Phone call with Paula- Review of Inquiry Propsal and changes.

Before speaking to Paula I felt very lost. I was re-reading over my Inquiry Proposal and almost felt a little confused by what I was trying to achieve. I felt like I wasn't quite getting to a point with what I was asking.

Like Paula said, how can you ask people questions and try and get an answer when you don't really know what it is you want to be answered yourself. It is important for me when carrying out my Inquiry that I am clear with what I want to achieve by the end of it.

So firstly we looked at what my Inquiry Title was from module 2...

What makes a new dance teacher good? How can you develop the right balance of fun and discipline?

Looking back my question I knew something wasn't completely  correct . Firstly things have change slightly regarding my inquiry. Originally I was going to visit a dance school and observe an ex-teacher of mine teach her classes. Over the summer her job changed which meant she was now working with older children and in my proposal I had stated that I wanted to look closely and children aged 4-12. So then I had to think about were I was now going to collect my data from. I started to stress myself out a little and then I realised ( and even more so after talking to Paula) that the answer was right in front of me, and in fact it was a blessing that my ex-teacher had a new job because the more I thought about it, the more I realised she was never the right source for me anyway.
At the moment I teach for a company who teach dance, drama and singing to 4-12 year olds. Helllooooooooooooooooo, what more could I want. They employ a lot of people so there are a lot of teachers who I could interview and classes that I cold observe. And then I realised in fact it is not dance teaching I want to look at because I teach more than just dance. So my question needs to relate to teaching performing arts not dance.

Paula told me how important it was to have the correct Inquiry question as this relates massively to what you are going to ask people in interviews and what you are going to be watching for when observing etc.

I also decided when looking at my question from my Inquiry proposal that it doesn't actually state what age group I would be looking at. As Paula said, 'Teaching' could be talking about nursery age up to university level. So it is imperative that I include that in my question. I have decided that my age group is not going to be so broad. The children I mainly teach and want to teach for my future are 4-8 so this will be who I base my inquiry on.

I will need to now get a new employer consent form as this has changed. It is all organised who this will be and I understand the ethics I need to consider and who I will need to get to sign consent forms.

Structure

This is something Paula made a huge point about. It is vital to have a good structure and plan for my Inquiry. We only have a certain time to collect the data and to analyse it so although in my Inquiry proposal I talked about my structure this is now happening for real so I need an actual plan.  I am going make myself a timetable and stick with it. This work-based learning course requires  a lot of self motivation and personally, if I say to myself that I am going to get up the next day and do some work, I know It actually wont happen so that is why I am going to make myself a time table and stick to it!!! I also am off to panto in November so I discussed with Paula that I will need to have collected all my data before I go, so this gives me a good starting point  to structuring my time.

Now along side planning when I am going to be collecting my data etc., the main thing I need to be focusing on now is looking at Literature. I asked Paula to explain to me in more detail what exactly this meant of me and why we had to do it. She said to look at between 10-20 different pieces of literature that relates to your Inquiry question. The whole point is to look at the ideas that other people have already researched to help you think more about what you want to gain from your inquiry.

Speaking to Paula has set me up to head in the right direction with my Inquiry. I now don't feel confused as to what I want my outcome to be at the end of the module and have a clear path in my mind as to what steps I need to take in order to get there!!