On Tuesday October 13, we had a Module Two session:
What are questions?
We talked about two kinds of questions – questions that
imply or seem to need answers
Like: Why do performers work through injury?
This question implies that you would need to find out an
answer. But how would you be able to really find this out. You would need to
talk to thousands of people to really be able to have any kind of credible
answer and then you’d need to talk to them a few times to be able to really
understand their reasons.
This kind of question would obviously take more time than 12
weeks and more knowledge about the field because in order to understand the
answers you got from the question you’d need to already know about the
question. In other words questions that imply answers require you to know
enough to recognize the answer. This
course is about giving yourself the time to find out more to explore the
unknown.
Then there are questions that help you understand your
question better – questions that help know more about the question itself.
Like: ‘What are some
of the reasons that performers use for having to work through injury?’ (you
could talk to five people and understand their stories).
Or
‘What experiences have
people in my cast have with working through injury?’ (then maybe you’d find
out more about what have happened to people who work in the same jobs as you).
This second kind of question can be more specific to your
professional practice (which is what your BA is about – finding out that will
help you in your career).
Assumptions:
Another way to look at questions is to look at what they
assume.
Read this post:
You can see that the questions themselves start to ask you
to look at them through ethical eyes and imply how you should find out more.
Ethics is about
how you look at your question from the perspective of how the question and you
finding out more about it will be experienced by others. How much of the
inquiry is you proving you are right about something you feel and how much is
about really finding out more – inquiring.
Your question also implies what tools should be used to inquire into it. For instance above the
question about ‘what are some of the reasons performers use for having to work
through injury’ clearly indicates interviews …
Lastly:
We talked about planning
Remember that you are planning an actual thing/activity. It
has practical elements it needs to be done over 12 weeks, you need to know
where you need to go to get more information and put this in the plan and if
you can go there! What you need to read to find out more and why these books (This
is Literature Review to help you know what other people already think. This
helps prepare you for the activity you are planning).
People involved in the session are writing more about the
conversation in posts on their blogs and in the comments below.
What do you think?
Adesola
