Reflections on Literature

Task 6c - Continued

I have been reviewing in depth three other pieces of literature and reflecting upon the contributions there angles and approaches can have to my enquiry topic of exploring what the meaning of Dance is to a specific community local to me.

Both ‘Understanding Dance’, Graham McPhee, ‘Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Enquiry, Sandra Horton and Penelope Hanstein, and ‘Dance As Education’, Graham Folwer have been my choice pieces of literature.

I have had to consider when reading literatures that the suggestions they introduce are coming from dance enthusiast’s points of view. Recognising this is important as writings may edge towards being bias. Acknowledging their opinions and collaborating them with my own thoughts has developed my approach to researching my topic. I cannot use their writings as fact, only supporting evidence as to why I plan to do the things I do. It seems both authors cannot remain entirely objective all the time, this would seem impossible considering the literatures titles and topics. But, the pieces seem to seek a greater understanding on what is involved when trying to understand the meaning of dance, and in what ways having this knowledge may be valuable.  Intensions from all three authors seems to be one of  having their view heard, but that any claims they cannot prove are merely ‘suggested’.

(Online sources are available to both books through Google Books, they are however only previews of certain exacts, still useful oversights though.)

In more general terms, all three books have developed the approach to my plan by suggesting angling my research to focus on exploring the relationship between human behaviours that one may consider ‘Dance’, and how these behaviours define the meaning of Dance to the person partaking in it.

Both literary pieces support an approach that to understand the meaning of Dance, one has to consider their own actions and behaviours to identify with the personal significance of what dance is and what it means to them. This is where I feel I have learnt how ones personal circumstances – their background/culture/shaping life events/personalities and personal experiences determine can determine how they dance in terms of the steps and movements created, and that this then relates to dance being something of very personal and individual significance.

Now having a better grasp on this concept, a workshop I recently gave really benefited from a new approach to creating a dance experience to a group of community dancers. The participants had free reign on choosing their own theme, the focus for the movements evolved directly from the topics THEY chose to explore, not suggestions of my own. Upon reflection, I saw real relevance to how the reason for dancing (in this case creating movements to a chosen theme of the Olympics 2012) facilitates the behaviours which produce movements, these movements then create a piece of meaningful and significant choreography. Participants felt a sense of ownership to the piece they created, in this sense, practising in this way gave the workshop experience for both myself and the participants a new level of personal significance. This will defiantly be an approach I intend to repeat when facilitating future workshops.

I wonder how the motivation levels witnessed during the workshop may have differed if I had chosen the theme to work on? Would this approach have been met with such enthusiasm I wonder? Does one become more enthused and perform at a higher, more complex level when dancing choreo that has personal relevance or ownership?

This has also drawn my attention to where literature on my topic for enquiry actually falls short in addressing what dance means to any specified community. Being such an established dance company for the North of England, I have been surprised to find no other research projects of similar nature have taken place at the Ludus. Ludus dance is fairly local to me, and its community of practitioners I am envisaging will play a part in my future practise while I develop my freelance work experience with them. Therefore, it seems logical to undergo my proposed enquiry not only for the benefit of my personal stance, but also to other establishing freelancers in the North of England specifically.

There also seems to be a gap in any researched evidence to support the idea that whatever ‘it’ is that dance means is irrelevant. In the future, I aim to promote awareness of dance opportunity, therefore encouraging participation in dance through working towards increasing its accessibility. It seems necessary therefore to angle research to support teaching dance in a way that stimulates any opportunity for participation in dance, regardless of the dance subject or style, regardless of the dancers backgrounds, and regardless of the subject or theme of the work covered or choreography composed.

Gathering all this together,the range of key texts I have reviewed seem to cover three main areas, the research itself, the topic of education in dance and finally understanding dance and dance philosophy.

Time Management...

I have been advised to think about effectively time managing my enquiry plan. It has been suggested I use a Gantt Chart to clarify time allowances for each part of the enquiry.

I was wondering if anyone else has used this tool before? Or, come across other effective methods to display a clear time plan perhaps?

Because of my inexperience of creating such a chart, I did a bit of research on a few examples. I thought I would share this link should anyone else be wondering how to approach this part of the plan too.

Gantt Chart - Wikipedia explanation

'A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project.'

It seems quite difficult to accurately predict how long a specific task will take, taking into consideration all the factors which could effect a tasks completion is a lot to think about.

For my enquiry, I am envisaging leaving ample time to compose questionnaires/receive feedback and analysis the data will be hugely time consuming. Also, at this stage I think my research may involve working with minors, so I need to allow ample time to gain parental consent from parents before undergoing any observations or interaction with them.

Piloting some of the tools for enquiry has been an eye opener as to how we must allow adequate time to conduct the use of the tool initially, but considering the additional time needed to collate all the data and apply it to concluding research findings.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated as always!

Literature Reviewing - Task 6c

No doubt we are all trying to tackle writing our Enquiry plans, it seems a big section of this is applying the theories we have come across during reading and researching various forms of Literature.

This in itself is quite a task, I have found giving myself enough time to read, analysis, learn from, perhaps re-read and apply the information is really crucial, is anyone else? Often things I have read come back to me at random points in the day, similarly, something 'clicks' and I have been able to make links between suggested ideas and theories that support the way in which planning my enquiry develops.

I have found consulting initially a methodological text really helpful to 'plan how to plan' in a sense.

Practitioner Research and Professional Development in Education

Campbell, McNamara, Gilroy, (2004)

Chapter 5 of the book itself states consulting 'professionally focused research guides to get advice on how to go about identifying and refining research area, devising planning any analysing enquiry' is an important step to efficient planning.

It covers many angles on tools for enquiry including particularly helpful suggestions for how to manage and review literature. Although the book is not directly related to my topic for enquiry or any 'Dance' specifics, it gives plenty of examples of other situations where I am them able to relate to my own dance teaching environment.

It also has enlightened me as to how useful it is to establish a clear and functional procedure for reviewing and managing literature, (specifically how to record a book, and also how to efficiently record specific chapters or journal articles for examples)

I now feel much more well equipped at depicting  the relevant information to develop the stages of my plan from more Dance related literature's .

Pilot Observation

Pilot Observaion

Having read various other blogs from fellow BAPP students, and focussing on which direction my enquiry plan should take next, I have decided it appropriate to pilot an observation with the intension of using this tool a way of data collecting for my enquiry.

I have decided, with specific help from Stephanie and Adesola, to focus my observations on a group of dancers who use Ludus dance on a regular practise. They are members of the Ludus Youth Dance troupe, a mix of female and males, the youngest being 19 and the eldest being 21. (Although Ludus works in conjunction with much younger age ranges a swell, conducting an pilot observation involving under 16’s was inappropriate without ensuring the correct ethical codes are adhered too. I simply did not have time to gather parental consent before conducting this observation – (however this will be something I need to consider for my actually enquiry.)

The group itself were taking part in a workshop class which took place over a few days, my observations were things I noticed during the middle day of the dance programme. Perhaps to gain a more in depth analysis of behaviours and attitudes observed I could have compared observation notes from day one until day 3, to note any significant changes as the programme went on.

The group were made a wear I was observing them, but it was stressed that it was not meant as an invasive process. I was not there to observe them, or their abilities, the aim of my enquiry being one where I hope to establish an insight into what dance means to them as the grounding foundation, and that as a researcher who only works for Ludus on a monthly basis, I may be able to expose new/fresh ideas which one often does not see when a structured day to day practise consumes them.

Explanation to the members of Ludus (both teachers and students and the company’s organisational team) was given about my ethical stance remains in the boundaries of the organisations code of conduct and in my application of my knowledge of their official child protection policies.

Important to remember when conducting observations, as an ‘insider researcher’ who had personal interest in dance, I may be inclined to want to pre-judge behaviours and assume people will act in a similar way or share attitudes similar to mine. Thought needed to go into how I remain un judgemental and objective. The benefits to being an ‘insider’ however are important to my enquiry’s effective development, often insiders understand the significance of what is happening because ‘they are very much in tune with the context’. (Campbell et al, 2004, P94) Being relatively new to the Ludus company, keeping an unstructured approach to observations seemed to be the most beneficial. Being a new face, establishing that my aims are as a researcher are ones of ‘good will’ prevented me from not witnessing normal practise in the workplace.

I used a method of taking field notes for the pilot, noticing behaviours on how the group walked into the room to their inter interaction to each other, their attitudes to the dance tasks set, their behaviours and how they changed at the day progressed to finally noting mood and attitudes upon finishing their busy dancing day. To really define what dance means to them, making record of interactions with the movements tasks during the dance class was really revealing, I would want to expand on this further to develop my enquiry in the future.

Observing as an enquiry tool will be beneficial to me to use in the next module, relative to the theory of triangulation, the beauty of the efficiency of the observations is that they facilitate means to ‘gather field notes which can be contextualised by background notes and are often supplemented by gathering data by other methods such as interviews’ (Hitchcock, 1989: 67). As I am already envisaging conducting interviews for  my plan, piloting in tandem these two tools has given light to how they can help each other to research and record broad ranges of mixed data.

Has anyone else conducted an observation? Have you seen links between the benefits of using observations and interviews hand in hand, research from one informing another?

Piloting a Questionnaire

Critical Reflections on piloting a Questionnaire:

Why use a Questionnaire?

-          Primarily because they provide quick and easy way of accessing pupils opinions for data collection.

-          Means of data gathering from a wide range of respondents in a comparatively short time period.

-          Efficient in providing appropriate data for my enquiry – quantitative data, but can also produce answers and responses of a qualitative nature too.

Preparation:

-          Being a wear of problems of reliability and validity caused by a low response rate. To alleviate this, reading on the benefits of a ‘face – to –face’ delivery of questionnaire. Personal approach in this way may encourage participation.

-          Pre – planning of structured questions displayed clearly following an order that flows correctly from one topic to another. Asking myself how best to target my sample of audience of students ages from 4 -20 was quite difficult, large age range to cater for. Stepping into their shoes to think about how they may interpret and understand what I am asking. I want to encourage freedom of sharing opinions, not trick anyone with complicated and awkwardly worded questions.

-          Decided I wanted to include two types of questions, one being of a facular nature to find out basic information for future comparison and correlation (how many times per week people dance, their age, which style classes they take etc) Secondly, more open ended questions as I am hoping for a wider range of responses to share their experiences of what Dance means to  them. Getting an insight into respondents attitudes and perceptions will be important for my research, asking the deeper questions to allow for wider responses rather than just single yes/no answers,  (how do you feel when you dance/what do you think about dance etc)

-          Decided to try different style of question, some where I identified some appropriate statements that could determine effective answers from my sample respondents – kept it multiple choice again for a varies scope of data. Others, giving the respondent to volunteer their own comments on top of my suggestions. Finally, asking the student to describe what Dance means to them through optional choice of colour, diagrams, words of phrases – a wear dancers are artists and may favour this creative approach. This question was specifically aimed at the younger respondents who may find long written answers very boring.

Reflection

-Already a wear of potential reliability issues of data collection die to low response rate, although this was not the case in my pilot, it may be for future enquiries. One way to elevates this would be to also offer and online version of the questionnaire. E. G Survey Monkey, the process of completion online would be extremely helpful to those in busy work based situations. More convenient methods – also enabling me to send them to a wider community of people farther afield – more varied responses as people have time to take the questions outside of the dance place, they have more time to think more deeply about their answers and will not feel pressured from any influential surroundings.

-  Types of Questions massively affect the analysis; questions must be focussed around providing the information I need.

How to increase the effectiveness of this tool:

-          Although an online version may be convenient, it may prelude those who do not have internet access, having a questionnaire in a documented form which I can deliver face to face as well as an online version would hopefully ‘cover all bases’ regarding receiving optimum response of accurate data.

-          More focus on the information I want to gather from doing the pilot, perhaps covering such a large age range was not the most effective use of a questionnaire – very difficult to compose questions to keep the attention and focus of very young children as well as young adults and parents.

-          To address the issue of potential teacher /student power relationships making data inaccurate, I could have created a poster stating that completing the questionnaire is completely optional. It could have read ‘Is anyone Interested in sharing their Dance experience?’, the poster could also tackle potential ethical issues by using text explaining what my aims are for doing the research, where the information will go, how it will be analysed etc. Confidentially issues were discussed face to face on this occasion – time could have been saved by creating a poster. A poster would also offer participants to volunteer to offer their thoughts, rather than being forced.

Summary:

Constructing effective questions is not easy! But, given due care and attention, have the facility to produce valuable data and research to really develop an enquiry, whilst staying within the work based learning environment. Piloting a questionnaire has been extremely useful, more so to draw my attention to how I can better its effectiveness for the future. Main point to consider about the questions themselves: do they make sense? Are they in the correct order? Are they visually well presented? All these areas could have been improved from my pilot of this technique, targeting my sample audience more accurately would mean producing a questionnaire or survey that is professional, but aimed to be inclusive for the ages targeted, both parents and students themselves.

Pilot Interview - Task 6a

Following on from my pilot Focus Group, I conducted a pilot interview. It seemed a logical tool to use next as the focus group was an excellent format for grounds of a platform of discussion. To develop my enquiry further, to really get into the individuals experience of Dance, one to one interactions would be necessary.

Interviews seem to have an advantage that the researcher can follow up on responses given from the initial focus group, clarify meaning of opinions share, or probe more responses and investigate motives for the answers that were discussed.

Really wanting to uncover potentially unexpected data as well here, interviewing as a tool seems to have capability of being adaptable is producing ways to probe my topic of what Dance means to the individual.

Decided on two types of interviews would be most beneficial to getting well rounded data. I have made some rough notes to describe my considerations before undergoing the pilot, as well as reflections and reviewing afterwards.

1 - Informal Interview with Programme Leader at a professionally established community dance company

- at the Ludus Studio - 'home' ground, creating a sense of comfort/ease/freedom to speak at ease/answers given in context and 'in the moment'

- informal/unplanned structure - alleviated potential of participant being affected by nerves about speaking to researcher. As an 'insider researcher' looking into a topic I have some knowledge previously attained, found the informality of unstructured interviewing suitable when interviewing a familiar colleague with similar interests in promoting community dance and dance accessibility.

- transcribing notes after the pilot, rather than recorded data seemed most appropriate - observation of facial expressions beneficial to really understanding how the interviewee was answering. Being able to retain eye focus felt more respectful in the situation.

-  consideration towards how I would direct questions - remembering I am talking with a professional who has worked for years on creating community based dance projects. Felt inappropriate to have pre structured questions - wanting to remain open and objective, also wanting to initiate a feeling that I had considered the power relation ships exposed. (I am undergoing the research for a project of my own interest, gratitude for her sharing her experiences through her years of experience to help me gain a wider insight into my enquiry.) Letting the conversation be lead in a way.

Reflections after the pilot:

- Pleased with decision to not record the conversation, gave me change to gain respect by maintaining engagement through eye focus.

- Perhaps for my actual enquiry, having a more negotiated form of accounting the information discussed as opposed to be writing notes afterwards would be effective. Notes I made afterword lacked passion/meaning experiences whilst the interview was taking place. When analysing the interview responses, creating a summery documented by both myself and the respondent would be the most beneficial way of collected reliable and valid data.



      After consideration into how time consuming interviews can be to organise and execute, deciding to pilot an interview over the phone was the next logical step into reviewing the tools on enquiry. Arranging a conversation via Skype with a fellow student on this BAPP Programme (thanks again Sonal) was a way of getting instant data from an accountable source.

Being in a work based learning situation, this was a learning curve for me to always consider in reality people do live busy lives with not much time to spare to be researched. Also, wanted to gain response from the widest range of people I can, people often live far apart, and gaining access to them face to face would be unrealistic. Sonal is also a work based learning student so this form of communication enabled me to contact her and collect reliable data with minimal inconvenience.

2 - Skype phone call - interview with fellow BAPP learner and dancer

- Fellow colleague with similar dance interests - underlying mutual respect already initiated

- my first consideration were to focus of the purpose of the call - wanting to get clean, unbiased data. Creating a situation where respondent feels entitled to share their own experience. Wanting to have the respondent open up to share their joy of dance, NOT to be confused wit thrusting MY experience on them with an expectancy of it being a shared one.

- no pressure situation, to alleviate feeling under pressure, emailing prior to pilot discussing suitable time convenient for both. Assuring knowledge of confidentially, Data Protection Act issued have been adhered to.

- piloting an interview with a colleague and a personal fiend can have advantages - one is able to get feedback after the interview itself, (feedback on my approach, how it could be improved etc)

- creation of a semi structured format to home in on the type of data I wanted to collect from the interview process, ensuring topics covered are of relevance to my enquiry. To do so, having a pre planned set of questions felt most appropriate. This creates a professional flowing format, but also allows room for flexibility of exposing and potential emerging issues

- Including some open questioning styles, for example:

What does Dance mean to you?

My aim here was to offer Sonal opportunity to contribute her personal interpretation not only of the question, but her answers too.

- Being sure not to include leading questions formulating inaccurate data. Questions must not be formulated in a way that makes the respondent feel obliged to respond in a certain way, remembering the solid foundation principle of my enquiry to to share someone else's experience in order to research answers to my enquiry question.

Reflection after the pilot:

-I noticed the interview as a tool does have some limitations. Because the information I want is sensitive, and personal to the individual, I was luck to have a willingly responsive interviewee. This may not always be the case. Following this, Sonal was happy to be recorded, again I should consider that this also may not always be the case. Here points out how the benefits of face to face interaction (noticing body language) can help stimulate more respectful relations with the 'researched', and ultimated producing the most reliable data.

- Having read about it before hand, (Campbell et al, 2004) I found the use of para - linguistic utterances encouraged the respondent to keep talking freely, almost as a way of the interview showing their support.

- I found the more open questions most helpful to finding the data required, using discussion in this way helped me to develop a more in depth understanding of their insight in Dance.


On reflection of the whole task, I feel interviewing will be a helpful tool in developing my enquiry to find varied but reliable data. Although I am glad to experiment with a phone interview, its limitations as an effective tool have confirmed I will not use this method during my enquiry. I feel face to face interaction most effectivly enabled me to develop understanding of the respondents thoughts, feeling and opinions in their world of Dance.

Has anyone else piloted an interview yet? Please share any thoughts!


References:

(Practitioner Research and Professional Development in Education), Campbell, McNamara and Gilroy, 2004

Ethical Implications - researching 'young people'

Wondering if anyone else is intending to under go research with contribution from young people. I have bee looking for official documentation on specific guidelines on how to ethically do this,

It seems once over 18, one is classed as being able to make there own decisions, yet being under 16 (minors) parental consent must be sough before a research can undergo any part of an enquiry.

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Older young people (18+) are able to give their own consent without their parents’ agreement. <sup>6 The Protection of Children Act 1999: ‘A Practical Guide to the Act for All Organisations Working With Children’ Department of Health 24
I have found these websites below useful when considering the ethical implications of involving young people in research, they also highlight the benefits to gaining insight from younger people, it's really interesting!

I am wanting to explore further in the possible 'power issues' involved when researching into the opinions of younger dance students, the approaches mentioned in these texts address what the potential issues could be, but also as the researcher how they can be avoided.

Has anyone had any thoughts on this, or is anyone else having to consider the implications we need to consider?

http://www.invo.org.uk/pdfs/Involving_Young_People_in_Research_151104_FINAL.pdf

http://www.ciimu.org/webs/wellchi/reports/workshop_1/w1_morrow.pdf</sup>