTS ENHANCE LIFE EXPERIENCE?

DOES A BACKGROUND OF PERFORMING ARTS MAKE YOU A MORE SKILLED INDIVIDUAL? 

all these thoughts going through my head on this have made me excited to begin my proposal, and all the thoughts I am feeling now are ones I can review and reflect on in my critcal reflection on the process of module 2. 

Whilst I am on the topic of module 2 and my development I have also taken the decision to delete my SIG group and just focus on the ones I am members of, this is because there hasn't been any development on the one that I made, no comments from others and no discussions whereas I am feeling more involved with the ones I am a part of and feel the discussions through those groups have also played a huge part in the development and changes in my inquiry. The sig group eleanor created - performing arts in education has really interested me with some of the articles that have been published on there and I feel I can now use these articles in the inquiry I am moving forward with. 

I would love to know your thoughts on my situation and whether I'm feeling the right things and if you guys have had any fundamental development changes to your inquiry like I have.

Job change at work!

Today I came to the decision to hand in my role of dance captain to somebody else within my team. I had been dance captain for nearly 9 months at the hotel and have sucessfully got 5 new team members into our shows. There were many reasons to why I came to this decision but I feel I have got all I can out of the role and want more challenges elsewhere, so I have taken the decision to go back to being a standard team member within the entertainment team. 

The reason I am sharing this with you all is because I believe ethics will play a huge part in the process. I have already been dance captain for a while, therefore I know the role, I know how I like to deliver the ways I do my job and I have my own way of doing things. By giving this to somebody else I have to accept that there will be changes to the process. I have to respect the fact I didn't want the role anymore and the new dance captain will have their own ways of doing things and it is not for me to comment on the way they do this. 

My personal morals should come into this - respect etc which then in turn makes me a professional within the team and then this makes my organisation a happy one to work in. Being a professional is putting behind me what I did as dance captain and letting the new one take charge- even if some of the things I don't agree with. 

Consequentialism is the best way to move forward with this, do not say anything unless it benefits the greater good of our team, this respectful character that I choose to be then makes my actions respectful also making me a virtue ethicist. 

I am excited at the new prospects the change of role will give me and feel I will have a lot more time and dedication to focus on my degree as well. 

5c- Professional Ethics

After studying Reader 5 it has provided me with a lot of information that I feel are relevant to the development of my professional inquiry. I feel out of all the topics this is the one I am struggling most with and it cam to light in Reader 5 that my thoughts are correct - 'Ethics is frequently not a case of black and white' (Reader 5 pg7, 2016)
The Reader covers 3 areas of ethics- PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL AND ORGANISATIONAL.
I believe in order to conduct yourself professionally, the personal morals have to be set which can then develop into your organisation.
In my place of work the way I am as a person in turn reflects the way I conduct my rehersals in a professional manner which then in turn affects the organisation I work in. The whole effect is like a ripple, the inner part of the circle is my morals, the middle ring is the professional and the outer the organisational. They all flow into one another.
I like image shown in the reader to represent this ripple effect.

I found the theoretical approach of consequentialism interesting- 'an act is morally right if, and only if, that act maximises the good' (Reader 5 pg 9, 2016) Working in the entertainment industry this rings true... I will only ever do something if it needs to be done. Telling my team that one of our shows was terrible wouldnt be maximising the good, telling my team that our show was amazing but we have a few things to work on would benefit them more than delivering a negative approach.

Dentology and Virtue ethics differ from the theory above and the easiest way I understood these was to apply them to the Case Study 2 in the reader.... the outcome below is what I came to...

Case Study 2 as a consequentialist- The photographer should of only taken the photo if it maximised the good of others.... but did it?   He won a prize for the photograph and did people enjoy his photo? By doing what he did I dont believe he maximised the good of others.... the girl died... he died? where was the positives in the outcome other than the prize?
Case Study 2 as a dentologist- The photographer was wrong... good will is not leaving the child to die....in this theory good will is always right.
Case Study 3 as a virtue ethicist- I believe the case study is controversial with this ethical framework... his character at first seemed selfish as he left the child to die and only focused on the photo and his career developing. But proof at the end proved his character was not selfish.. the guilt he felt only showed his character to be a caring one. His character was as important as the action in the end of this study.

There are many controversial arguments in the framework of ethics where the employers expectations, professional code and personal ethics all interlink with one another and can cause dispute.

Descriptive ethics provide a description of the reasons behind moral choices, it states what the case is.
Normative ethics examine the principles people use when they make moral choices. It raises more questions than descriptive ethics.

Ethical Arguments - Is there another way of seeing the situation?  This is something I like to do when considering a situation that I don't know if I have done wrong or right. I would like to be able to apply this approach if a problem was to arise in my inquiry.

The whole reader has educated me to a higher level on the theory of ethics and the deeper morals behind them. I feel now I can apply ethics to my inquiry with the confidence I have the understanding of what they are.