Week Two: noticing

HI

Week two and hopefully you are getting into the flow of things. Finding your ‘student world’. The best place for work: home or a coffee shop? Do you work best in long chunks or short regular bursts? How do you schedule your BAPP working times?  Do you work best after a yoga class, a strong coffee (de-café of course!!), in the morning or afternoon? Its fun to workout what or how you are as a student. Somehow my student self in my head is always heading for Paris!!

Please read ALL the below whatever Module you are on: the course is all connected

Module One’s: by now you have your blog going, you have played with Flickr and maybe some other web tools. But this is not a tick box type course. You need to notice how you did things, what you did. Already you have made choices (ethical choices) about how you have presented yourself, what you value as important and what you haven’t said. Although all you did was start a blog you took action according to your own value system, your principles your priorities your ethics. Think about what this says about you and what is meaningful to you? Who helped you or influenced you to have this values and principles? This module is about seeing how you fit in to a wider world – contextualising yourself in order to better understand your professional practices. The reflection section of the module will help you with this and it is next…

Module Two’s: You will have been thinking about questions. These are not questions you will be finding answers to!!!!!!! They are questions about something you want to find out more about. Think of your research question as something you want to ask BETTER questions about when you have finished the research NOT something you will have found an answer to when you have finished the research. So maybe look back at the reflective work you have been doing see what keeps interesting you, what keep making you excited to work, what you are curious about. This is probably the area you could work in. Then think about HOW you are asking the question. How does the way you ask a question affect the kind of answer you will get. This is important because the rest of the module is looking at how you ask which is the research methods you will use. This module is more full on than the first module, so get stuck in.

Module Three’s: One word: Literature

You are not alone!!! Find out what other people have said about your subject through being published or performance etc… Not the firs random article you find when you use Google ... If you had a conversation with someone else who studied what you are looking into who would they know you need to know them too. This module is not about gathering data! It is about what you do with it. And what you do with it involves thinking about what other people have theorized too. You are not alone. The wheel has been invented. Now – also – where do you stand in all is going on. What is your philosophical framework? What assumptions have you made – that people will talk honestly to you in interviews? Did /will that happen? That we are all equal and nobody will be intimidated by you asking them questions? That everyone has an opinion about your project area? Did / will they? The truth is out there? Or there are many truths?

Things that have “gone wrong’ so far are also a part of your data the best part probably. For instance I keep asking teachers if they will talk to me about dance & and Maths, most of the Maths teachers have not replied for interview dates and one did but only had ten minutes in a busy staffroom where I couldn’t properly record the interview and I am worried about running out of time, all of the dance teachers have been very excited about the idea and I have interviewed one already.  My question is ‘How do we integrate dance into core curriculum subjects?’ I feel need Maths teachers data. But I have some already – they are not interested, that has resonance with my question. When I come to analyse all the data the fact I couldn’t even have a conversation with a Maths teachers is part of the data and comments on the question. Once you begin the research EVERYTHING that happens is part of the process. Be brave and let it happen.

What do you’s lot think?

Adesola