Module 3: First Campus Session

Today was the first campus session for the final module, and the very first one in the entire course I’ve been able to attend!!

It was a bit of a unique one, because Paula ended up doing two sessions, one 10-1 and one 2-5 I believe. Sarah Pearson has posted a fantastic overview of what was covered, very well laid out. It will be a useful point of reference for people who are still a bit foggy and unclear about where they are and what they need to do.

As Sarahs blog is such a good one I’ve decided to make my post about specific elements of the session that really helped me.

First of all: Literature Reviews.

I have, until now, had a massive fear of literature reviews. Here’s why. In my head, to do a literature review I had to:

• find an article/journal entry/case study etc and read it over and over until I had a firm grasp of it in its entirety.
• Decide whether it was completely and specifically relevant to my exact enquiry topic.
• If it was, write a full blown essay about the literature.

This is incorrect!!!

In truth it’s more like this:

• Find an article/journal/case study etc and read as much of it as is necessary. Scan it and see if any particular bits jump out as relevant to your study. If so, maybe read a bit deeper, but not necessarily! Just take from it what is valuable to you and don’t worry about the rest.
• Write about what the literature is about (briefly) and explain how it has influenced your thinking and your study (again, briefly and to the point). It doesn’t need to have done so in a massive way, but if it has contributed to your enquiry, boom! There’s a reference and something to back up your thinking!

Realizing this has been a break through for me and I feel it will make me a lot more comfortable and willing when it comes to finding sources and referencing them.

Secondly: Don’t be afraid to tweak!!

I came across two issues with my inquiry title and was terrified that these realizations were going to ruin my whole project! Preposterous way to look at it now I think about it!!

Paula explained that if you can justify the changes and explain why you’re making them, and how it will help your project be a success, it’s actually very simple!! Here are the issues I came across:

1.    I had planned to use children in my study aged 14-18 using two different groups from two different places of work. Upon my return after the holidays I discovered that in one of the groups 80% of my students were around 12 years old due to age groups being merged. I was left with maybe 2 or 3 14-18 year olds, and 13 12 year olds!! I was going to have to change the age bracket, but how can I justify the change? 
Well, my long term goal is to work in a secondary school as a dance teacher, and what’s the age bracket for secondary school children? 11-18!!! (once the new leaving age kicks in) Bingo!! I am changing the range range in my study in order to cover all the ages I am hoping to teach in my future career! A short, justifiable reason and it’s all good.

2.    The title. My title was going to be “An exploration of dance students and dance teachers perceived benefits of dance education within the styles of street/creative dance.”

My issue was, having drafted the surveys and began the process, it was becoming clear that the genre of dance was not going to be specific. Also, one of the groups I was studying could’t really be classes as “dance education” as it’s a youth dance project, and probably better falls into the category of “community dance”.

So I changed it to: “An exploration of dance students and dance teachers perceived benefits of partaking in dance classes”.

Here’s the justification I will use:

I changed “within the styles of street/creative dance” to “dance classes” because upon reviewing the settings of my inquiry I have realised that street/creative dance is not really relevant. In both settings I teach a range of styles, and not all of it can be accurately referred to as “dance education”. Also, when I achieve my goal of teaching full time in a secondary school I will be required to teach a range of dance styles, and therefore it would be unnecessary to specify the style being researched.

I have made a believable argument for the change, and made it clear how and why my project will benefit from the change, so it’s ok!!

So in summary

• Don’t be scared of literature reviews! Find a piece of writing (using summon on unihub is generally effective in finding what you want), read as much of it as you need in order to take something useful from it, then write about what that something was, why it is useful and how it will support your study! Simple! And as short or as long as is relevant.

• Changes and tweaks of you enquiry project are good!! It shows you are actively developing it. As long as you can justify why you’re doing it and prove that the change will benefit the project, you’re golden. (and this is actually more simple than it seems! Identify the problem, decide on the change you want to make and then FIND a way of justifying it)

I really hope this is helpful to people. These two revelations have really helped in calming me down (see sarahs blog for stress management techniques!!) and getting in control of my plans, I hope they help others too!!

Don’t forget, comment comment comment, blog blog blog!! The more we blog with each other the easier everything will be!!