CRITICAL REFLECTION ON PROFESSIONAL PRACTIONER INQUIRY

CRITICAL REFLECTION ON PROFESSIONAL PRACTIONER INQUIRY

Arriving at my Inquiry topic has been a long and intense process, it has sparked lots of exciting new thoughts and ideas and made me realize how egger I am to learn and explore my professional practice.

I first looked at Knowledge this can be seen is this blog post,

http://heathersophiesmith.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/module-2_1.html

After I reflected on the fact that I have a lot of different ways in which knowledge could be learnt or approached the juices started flowing and I started thinking of all the possible topics my Inquiry could cover, as see is this blog post:

http://heathersophiesmith.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/task-4a.html

I realized I had so many questions and a lot more than I thought I would have, initally I thought I would be struggling for ideas. After attending a campus session and discussing with my mentor I realized I needed to narrow my questions down so the topic did not end up so vague or impersonal to me.

I realized that the key to a good inquiry would be something that I am very passionate about and after a brainstorming storming I came up with the topic of pressures of the Industry as seen in this blog post:

http://heathersophiesmith.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/questions.html

I did consider basing my inquiry on something to do with teaching as I teach dance and i am looking to make a transition from performing into teaching soon. I thought that this would mean it would be current and relevant. However I found myself struggling for ideas and I did realize that my thoughts kept coming back to the pressures of the industry and my heart was more set on this line of inquiry. It is something that I want to find more and more about.

I then went on and talked about this topic with lots of my friends and family and I realized that it is a topic that lots of people are really interested and passionate about it, however a lot of people did make a good point about how pressures of the industry could come across as being a vague subject. To solve this problem I decided I wanted to concentrate on solutions and methods on how to cope with pressures of the industry. Reflecting back on this it will allow me to explore new views and ideas. I also realized that people who are not in this industry are also very interested in this topic.

To get me to my question I brainstormed a variety of questions such as, ‘what are the range of experiences?’ ‘How do dances cope with rejection?’ ‘Is talent being sacrificed for the correct look?’ ‘Is there enough support for dancers mentally?’

Asking these questions allowed me to challenge my premise. I then asked some trial questions:

http://heathersophiesmith.blogspot.co.uk/2014_02_01_archive.html

During this module I reflected on Ethics and of course there are a lot of Ethical issues that need to be considered when discussing pressures of the industry. How I approach my inquiry will be important to allow my participates to feel safe, respected and in the know. Below is a link to my blog where I discussed issues that may arise.

 http://heathersophiesmith.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/ethics-5b-and-5c.html

These questions confirmed that I want to have ‘pressures of the industry’ at the heart of my inquiry. Reflecting back it was at the heart of what I wanted to do from the beginning and by exploring other ideas it helped me arrive at my question.