6c

With only a few more days to go I think I have come up with my inquiry question, I am still unsure if it is final and it may have a few adjustments over the summer but only slightly. I am looking forward to Module 3 after spending the last few weeks planning.

'Do dance teachers with experience in performing on stage have a wider range of knowledge about performance that they can bring to their teaching career? If so I would then like to identify expressive and technical skills and investigate into do most dance teachers come from one more than the other?'

5c

After researching into all types of ethics, I would now like to relate ethics to my personal inquiry which is 'Is there a higher standard of teaching if that teacher has had a professional career and the experience of performing on stage? If so how does that help effect students with technical and expressive skills compared to a teacher that does not have a professional background nor the experience but is well qualified?' I am still looking into different angles of this question and may still need to re-word after developing more research.

It is important that we as members of staff behave ethically, as it is at the heart of what it means to be a professional; it distinguishes professionals from others. Here are 6 rules all professionals should follow:

1. All members must demonstrate
2. Act with integrity
3. Always provide a high standard of tuition
4. Act in a way that promotes trust in the profession
5. Treat others with respect
6. Take responsibility

Before finding BA (Hons) Professional Practice in Arts I looked into many different courses for dance teachers, and finding a good qualification. I found none of them mentioned having a professional employment before looking into teaching, which means it is not necessary to have that experience in the eyes of the law.

I feel I have had a good training I have completed all my RAD ballet exams from pre-primary up to Advanced 2, I dance every night of the week and Saturdays after school and going to Tring Park School for the Performing Arts also helped. I did A levels in the morning which I believe you need, extra knowledge and always something to fall back on if I was to be injured etc. After our busy morning we moved on to many hours of dance until late evening everyday Monday-Friday, I also attended classes Saturdays too. I believe this has influenced me in my teaching. After all, all that training and hard work has made me the dancer and the person I am today, and I find my classes have high expectations, a lot of drive and I do make my students work hard. I think this is the case with other teachers as well, I have many friends from college that teach and friends I went to school with that enjoyed a couple of dance lessons after school each week, I personally think there is a big difference between us, or at least for what I have seen in my eyes. People that have dance all day every day have passion, it has to be something you must really love, and also putting in them long hard days of dance you have much more knowledge compared to others who have had a 2 weeks course in teaching. We have experienced different teachers and different teaching method, I can compare teachers I have had and I try and take away each of their good points and add it to my classes. This is something I liked about the BAPP course, you already needed a level 3 diploma as this is further education, this means people who do this course are passionate about dance.

When I complete my inquiry in Module 3 I want to compare a range of peoples personal ethics mostly, I am interested in finding out their opinions on my topic and why. So far in my research I have found various different opinions which all have valid reasons, even my opinion on this topic is always changing. Some people believe that having a teacher with experience performing is inspiring, and makes you respect that teacher even more. Also they understand the dance world, they know how to prepare for auditions or extra tips, they also know a dancers life weather its on a cruise ship, touring or even just working evening performing they can pass on this experience. One boy also said another advantage would be having contacts in the dance industry, then that teacher can organise workshops for their students or help a student get into contact with the correct person who can help with their future. I found the people who agreed with the higher standard in teaching were the people who did not have the experience on stage, this was not the case for everyone but the majority of people.

Another side of personal ethics I want to look at is from a parents point of view. My parents found a ballet school with a good reputation and a high standard of teaching, I think this reputation came from her past experiences and it was very disciplined. At the school I teach at now, we have a website with our CV's on which shows our pasted employment performing or teaching, teaching qualifications, and our personal achievement's. I tend to find parents who have more in life and accomplished jobs are interested in the teachers background and expect more from the teachers and their child.

6b

After reading reader 6 I took a while to choose the tools that would most benefit my personal inquiry question. I also thought what type of data would be helpful and would show the best analysed results. I also had to take into account which ones would actually be possible for me to succeed in organizing with my SIG, for example I liked one tool especially but chose against it as the SIG I would want to use it would be hard to organised down to busy work timetables and time differences around the world.

• Focus Groups

Focus groups would be a great way for people to interact with one another and discuss different topics, normally a focus group are members of a workplace or all have something in command for example they might all have passion, knowledge or experience in the dance industry of some kind.  This would be a good opportunity for people to compare opinions and listen to other peoples point of view, you may even come to some agreement or for someone to change their mind if they have heard something new or something they did not know in that specific topic. There are also things you need to be aware of when planning a focus group, for instance some people are louder than others, and some people naturally take a leading role while others would prefer to sit back, be quieter and may even let their own personal opinion be influences by a stronger character. This is something the researcher would have to be aware of before and make sure everyone has a turn to speak and are not spoken over as the recording device would be difficult to listen too. Another way you could try and sort this problem out with be by organizing a seat arrangement maybe.
Going back to the recording device you would need to make sure you personally know the voice of each person at the focus group or each time someone speak you would have to make them speak loudly and clearly and maybe state their name before talking. This would be hard as I think this would easily be forgotten but you need to know differences between who's talking.
Being the researcher and being in control of this focus group session you would need to make sure the discussion does not lead off topic and that the gatekeeper is happy with the conversation.

• Surveys and Questionnaires

Surveys or questionnaires are normally made up of asking questions about who they are and what  they think. An advantage of surveys is you can ask a range of questions on different topics, events etc. You can also collect this data from a large group of people, after you have come up with your survey or questionnaire you can hand it out to as many people as possible also thinking about the range of different types of people. Do you want any gender, age, senior staff or junior, what will be most helpful for your topic of inquiry. Making sure the best results you can achieve are valid you need to choose an amount of people that will give you the best outcome for your questionnaire.
You can ask open or closed questions, if you chose closed questions then you can ask a wider range or participants to take part as it will be easier to analyse, open questions can be more difficult as they are normally answered with a sentence or two. Other questions you could use rating from 1-10 or quick and easy questions such as yes or no, theses will be quick to answer but you may need more in depth questions as well to find out peoples opinions.
Choose your questions wisely when planning your survey, you do not need to ask unneeded questions, you need to get to the point and ask questions you truly wants to know the answer to about your topic. Another thing to think about is how many questions do you want, you do not want to put off participants with too many questions but have enough for you to get the information you need to know. Presentation of your survey is key, the layout needs to be easy to understand, and clear to read, think about what format you want and do not choose anything too fancy. Before planning yours you may want to research into other surveys or questionnaires there are websites such as Survey Monkey which will help you. Start with a first draft and you can change the framework or layout before trying a second or third draft when you are finally happy then you can come up with a short and simple letter explaining to your participants why you are researching into this, and to thank all of your participants for taking up their time to answer your survey or questionnaire.

• Observation

I was always keen on the idea of observing as I liked the idea of watching at first hand and not just different opinions like the other 3 tools. I would like to watch a few classes in action and analysed it myself. Another keen feature I also liked was the fact the observer has the choice to participant in the event to make them more involved within that situation, after giving this a little thought I do not want to get too involved as I would want the class to be as normal as possible but interacting slightly might be nice depending on the circumstances.
On the other hand I know observing classes can be time consuming and attending those classes can often be difficult to arrange transport or finding time in your schedule, but I am luckily enough to have my main workplace based only  a 30minute drive away. I will also be able to fit in observing classes on my day off each week, and I can practice analysing and taking notes on Mondays and some Saturdays where I assist and learn new syllabus work, if I am to use observing I would want a to watch a few different genres of dance such as ballet, street, modern and maybe even some musical theatre classes as they focus on performing a lot of the time.
Something to always be aware of when planning to observe a class in permission. Having permission from the 'Gatekeeper' is always very important, I have also told my colleagues about my course from the beginning so when I mentioned observing classes they thought this would be helpful or me. There are 2 types of observing, overt and covert.
Overt, meaning the researcher has told everyone involved what their intentions are and what they are investigating, this has its advantages and disadvantages like many other things. The advantages of overt observing would be the researcher can be completely honest with its participants and avoiding being bias which is important. However the disadvantages would be as the participants know you are observing they can cause unnecessary or uncommon situations especially as teaching dance can normally involve children. Sometimes children can play up to extra attention and the class would not be as ordinary as their weekly classes. I do find as most of the students at my workplace know me and I've taught the majority I would know if a child was behaving or acting differently, but the fact most of them will recognise me and it would not be completely unfamiliar to them they will hopefully act normally.
Covert observing can be very risky, keeping the researchers true intentions a secret from the participants. Again there is advantages such as studying a class without them truly knowing the reasons behind it, can give you the correct data of a 'normal class' which provides you with the new information you want.
There are a few different ways to record observations, such as written notes, taping or recording depends on correct circumstances. I think written notes will help me, I personally enjoy jotting down notes and this always helps me remember it if I visually see myself write it down. I would like the opportunity to record some of my classes as I think this would show valid evidence and would also show I am not being bias, but it would depend on the right circumstances, and would think wisely to which class.

• Interviews

Interviews is collecting what people say and using it as evidence. Using interviews is a great way to get lots of information, you can not only have to ask one question and move onto the next but you can investigate and ask about their personal feelings, motives and a good question to ask is why? Asking lots of questions to people that have experience in my topic, or knowledge this will help my inquiry a lot. Interviewing is a very useful tool when finding out different opinions or new information, if you are skilful and have experience in interviewing people you can find out unexpected data, but you need to ask the right questions and use your participants time wisely.
There are a few types of interviews depending on what type of information you want to find out, you can have a interview face to face, or over the phone, you can have one to one interviews or maybe even a group of people if you want to discuss certain topics, or you can have set question and stick by them without going any further or you can have a informal method which leaves your questions or themes quite open for them to explain in their own way. Also another thing to think about with interviews would be how to structure it, you can have set questions and ask each personal all the same, or you can leave it quite open and even let the participants tell you stories of experiences and allow them to talk about anything they like too.
A big question you need to answer before interviewing is who will you interview? You need to ask people that have experience or knowledge in your topic but you also want a range of people too. So you may want male or female? What types of ages? People that have been in different situations or different types of employment? In my topic I would want a range of people with and without experience in performing as a dancer on stage, I think it would be nice get a male and females point of view as well, also ages I would take into account as people who are older or middle age will have a lot more experience compared to someone my age or younger.
I think if I was to interview people I would have a few closed questions at the beginning and then slowly end up more relaxed with open questions letting the participants talk freely and give their own interpretation. A few closed questions I can compare easily with a chart or graph etc. which would be nice to compare the participants but then to have a mix of lots of information and all hopefully different to one another. You need to make sure all your questions are to the point and they understand what you are asking of them. You especially do not want leading questions where you are putting words in their mouth, do not make them agree with your opinions leave the question relatively open so they are answering it for themselves.
When planning an interview I think it is all the little things you plan that make a difference, I do not want my participants to feel they are being questioned I want them to feel relaxed and I hope they tell me as much knowledge or experience as they can. I would make sure I choose a location we have been before or at least somewhere they feel comfortable, planning what questions will be hard as you do not want too many but you want as much information as possible too. Also something I need to think about more deeply would be how I plan on recording their answers, I could actually record it so I would not waste time writing notes down, but this is something I will look at more after I know the types of questions I will ask.
Sometimes in our busy lives it can be hard to see people face to face down to time, money or distance so another way interview would be via the phone or Skype. I do not know if this would effect your interview as I think being on the phone or Skype is not as personal but if it has to be done then I am sure you get a lot of information from it.

Conclusion
After looking into all 4 of these tools, I thought all of them would be helpful in their own ways but I wanted to think realistically as all of them would be time consuming and I did not want to attempt all 4 but not to the quality I want. I have chosen 2 of them but plan to use these tools a lot and find out as much new information as possible. I will be observing classes at my workplace and I will interview a handful of people, I plan on keeping my interviews being semi-structured as I want a few set questions but the opportunity to talk quite freely on different themes as well to see if I find out anything unexpected. I think this will also make the interviewee feel more relaxed and not so tense so I hope to get good results.

6a questionnaire

When I started to read into my 4 tools I could use for my inquiry in Module 3, I was unsure of which to use at first. So when I read my tasks for Part 6 I was glad I could plan and conduct at least one of them for a trial attempt. I choose I would have an attempt at a questionnaire as I was unsure to choose from interviewing or conducting a survey/questionnaire.
I had so many idea's for questions, and wanted to vary which type of questions, I did not want my participants to feel they had to write pages and pages, I wanted something quick and easy and a questionnaire that was not too time consuming. I found constructing my questions very hard and spent a few days re wording, simplifying and cutting them down but making sure they were easy to understand. My first attempt I started printing and then realised there was a silly mistake instead of putting down '12 teaching skills' I had put 10 and you had to rate them from 1-10 so I had to cancel my printing and change a silly mistake. I eventually narrowed my questions down to 12 which had 3 bigger questions, 2 questions rating 1-10, and a few closed questions and selecting answer/s, I then handed them out to a work colleague, and students I went to college with that now teach elsewhere or are touring in a show.
I found questionnaires harder than what I thought, there was a lot of time spent conducting the questionnaire and then analysing it, but I did find the answers helpful I just wish I could of had more in-depth questions. I then asked a couple of my close participants if they found it too short and if I could of made it longer but they both agreed it was the right amount of length and if it had of been longer people would of lost interest and their answers would of been short and not completely answered.

Question 1
Question 1 was easy, I first wanted to know what age group they feel under. I Had no one select under 18 or 31-41 most people were 18-25 then I had one from each group of 26-30 and 41 or older.

Question 2
Was still easy and I wanted to make sure everyone had been train in some way for dance, no one selected 'not ever' and most people started dancing 0-3 and a few older.

Question 3
Most people a gave my survey too, agreed to having some kind of paid employment on stage, varying between choreographing for pantomimes and touring the UK in Top Hat. I still had 3 that had no experience which is what I wanted, I wanted to compare and see if their answer were different to each others.

Question 4

For question 4 I made a pie chart to show the results more clearly, the smaller sections explain these are what people think are more important skills for teachers to have for example 'passion' and 'Hard working' is the smallest section by far. The larger sections such as 'organised' mean people found these less important over all.


Question 5
This question I thought would be very tough for participants, and was unsure weather to select it as one of my questions at first but not one participant complained about it being a hard question, I asked if you had to choose between expressive or technical skills, which would it be? I found the answer to this question was 4 people chose expressive while the remaining 3 chose technical.

Question 6
I was shocked with this question too actually, I thought the majority of people would prefer performing on stage compared to an exam situation. I once again found 4 who preferred performing on stage and 3 preferred exams, I now want to research into this further and see what else I can find out.

Question 7
Here is the chart for the results of question 7:

Question 8
I wanted to find out which type of teacher achieved the best from their students, I gave them 4 choices which were friendly, strict, high expectations and experience/respected. Most people chose experienced/respected but 3 chose high expectations and only one chose friendly which left strict with no options.

Question 9
Most people preferred an older teacher that could not demonstrate but there were still 3 that chose a younger teacher that could demonstrate but was not experienced performing on stage. I need to look at this question deeper as I think it also depends on the age of the students, younger children would prefer a teacher to join in compared to older students prefer the experience and wisdom.

Question 10
Asking people how important it is for your teacher to have knowledge on the dance industry, and being able to say they have had experience in auditioning etc. Most people rated this between 8,9 and 10. But again it would depend on the student so I would need to look deeper into this question.

Question 11
The last two questions were more open and people could write a sentence or two. My first question was asking if teachers that had the experience of performing on stage have a different side of knowledge other teachers do not have even if they are qualified. Everyone agreed having the experience would be an advantage as having more knowledge in anything is always better than none. It can help guide children in the right direction, and being able to admire a teacher who has been out there in the dance industry as such but also people said not every professional performer would be a good teacher it takes a lot more different skills to be a good teacher.

Question 12
My last question was asking people in their own experience how did they prepare for an audition or exam etc. Most of them said researching on the internet, practicing dance moves constantly, but I believe everyone said teachers guidance or friends that had done it before etc.

Although I did learn a lot from my questionnaire, I now think I will choose observing and interviewing as I will get more in-depth answers and be able to have a conversation about why and what if in my interviews instead. I may not be able to have as many participants while interviewing but at least I will be happier with the more in depth answers, I would prefer a few good answers than lots of vague answers. I am glad I had an opportunity  to try out a questionnaire and the research has helped a lot, I now know what I need to look into deeper, from looking at my results I was surprised with a couple but now want to know why.