Jumping straight in.....

I think I have made a decision to just get going with my final inquiry writing,

I am finding that the original Gant Chart i had made isn't realistically working with my work schedule and if I dont get a shift on and actually start writing my essay I am going to have a rush over the christmas holidays which noone wants!

So I am starting at the beginning and working on my introduction and the inquiry process I will conduct more interviews when I get to that section as I have shifted what my inquiry is about I need to be sure I know the aims of my inquiry before I start asking people. It's not an ideal way of doing it but unfortunately my work load is too much that I can do it in the ideal way.

Has anyone else started their inquiry in such an upside down way?

Let's Begin...

I have just read through the Module 3 Handbook for a second time, this time I was armed with post-it notes and a highlighter,

I have found the handbook to make a lot more sense by highlighting the key points I need to focus on, I had in my head that my module 3 inquiry was a huge undertaking but by reading the sections I now have a structure to my inquiry and have a starting point.

I have been thinking about my Artefact section of my inquiry and what I might do for that, this has then made me think further into my inquiry topic, as I have stated throughout my blog I have had real trouble narrowing it down into something I actually want to find out about.

After re-naming my inquiry to Why do people perform, I had 3 questions in mind;

To look at reasons that people perform other than for entertainment purposes.

What historical influences have lead to the way we perform today exploring Indian dance?

What has lead to performers feeling they need to compete their talents against each other for them to hold any worth?

Why and how do people use performing as a form of expressing themselves?

I was still feeling quite overwhelmed by these questions my main worry was apart from the main title question I was struggling on a way to link the 3 together,

I feel the first question required for more research than I had time for, the history of Indian dance is huge! It has so many meanings and reasons behind why it is performed, I only did 1 contract in India and I have no plans of going back to do another, so this wouldn't be that relevant to my professional practice.

The third question, Adesola agreed it's opening up a whole new inquiry, it could also be quite opinion based which was the reason I decided to change my inquiry in the first place.

So, I would like to focus on the second question and do my inquiry around that. I feel it is much more manageable and I would only need to analyse my findings from this, I can compare positive & negatives of competitiveness in dance rather than linking 2 completely different topics. 

perhaps looking into how competitiveness can have a positive and negative impact in professional practice and my experience of that, but now how I want to channel it in the correct way for children as a chance to show off their skills?

x

A complete U - Turn

After having the panic about starting my final inquiry and revisiting the subject after the summer break, I had really fallen out of love with it.
I felt that my inquiry question 'What does performance mean to you' was far too broad. I could explore an array of people and still not come to a conclusion. I felt as if my inquiry was all based on opinion, even reading literature would be someones opinion. This made me feel very uneasy as I had no idea how I was then going to analyse all the opinions I had gathered. I feel it would be too personal to compare one against the other, as i wouldn't have the time to completely explore peoples backgrounds and find out why they had the opinion the did and why it differed from another person.

If I hadn't made it as a performer I would have been a historian. For some this can seem worlds apart but the dance we have today all stems from somewhere. I think this is why I did not want to base my inquiry on just opinion and why I need to be able to add a factual basis which I can research. I would enjoy researching into the history of my subject.

I also think that I have had a change of heart on the inquiry topic I would like to do because I have changed what I would like to do in the future. I wanted to be a senior school teacher so I had a clear path of how I needed to get there. Over the summer I organised a dance festival. It was a 3 day competition I had 600 entries from local performers aged4-18. They competed in different genres of dance and the whole event was a great success. I am organising a 5 day one for next year in the hope I can expand each year. This is now the path I would like to take in my career. I would like to organise events & competitions for dancers. I would like to be a part of showcasing what they can do rather than teaching it to them in the first place. Although I realise my inquiry doesn't have to affect what I do in the future but I need to be able to relate it to my professional practice now, because that has now developed so too must my inquiry and I need to narrow down my question.

I am now going to as Why do people perform?
Again this can seem quite broad but I am going to narrow it down into some sub categories of
What historical influences have lead to the way we perform today exploring Indian dance.
What has lead to performers feeling they need to compete their talents against each other for them to hold any worth.

Why and how do people use performing as a form of expressing themselves. 

I am then going to focus those questions further into exploring them looking at the history of Indian dancing and the history of dance in the UK.
One of my contracts was to dance in Indian in Bollywood films & Music videos. It has become so westernised. Even when I was out there I never looked into the reason why and how it has evolved so this is of interest to me and I can use my previous experience.
I will look at the two different countries but not necessarily compare them. I would just give me moer information to look at and explore.

I am now motivated and ready to start my inquiry. I have a lot to catch up but am glad I have now finally pulled my head out the sand!

Sunday Night Panic

So as a new week begins tomorrow I am having a Sunday night panic!

I really have not gelled with my inquiry, I think that the question I have asked is broad and flakey and I wont be able to get any real analysis from it, I will just get opinions which are personal rather than any real facts I can piece together.

I will hopefully speak to Adesola about this in the hope I can completely steer my inquiry in another direction despite having done all the planning. I would really like to be excited about writing about my inquiry and raring to go, instead I am putting it off and really can't think of anything worse to do!

The reason I want to get my degree has also changed and I dont think this has helped originally it was because I wanted to work in a senior school hence why I was doing this course. Now I don't want to do that, I want to run festivals & competitions and start up my own associates dance programme. I want to build a business all around the dance world which is what I have grown up in and love & that is where my real passion is.

I guess situations change and perhaps the summer break gave me too much time and I am completely out of the swing of things.

Time to make another plan perhaps! anyone else having some Module 3 doubts?

Module 3

Ok, here we go Module 3-

Over the summer I have had my final module in the back of my mind, but still teaching full time was a challenge in itself, with exams and prepping children for festival competitions. As well as organising my own dance festival. This is something I am extremely proud of I had over 600 entries from schools across the south coast of England,  I also had some schools from further afield come to compete.
I am going to make Petersfield Dance Festival an annual dance competition getting bigger and better each year.
The first dance festival was a big learning curve for me through organisation and making sure everyone was informed as to what they needed to do. I received some great feedback about my festival.
I would like to try to use the festival in my final piece as I have seen the effect performance has on grass roots level. This is something I had not necessarily thought about in my planning. Although I will not be interviewing any of the competitors as they are minors and I don't have their permission I will write a generalised summary about what I saw that performance meant to these children. How hard they worked to achieve something extra curricular and how much passion they put in to it.
I will ask the people I am interviewing if their experiences when they were younger have effected how they now see performance.

I am now ready to focus on my final module of my BA hons and to start to do my intereviews and focus groups

Task 6C - Award Specialism Title

Award Specialism Title - BA (Hons) Professional Practice in Arts (Dance)

Since the age of 3 Dance has been my life, through every dance class as a young girl then continuing my studies at Stella Mann Dance Colege where I gained my level 6 Diploma in Professional Dance. I have then gone on to dance around the world and I have no intentions of letting my love of dance fade away.
I would like to continue my career of dancing after performing to a lot of other avenues, so I would like to keep my title quite broad on the spectrum. This will then enable me to either continue performing or go on to teaching at a higher level than I already do. I am organising a dance festival which I hope will continue to grow so there is plenty more on the horizon that I wish to discover with Dance.

For my inquiry I would like to focus on what performance means to trained and untrained individuals, and how it features in their lives.
By focusing on both trained and untrained I can gain the perspective of the fans of performance, people that have never taken to the stage but love going to support.
I can also speak to people who trained to be a performer and then didn't perform, whether it be through their own choice or not. I can also speak to people who are still peforming and then people who have perform and aren't anymore.
I would like to find out the back ground reasons for their involvement within the arts and why?

6B: Testing the 4 methods of enquiries

Task 6B was to try and test the 4 methods of inquiry to try and find the limits and merits of each tool in relation to how they work within my own inquiry,

They are:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Documents

Interviews

Limits

• Can take up a lot of time asking everyone individually
• Could go off on a tangent and not answer the question needed 
• Difficult to take up other peoples time when I know how precious it is.
• May not agree to it for professional reasons or want you publishing their personal results

Merits

• Easily repeated: same set of questions and could get a different answer each time
• More personal so people may open up more
• I can choose which questions I ask and add any additional ones in if i feel it going off on a tangent
• Answers can be easily recorded and referred back to.
• Uncover unexpected data

Surveys

Limits

• You can't elaborate on a question in case the candidate doesn't understand so you may have incorrect answers
• Can be very quantitative so only yes or no answers
• As its time consuming you may not have accurated answers or be able to divulge as much as you want to as people are answering quickly.

Merits

• Can be sent out to alot of people at one time, less time consuming for you.
• Can remain anonymous so may attract more people willing to give their input and opinions but those who may not be able to share them if identified
• You have all the data recorded when the survey is sent back to you

Focus groups

Limits

• People may not want to open up in front of others
• Can't remain anonymous 
• Time consuming
• May go too far off on a tangent
• Would need to do more than one group as similar people may all be swayed by each other

Merits

• Can talk to alot of people at once
• Can bounce ideas off of each other
• more of a discussion and less intense than an interview
• can easily be recorded for use at a later date

Documents

Limits

• Would be quite hard to find documents which relate exactly to your inquiry, so could lead you off on a tangent.
• Policy may have changed since the document was written
• Time consuming to analayse each one which may not be any good anyway

Merits

• Easily accessible on web 2.0
• Would gain the persons in depth opinion on the matter
• Would help to have another persons inquiry ideas to help start your own and other avenues you may wish to develop further.

I think for my inquiry I will use a combination of Interviews, focus groups and documents. I feel that as my inquiry is about personal feelings and experiences this may not be able to come across in an online survey, i feel as if I need to communicate with the participant and put across what I am asking of them. To hopefully get a more in depth answer.

I think a focus group of similar minded people would be great to bounce ideas back and forth but then reverse this idea and interview them individually and see if their answers were still the same when not influenced by others.

I think documents would also be a great idea as it would give me access to this mind of those I would otherwise not be able to speak to and to gain professional opinions.

Task 6A: Review of Reader 6 and a trial run!

Task 6A was to review reader 6 which contains a number of different tools which we can use when carrying out our inquiry, Module 2 is all about the preparation and planning for our Module 3 inquiry, this way we can see which tools work for us and provide the outcomes that we need and which don't.
By using our SIG groups we can test out through trial and error before we are released on the general public to try and research our inquiry.

The reader suggests how research can be carried out in a qualitative (what people have said) or a quantitative method (statistics) (Punch, 1998) It is important to work out what works for you and the line of inquiry you have,
'different questions require different methods to answer them' (Punch 1998, p. 19)
My inquiry for example is researching into peoples personal experiences so a qualitative approach would be better for me.

I would like to use the 'triangulation' approach to research when it comes to doing my inquiry, this is the name given to using several tools to examine the same topic. You can therefore compare the data you have received and draw even more conclusions from it.

The types of tools you can use to collect research are;

• Interview
• Survey
• Focus Group
• Pilot Observation
• Literature - (reading other practitioners work)

After reading through Reader 6 about each type of tool I have decided I am going to use the Interview with a bit of focus group thrown in! I find that with focus groups people can bounce off of each others ideas and create either a debate or unity. However with Interviews you tend to get more in depth ideas of that one persons. This i think will help me to gain more focused answers but I would be quite interested to see the additional topics which may arise from a focus group.

With my original inquiry questions (which I have sinced slightly changed) I practiced the on a few close friends from a corporate event agency I am part of, it was great as it sparked emotions of the people I was talking to, they drew from each others experiences in order to answer my questions and I really liked the way it opened up other avenues for me to explore.

SOS on a Sunday Night!

After burying my head in the sand about beginning the planning of my professional enquiry, I decided to try to make some real progress on it tonight,
I thought about the reason I had been avoiding doing it, aside from the usual lack of time I realised that it was because I had no interest in what I was talking about! If I had lost interest in it already now how was I going to be able to talk about it until December!

It was time for a bit of hand holding from Paula, we had a skype conversation this evening which I found to be extremely helpful, Paula helped me to realise what it actually was that I was interested in, i'm not ready to give up the performing side of my career which is all i've ever known and loved to talk about teaching which is going to be my future career and in the grand scheme of it, I know very little about!

For me, at the moment teaching in primary schools is a job where I can use the skills I already have, however my end goal is to work in a senior school or a college, which is why i am doing this course to gain the skills needed to enable me to do this, so it did seem a bit daft to write about a teaching as a professional topic of my choice when it has only just come into my life.

So we have managed to home the subject back in to performing, I was telling Paula how I now am considered to be a retired dancer but I just cant let go of performing, this is what has lead me to the topic of my inquiry, why can't I give it up?

What does performance mean to trained individuals and how have they used it in their lives?

Could this have been a penny drop moment?

A little late in the day and I have a lot of work to do now to steer round my research into my new line of inquiry, I am planning on using the easter holidays as I have a bit more time of work to research some literature on what performance means to individuals.

Task 5B - Ethics in the workplace

Previously in task 5A I had thought about which ethics may apply to my profession, however on looking further into it with all the different places I work out the rules can be quite different.

This can make it complicated to following but I always ask for a copy of the rules for whichever company I am working for.

As a teacher, in all primary schools I have worked in, I have either been give a copy for reference of the schools rules or I have been give a paper to read and sign to say I adhere to them, most of them seem to be common sense. However there must be a reason why these policies have had to come into play.
In extra-curricular dance schools the process isn't quite as vigorous, in one school I haven't had to sign a thing, but this is where my own morals and ethics have come into play as I know what is right and wrong when it comes to teaching. I have a duty of care, I would like to think I wouldn't need anyone to check up on this. But unfortunately not everyone shares the same views on what is required.

As a performer we look to bigger organisations for support such as equity, they have a vast amount of agreements to help support the art industry, as we are all our own product we don't have a human resources department should there be an issue to raise. Equity holds power over the performing arts industry if a company or agent gets blacklisted it soon spreads among performers and we can make sure that something is done about it.

I feel that my assumptions were correct, I have been working in the performing arts industry for a number of years and have learnt the art of adapting to who you are working for. I would hope by now I have learnt the codes of conduct in the work place as this has helped me to have a long career.

Reader 5C - Reader 5

Reader 5 (Middlesex University) bought out the debating side of me, 'Ethics is frequently not a case of black or white' I very much agree with this.
It is very inetersting to read that ethics can be categories to a certain extent into Personal, Profession, Organisation and society. After reading through the case studies I can now see this is the case. Ethics have been dated back to 300BC this ultimately gave the world a structure. Which was seen so early on as being vital in order for humans to co-exist.  I wonder what the case under question was all those years ago which sparked ethics needing to come into play?

I have decided to blog some of my thoughts on the case studies in Reader 5, I think this may be useful when looking into my own professional practice ethics and give me some questions which I can apply, I have also given my opinion on the case studies.

Case Study 1- NHS Mid- Staffordshire Enquiry

• Can the NHS truly be disected by one man in one year? Surely the NHS did not go from 0 preventable deaths a year to 1,200 which triggered the enquiry - so where does the problem start and why did it start in the first place would this not take years of research into the future to establish if peoples actions are still causing it to happen?
• By Martin Yeates resigning before the report was published and being to ill to appear at the inquiry, the cynic in me point to this man knowing something and perhaps feeling guilty, was he not upholding the ethics and thinking he could get away with it?
• 'The NHS find it notoriously hard to admit a mistake' is this because it is public knowledge of how many problems the NHS has and if we knew the true extent would that be the end of the NHS?
• I think the ethical principles are professional and organizational however by individuals resigning they have made in personal. It would be easy to point the finger at the doctors and nurses that allowed the patients to die unnecessarily but why did they? lack of equipment? funding? training? staffing? These are all factors beyond their control so therefore the responsibility would lie higher up.

Case Study 2 - Ethics in Photography

This case study shocked me, to walk past an impoverished girl in order to take a photo of a vulture in flight is ludicrous! To me what gave that man the right to judge which life was more important if all human beings behaved this way with such disregard for others the world would cease to exsist.

They were told not to touch another human being for fear of epidemic? Could they not have alerted a medical team? Or at least bring water to the girl? Personally I would not be able to walk away from this situation

This is personal on the scale, not organisation or society, yes the organisation told him not to go near anyone, but would your human instinct not take over? That man chose to not help save another human life and I can see why in the end he died of guilt. Which ultimately isn't morally right either to let a wrong action eat you up so much, For me if i look back in hindsight at something and it was wrong i would do everything i could to make sure it certainly didn't happen again and something to help the situation. two lives were lost when neither needed to be.

Case Study 3 - The Dance Class

I can see both sides to this perhaps because I am a dance teacher so I am more informed, not doing a warm up does risk the dancers health and they could cause injury, im guessing that the teachers that were not doing warm ups have not had this happen to them, alternatively, for example when I have exam classes which are 30 mins long to take 10 mins doing a warm up and 5 mins at the end doing a cool down leaves me 15 mins to teach exam work and if the children don't get the results their parents want they don't come back! If the dance school is your livelyhood can you afford for this to happen- no. However if you extend the classes, this costs more. I don't but any means agree with not doing a warm up but I can see if under pressure why it was perhaps skipped. In the national curriculum it says all children must be involved and participate to do their best. By singling one student out and putting her down means she will not do her best. You learn to cope with the real world as you're living in it! Your real world may be very different to that of someone else. This is another problem in that anyone can go and open a dance school there is no regulations to stop them, however becoming a teaching is a long vigorous process. Therefore there will be difference in the codes of conduct which is a shame.

Case Study 4 - An extreme case of Plagiarism

Morally and Ethically wrong, personally, socially and oragazationally wrong.

A big question I have is how did the Spanish research team not think that Brown would speak up with evidence of his research and prove the the new planet was his discovery. 

Having the same theory on something when researching the same thing could be quite common, for example some of the things I write about in my blog could be similar to someone else's without realising, but we are working on the same course from similar professional backgrounds.

However to pluck a theory such as a new planet from thin air with no back up research would set of alarm bells to most people. 

Case Study 5 - Presenting findings

Alot of the findings have been made by presumption and generalisation not by fact. One persons opinion can be very different that of another disgregarding gender, class or age. However the author of these finding has drawn his own conclusions on the matter, reading the results of this I would say he hasn't actually spoken to these people and made this up himself.

He has described people politically incorrect as well as morally incorrect and disrepectful. These results I hope would not be taken seriously.

This has really helped me to many sides of ethics also to realise that its not just a case of right or wrong, not following rules and following rules. Does this mean when ethics comes under fire does it need to be a case by case inquiry, to be carried out by a number of people so that personal opinion doesn't come into play?


I feel most of my opinions have come from the world I have grown up in right from what I was taught as a child to the professional world I am now surrounded by, everyone has a different experience of this which is why codes of coduct would come in to play in a work place because the way you may deem appropriate to behave may not be the same a the place you are working in. It would be chaos to have everyone doing as they pleased but, this is a fine line between telling people what is expected of them and leaving them to work it out, rather than they telling them exactly what to think and how to go about doing it. If this was the way we would have difference of opinion.
This has made me realise why it is of such importance that ethics is taken into consideration when carrying out my inquiry as to not influence others opinions, disregard or group them. 

4D - Literature

Over the past couple of weeks I have been reading various sources of literature which may help me which my inquiry, I have found this to be very useful in providing me with others opinions on subjects I am also looking to develop as well as helping me to narrow down my inquiry questions and give me more focus on what I would like to find out as my end result.

I have used various tools which are available to me to find information and articles of interest, such as Middlesex library - Summon tool, google search for articles on relating websites and articles in newspapers.

Here are some of the links to my findings:

Jason Heath - You can’t teach professionally and perform professionally – misperceptions on both sides of the divide http://doublebassblog.org/2007/09/you-can-teach-professionally-and.html

American Musical Theatre Academy - http://theamta.com/gb/3-reasons-performing-arts-important-society/

Independant School Parent -  http://www.independentschoolparent.com/school/the-importance-of-drama-and-performing-arts/

Tim Casson - JV2: Dance-theatre training and the importance of versatility

Karen Schupp - Studying Dance - A Guide for Campus and Beyond - Article

Lyn Paine - A complete guide to Primary Dance

Physical and Mental work loads in professional dance teachers by Eileen Wanke, Mike  Schmidt, Jeremy Leslie- Spinks, David Groneburg 

How to handle a career transition - Ciara Pressler https://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/acting-teachers/how-to-handle-career-transition/

Ronald Federico - http://www.americansforthearts.org/by-program/reports-and-data/legislation-policy/naappd/the-decision-to-end-a-performing-career-in-ballet

Bishop Tyrrell Anglican College - http://www.btac.nsw.edu.au/2016/10/importance-drama-performing-arts-education/

Sir Peter Balzagette - https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/apr/27/value-of-arts-and-culture-to-society-peter-bazalgette

University of Derby - https://www.studyinternational.com/news/the-importance-of-performing-arts-in-an-interconnected-world/#A1p8GVrUVjEDVGsT.97

Economic Estimates of DCMS sectors http://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/industries/arts-culture/arts-culture-facts-and-figures/the-economic-contribution-of-the-arts

Arts Council -http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Value_arts_culture_evidence_review.pdf

By reading these articles it has helped me to further narrow down the question of my end project, What is the importance of the performing arts industry in our society, this topic may be too big however as i would like to explore through schools, economically and politically but I feel I now know where I am heading and the types of literature I need to be reading to further broaden my knowlege.

Task 5A: Code of Practice in my work place

Task 5a really forced me to think hard about the codes of conduct in my work place which I have become second nature to me and I follow on a daily basis,

As I have 2 very different work places I have decided to separate each half of the mind map, although a few of regulations I follow can cross into both, such as health and safety and time management.

New regulations are coming in all the time especially in school, which I don't think is a bad thing, as it is all put in place to improve the school for the pupils and workplace for the teachers. However when I teach at many different schools it can differ from one policy to another, so I have to make sure I am aware of any changes or new implemented rules.

However when it come to performing as I am the one performing to a certain level I am in charge of my own regulations as long as they comply with the client and my insurance company. As I am my own advert and product I need to make sure I manage my code of conduct and regulations professionally.

4C- Developing Questions

Due to having some very helpful professional work colleagues plus the bribery of coffee, I was able to ask my questions to a group of fellow performers and teachers of the performing arts industry to get their opinion and to help broaden the topics i was focusing on.
Although the points we came up with were very similar to the ones I had already thought about, I managed to gain an insight into the way other performers looked at the industry and how similar we all felt, this then made me think if we all have a similar opinion on the matters of the industry and how it needs to be changed, why isn't more being done about it.
However the more we spoke to more i realised it wasn't anything to do with the people who were inside the performing arts industry it was to do with the people who weren't!

Was it a jealously that we have managed to make our hobbie and passion into a career and they perhaps hadn't? Howe we get to do something we love every single day so therefore its not taken seriously by those who don't?

From the discussion I've had I have decided to narrow down my questions about my inquiry to start to try to look at the areas I would like to focus on.

Theses are:

Why isn't being in the performing arts industry taken seriously as a career?

In Society what is the importance of performing arts and which things are a problem to the industry?

Does having a career as a professional performer make you better at teaching it?

I hope to explore these questions more now I have narrowed them down, and start to look at who else I can talk to about my inquiry.

Task 4C: Developing questions in my own professional community - Pre Task

I am very lucky to be surrounded by some beautifully talented performers, we meet every tuesday evening as we are all part of a corporate event agency 'Manic Stage Productions'

The group consists of current performers, ex-performers, teachers and dance school owners so I feel this is the perfect place to sound out some of my ideas that I have for developing my lines of professional inquiry.

This Tuesday a few of them have agreed for me to put my questions to them and have a group discussion hopefully developing my ideas further,
I am really excited to do this and share my findings. as last night during a gig with  fellow professional I began to discuss some of my thoughts I had and what her opinion was, this triggered a good rant about the performing arts industry! The true cost of what it takes to be a professional performer, hence why we were doing a gig until 3am just to be able to continue being able to afford to follow our dreams. It was very interesting to hear the same thoughts from a fellow professional, so I look forward to developing these further on Tuesday!


Just wondering if anyone on the BAPP course lives near the south coast? perhaps we could meet up to discuss our own thoughts?!

Task 4B: Developing Special Interest Group (SIG)

Task 4B is to develop and actively be part of a special interest group,

I think in order to gain as much knowledge and discussion from fellow BAPP students I would like to join as many as possible to share ideas, thought and comments,

I would like to set up my own SIG group but i would like to offer something different to discuss so we are not replicating each other, perhaps creating a title that will trigger another debate that can be related to the lines of inquiry we are all choosing to take.

I have decided to make a SIG group titled 'The true cost of being a performer'

https://plus.google.com/collection/4FkSNE

I would like to stimulate ideas that show the effects of costs and funding at grass roots level in schools, to what you have to do in order to become a successful performer.

Please feel free to join and add thoughts and comments, plus add your groups below so I can join too!

Task 4a: Developing lines of inquiry

I currently work in a number of sectors of the performing arts, I would describe myself as 'transdisciplinary' according to Reader 4, I feel this has made it harder for me to choose which line of professional enquiry I wish to follow.

Part of me is pulling towards the end goal of becoming a higher education teacher, yet I am still very much in the performing world. I am surrounded by performers on a weekly basis so feel I could develop my lines of enquiry more with them. I feel I would be limited at the primary schools as to how much I could develop with other professionals as the reason I am employed is because I am so specialist to my subject. I also am I there when teachers aren't so I don't feel my current work life timetable would allow me to interact with them quite so much.
However a few thoughts I have been having about the lines of inquiry I would like to take have been crossing over into both sectors and this interests me, I would like to broaden some of my lines of inquiry as I am not looking for a specific outcome I feel i don't need to narrow my research and could have a much broader inquiry as a result of this.

Some of the questions I have thought about are:

• Why isn't dance taken seriously as a subject in schools? 

• Why isn't the performing arts world taken seriously as a career?

• Funding for the arts is constantly being cut, how is this going to effect the future?

• Why is funding for the arts being cut so much when a healthy lifestyle is trying to be boosted?

• Why am I not considered to be a proper teacher when my subject is dance?

• How are the funding cuts effecting grass roots level in schools?

• Does performing arts provide a way of communication for some children who aren't necessarily excelling in other areas?

• Does dance help with the discipline of children?

• How does being involved with performing arts from grass roots level go on to help in later life?

• Why is someone who has a dance degree but no performing experience considered above professionally someone who has been to a dance college and gained a diploma but been performing for several years professionally in the eyes of the education section?

• How does a performing arts background benefit you as a teacher? Do it make you have higher expectations as you know what the demand is if they want to pursue performing as a career?

Please comment your thoughts about my questions and any other questions you may have! 

Back to Blogging!

Wow, the first 2 months of this year have flown by! It seems as an adult that the years go quicker than ever! Is it that were not waiting for Christmas like an excited 4 year old so it takes forever to come? Or that the demand has increased, from home work and social life that we are under so much more pressure to cram everything in?

I now find myself only being able to allocate a strict time to things in order to achieve everything that is required of me, today for example, I was working until 3am last night (extending my work day having started at 9am yesterday morning) It was my uncles birthday today, the first time since Christmas the whole family would be together, (thats a lot of ticks off the family seeing list if I go) but knowing this afternoon I needed kick start my BAPP course work (having been nudged along by Paula - thanks Paula!) I could only allocate 2 hours to seeing them, waking up after only 5 hours sleep for the second day in a row, to make sure I was able tidy my flat (tick) do some washing (tick) drink more coffee (tick) looking at costumes to order for an upcoming show from work (tick)
Lunch done, its now time to sit and get my head stuck into BAPP course work, I would love to say I have the rest of the day to dedicate to this but as a full time teacher there are lesson plans to do for the week as we have ofsted looming.

I feel its not so much time management thats my problem it's that I can't say no! To me its a sign of weakness! (thats what being a stubborn scorpio does to you) however I am also very good at seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! It will all be worth it in the end, so I need to stop waffling, (which incidentally is reason for the picture above, I ordered a waffle which they didn't so they sent this instead!) and get on with the tasks in hand!

Happy Sunday Everyone!

P.S. Please feel free to comment thoughts on this, mainly so I know i'm not alone in having a crazy hour by hour specified life!