BAPP Course Blogs

This task has asked us to provide our Title for our proposal. Looking at our questions for our inquiry to give us an overall title.  Based on my questions I have decided to call my proposal the following: ' An Inquiry Research Proposal into the dynamics of community dance, it's history and the benefits it entails.'  Written Rationale: The rationale behind my title is based on community dance as this is such a broad subject I wanted to focus it on the 3 main sections: what is community dance? the history (how has it developed) and the benefits of community dance. I decided to focus my inquiry on community dance as I am currently a community dance practitioner and would like to develop my knowledge on this subject, using my practice and the support I have around me. Currently my work role involves teaching in various locations with a wide range of participants. This includes Dance in the EYFS (early years foundation stage) all the way up to care homes where par...

This task involves us looking at the merits and limits (pro's and con's) of the tools provided in relation to our professional inquiry topic, of which mine is looking at community dance: history and benefits.  Tools of Inquiry: Observations: Merits: Easily repeated. Planning is simple.  You can be both a participant and an observer giving you different aspects of the observation. Accessible in my line of work.  You can pick up points that you may not have considered using other tools.  Limits: Time consuming. Getting permission from the correct people.  Analysing is quite complex.  Interviews:  Merits: Can either be informal or formal.  Structured provides an easy to repeat method.  Uncover unexpected data.  Using equipment such as a tape recorder can help you check your analysis.  Limits: Time consuming. People may not be comfortable taking part in interviews.  Focus Groups: Merits: People may ...

The end of Module 2 is slowly creeping up! Now I am on the final tasks. The first task for section 6, was to read and review Reader 6. This reader is based on tools of professional inquiry. The idea is to experiment with these different tools and from there design our own practitioner research. I already had a few ideas of what methods I would use for my inquiry, but I was very interested to look at and see the other tools I could use, and to see if the ones I had previously thought of, would actually benefit my inquiry.  Designing Practitioner Inquiry: The inquiry involves capturing evidence using specific tools which will benefit you most in your inquiry. It's aim is to be a process of self discovery as well as a piece of literature to use to educate others in your chosen inquiry. The data you collect should be used to inform your professional practice. There are 4 main tools which are used usually (explained in more context below). Involving both qualitative an...

As mentioned previously I have been looking through a variety of literature, as my subject of enquiry is so large I have struggled to whittle it down to 3. But now I finally have!  My first piece of literature is an article from Princeton university (Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies) titles 'How the arts impact communities' by Joshua Guetzkow June 2002. The piece of literature is targeting the fact that previous literature involving the art and communities is too vague. For example what is actually meant by 'The Arts' and/or 'Community'. It lays out the issues that need to be looked at more thoroughly, looking at studying this kind of work as well as showing the impact literature has on the arts. This piece of literature has really helped me to look for more useful pieces of literature. Also looking through theoretical and methodical issues. It has thorough explanations of 'The arts' and 'Communities' and what they could potentia...

As I am now getting closer to preparing my research and acting on it, I now need to look closely at what ethics I will apply whilst conducting my research. I will discuss this with the SIG groups so they can offer me advice and I can look for inspiration from them. I will be conducting a few interviews for my inquiry so I will need to take the following into consideration: Questions : They need to be appropriate, and necessary. Forms : I will need to put into place all the correct forms, such as permission forms so that the person I am interviewing will know its professional and feel comfortable with any information they are going to give.   D ata protection : Alongside the forms and interviews, I will need to protect any personal data in which the person I am interviewing gives me.  Morals: I will need to take into consideration the morals and ethics of the person I am interviewing to make sure I do not offend and make them feel comfortable. To do this I will create my ...

We were asked to review reader 5 for our next task. Within the reader it looks at the development and history of ethics and codes of practice and how we can use them for our inquiry. Ethics have 3 main contexts: Personal (family/religion) Professional (specific to your work) Organizational (based on Ethos) After researching ethics in my place of work I can see how these contexts fit in, and also how I have been following them without really realising.  The reader then looks at the history of ethics and evolution of them. Dating all the way back to Ancient greeks and philosophers. These root from moral philosophy. By the 13th century Aquinas adopted natural law and this started to look at how law and religion is linked to ethics and morals.  From there they went onto look at the characters of people, looking at their virtues.  In the reader a task was set to write down your virtues and the virtues in the work place including the two extremes of this. As I did...

After my previous blog, we were asked to look at the ethics of your workplace and see the examples they have used. I firstly looked online, to see examples and ideas of other workplaces ethics.  First I came across People Dancing - Foundation of community dance, which is also the place where I get my insurance from so it was useful to see all of the other things they offer on their website including their code of conduct. This is a perfect example for me to follow, as it is based around community dance, which is currently my profession.  What is a code of conduct? Codes of conduct are a set of 'rules'/ expectations that are agreed within the company you work for. All companies need this to mainly ensure safety of the employee and the participants/ general public.  People dancing have looked at several sections as part of their code of conduct, these include: Professional competence. Responsibility. Safety. Working with people. Commitment to ...

For this task we were asked to look at the ethics in our workplace. As I work for a variety of companies with people of all ages/capabilities/shapes/sizes there are quite a lot of ethics in the workplace that I need to consider.  To start of with, I needed to make sure I have the right qualifications to do my job as a freelance dance artist. Such as a DBS check, safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults, insurance and also first aid. Then on top of that the correct training for the specific roles I take on, for example to be a TAPfit instructor I needed to go on a training day to gain the qualification to run these classes.  So with the correct certificates I can now be a freelance dance artist.  As I travel from place to place within a variety of settings I can never guarantee what the area of teaching will be like until I get there. So the first thing to think of is preparation and safety. Insuring I arrive at least 15 minutes before each c...

I have currently been working on task 4D which is to pick 3 important pieces of literature which will help me further into my final inquiry. As I am basing my inquiry on community dance and it being such a wide variety I have been struggling to focus on just 3 pieces.  I have found and ordered a book which after reading the summary looks to be perfect for what I need. So as and when that comes I will be reading and writing about it, which I highly look forward to!  I have also found multiple articles which all have very good links to my inquiry as well as having links and references to other pieces of literature. So throughout this week I will be finalising my main 3 pieces and working towards my blog about this. So keep an eye out!