Campus Session Module 2 28.2.12 COMMENTS ADDED 4/3/12

CAMPUS SESSION 2 BAPP (Arts) Module 2 WBS3630

28 February Trent Park Campus, Room 4

Schedule of session (Paula)

Attending Rozana, Alice, Emily, Hannah, Tiffany, Lily, Corinda, Sarah, Rhoda

Introduction: 

Reviewing Addendum sheet for Module 2and formative feedback - the Addendum sheet talks about the dates around which the feedback takes place...

Summing up Part 4  

Progress on Inquiry Questions - We talked about how the earlier questions are now becoming clearer and the ideas for a final topic area are forming. The inquiry plan should have some main inquiry questions to explore, and may have a number of sub-questions. What is it that you want to find out about? There may be ideas (philosophical) and practical aspects that you might want to use for your inquiry. Most people are still in the process of focusing in on there topic area in order to use the headings in the Module 2 Handbook to write their plan.

Progress on working with Special Interest Groups (SIGs) – naming the groups and how to join in on their conversations  - Most people seemed to not be keyed into groups yet but many had begun to form them - we discussed using Facebook and Linked In as a way of developing groups as well as blogs and other means of contact amongst the BAPP network - the groups discussion should help you decide on some of the issue you want to develop in your inquiry

Insider Research and professional practice - this is a part of Part 4 - there should have been an extract emailed to you - this inquiry will be looking at your professional practice (paid or unpaid) and you will need to take care when using this context for your practitioner research - following ethical guidelines will be important - and your will need to get permission from your Employer or someone from your community of practice if you are freelance who might act as a 'gatekeeper' at work - for example a manager or director or Head Teacher looking after the interests of the people who work where you hope to develop your professional inquiry. 

Part 5 Ethical Practice 

Professional Ethics (Rosemary - The Black Swan), Aesthetics (Adesola) and Inquiry ethics - using ethical practice in your professional inquiry - I started this section by referring to the Fox et al. book that talks about how ethical practice is related to professional knowledge. Professional ethics and the ethics that you will use to gather evidence for your topic are important skills for the professional. Reader 5 (compiled by Rosemary) goes over the history of ethics, morality and ethics, and the professional conduct that many professional are required to have in order to practice.

Larger group exercise: Professional ethics using Part 5 Reader 2 (5a,5b)

What are the ethical considerations of your professional practice?Taking the lead from Rosemary, we began the discussion using the movie the Black Swan  about a ballet dancer and her rather bizarre and dramatic experience trying to take the starring role of  white/black swan. Generally it shows how not to practice - Corinda pointed out the fictional mother was also ultra demanding along with the director. It exemplified the need for ethical guidelines and a discussion ensued about this. Rhoda and Hannah pointed out that they had experienced bad ethical practice, and all agreed that politeness and etiquette with all job related colleagues was a key skill in engaging in practice. Many of these codes of practice can be found in written form, and this is one of the tasks for Part 5

Small group exercises: Inquiry ethics using using Part 5 Reader 3 (5c)

Discussing the Ethics Forms, discussion in inquiry plan, informed consent forms - Here we discussed the requirements for the module and the need for developing the professional inquiry at Middlesex University - informed consent is explained several times in Reader 5  (e.g. p.18 and in Reading 3 p. 36). The Inquiry plan and Ethics form requires you to identify who your will be talking to in Module 3 when you gather data through tools such as interviews... 

Break A brief stroll around or near the Mansion house...

Part 6 Literature – how finding out relates to ethical practice 

How to search for sources that relate to your inquiry

Analysing sources for information (data) as a critical thinking skill for professional practice

Using tools with ethical practice Here we took some short articles that I copied from the Stage and scanned them quickly to identify the main points from the literature - literature comes from many sources, but generally it is someone who has professional or academic expertise who is talking about the topic and explaining some research or review of the topics and/or issues. For example education usually has literature on policy as well as literature on practice - so one is the government's rules of how things should happen and the practice literature explores where that practice really is and the ideas that go into the practice. 

What people did to the literature – as it was not a library cop – wa they used highlighters to indicate the most main points and added ‘annotations’ or notes to the side to remember the themes and theories introduced – this is helpful when you are writing up the analysis.

     

Group exercise: Using a sample from Stage, read and annotate an article and relate to the group  the issues explored (6c).

Our articles came form a performance topic area – one article noted that some research had been carried out by MarketingBirmingham that said that children only got limited access to attending performances in that city. Issues included - who did the research, why the research was done, what the evidence about non-attendance might mean to the children, etc. 

The article can be found  at the Stage on this link.

Searching literature is an important way to focus in on what others have said about your topic. Module 2 asks you to choose 3 pieces of literature to analyse – see Reader 6 – and this will also help you define what it is you want to examine about your professional practice. Look for issues make sense to you and would be worth sharing with others.

Plenary 

We said that more people need to be involved in the SIGs and that people would send me addresses to put on the BAPP Libguide. Alice and I did a short video after the session to be posted on BAPPYouTube. Next time we will try to do more of this.