This post
should interest BAPP Arts students on Part 4 of BAPP. You may also be
interested in previous posts relevant to this topic:
This is a long
post – apologies but I go into some detail here!
I have looked
across the Blogs and drawn out a set of questions / lines of inquiry that I
would like to comment on. Please note that I am not picking out individuals for
praise or admonishment, rather I am trying to identify different qualities that
I have observed, and sought to direct my comments to understanding these
questions better. All of these questions can be found at:
So onto some thoughts about Lines of Inquiry ...
Effective
lines of enquiry and questions often look at ‘extents’ (levels of) something,
rather than does ‘something work or not’ type questions. Here is a sophisticated
question that explores ‘extent’ between characteristics (e.g. cause and effect):
‘Do peers affect the level of engagement
on students within a lesson? and would a philosophy of teamwork
integrated into lessons provide them with security and promote positive
and effective learning?’
This question
enables us to explore in more depth in terms of where or with whom does the
insight lay? Know where you might go to answer the question might help to
nuance it for greater precision. See this in this revised question:
‘What do students report as being the benefits
of a teamwork approach to learning dance?’
A similar
question from another dance teacher was:
As a teacher how do you encourage the
students who are less willing to join in?
Here the
location of the insight is identified (dance students), and therefore can lead
us to imagine types of inquiry processes that can draw out insights. For
example, a focus group or discussion with students.
Moving on,
another question was:
Are there generic weakness in dancers? If so,
are the patterns that emerge general, age based, physique based,
continentally genetic, or something else. Are these weakness
related to the dancers strength/flexibility ratios and could they contribute
towards common faults.
Here we can see that the inquirer is trying to get at
whether we can find a broadly agreeable notion of whether particular aspects of
training and/or practice lead to particular effects in terms of weakness. The
question itself acknowledges that there may be no absolute truth, but that
there may be ‘typical’ consequences.
While the above example is answerable and carries all sorts
of helpful framing, conversely this one is far harder to answer:
What are the
benefits of the different schools of training used across the world and
what are the results? Is one producing a more rounded dancer than the
others?
This is far harder to answer because
the question sets out a some difficult preconceptions: that there is such a
thing as a ‘more rounded dancer’ ... that a ‘more rounded dancer’ is better
than some other type of dancer, that schools of training are the only thing to
effect this … etc. This question implies strongly that there is a correlation
between cause (schooling) and effect (result = rounded or non-rounded dancer).
This is a difficult question to answer because it is laden with preconceptions
that get in the way.
This type of question could
be better tackled by thinking in terms of where the insights lay, e.g.:
What qualities do established professional
contemporary dance practitioners attribute specifically to their training,
experiential and other factors?
This type of question does not imply that ‘specific type of
training = rounded dancers (as something of value) rather seeks to understand
how different qualities of their experiences and how the dancers feel this links
to their capabilities.
Another example of a difficult question or starting point
is:
Which is more
important a degree in dance or a CV full of performing?
This question is a dichotomous question (that a degree in
dance is in opposition to a CV full of performing). What if someone has both?
Many do. Many don’t. Generally, asking a question ‘is X or Y better is thought
of as dichotomous. The problem is it invites superficial yes/no answers. Any
worthwhile line of inquiry is trying to get at a deeper insight of what is
going on in a particular context. Also, what does ‘important’ mean? To whom?
Where? When? It seems that the inquirer wants to know what is more important
but the question lacks context. A good line of inquiry also carries the DNA of
the inquirers purpose. Why does the
inquirer want to know? What value does it have for them? So this line of
inquiry would make more sense as (for example):
What considerations do
dance students take into account when making the choice between professional
training or higher education routes to a dance career?
You can see that the general starting point (Which is more
important a degree in dance or a CV full of performing?) can open up into all
sorts of more specific, and workable inquiries, that might, for example, talk
to established dancers about their experiences, or to choreographers and casing
directors about the choices they make etc.
Another example of this type of difficulty is:
Do children have more
rights than teachers?
This again is very difficult to answer. It simply prompts
more questions. What is the underlying purpose of what this question seeks to
get at? Why would anyone want to know that? What would you do with the answer
even if you could get at one?
Moving on, a more helpful question looks at:
How would you teach a
class of students/children at different levels with different capabilities and
skills? Without holding the more capable students back but also not making the
class too difficult and advanced for the less capable students?
This question identifies the ‘value’ in terms of the social
purpose of helping all students in the class. The inquirer is concerned for all
her dance students, not just a particular group. The context is identified - how to plan and teach a class that
addresses learning whatever the starting point of the learner. Importantly, it
identifies the ‘agent (where the insights might lay) as ‘you’. If we substituted
‘you’ with a slightly clearer ‘agent’, you can see the question is pretty well
structured and answerable:
How do dance teachers (the
agents) teach a class of
students/children at different levels with different capabilities and skills?
Without holding the more capable students back but also not making the class
too difficult and advanced for the less capable students?
Some of the most difficult questions are framed broadly as:
‘How do I become a
success dancer (or teacher, or whatever)?
What key skills must I have to become a successful dance teacher?
What do I need know to
be a dance teacher?
I think these are not actually properly questions, rather
expression of motivations and concerns. They are broad directions of thinking. As
a question, we might see these a ‘precursor’ positions. A starting point. The
challenge is that these types of questions are broadly speaking, unanswerable
in terms of an inquiry. This is because practice operates in so many contexts,
and we all bring different mixes of qualities and attributes so it would be
really hard to say ‘x’ is what is required to be successful.
So this type of question needs further crafting into
something that could be answered, e.g.
‘To what do
established dancers attribute their success?’
Now this sort of questions is answerable because it seeks to
find out a range of possible responses and identifies where the insight might lie.
It could bear further crafting obviously, and you could experiment with how to
do that (thinking about where the insights might lay, and the context or range
of contexts to which the question relates).
Onto another question:
Does singing and
movement help with early years development e.g. fine/gross motor skills,
imagination, phonics, social skills etc?
A simple improvement to this question should be:
Does In what
ways does singing and movement help with early years development e.g. fine/gross
motor skills, imagination, phonics, social skills etc?
The former question we already know the answer to. Is
singing and dancing likely to be good in an early years setting? Yes of course.
But in what ways? That is the question.
If we asked:
What do Early Years
Teachers report as being the effectiveness of singing and movement to help with
early years development e.g. fine/gross motor skills, imagination, phonics,
social skills etc?
This would then give a clear focus on where we thought the
insights lay (teachers as the agent), is conditionality (reporting on
effectiveness without setting up right-wrong / good-bad dichotomies) and
specifies some areas of particular interest (e.g. motor skills).
We don’t need to ask questions we know the answer to, but
questions that, by their nature, help to direct us towards particular insights.
In this case, this question looks very worthwhile in finding out what teachers
think singing and movement contribute from their expert perspective and
experiences.
A similar question:
Do we have a Role Models as adults?
Again, this needs to identify where the insights lay, and
the context in which it operates, so better as:
Who do establishing
Dance Teachers report as being important professional role models and why?
Again, another question of context:
How do you think dancers cope
with the pressures of the industry?
What is needed here is the ‘who’? Who is best placed to answer this?
Dancers probably? Then better reframed as:
What do dancers (the agents) say about how they cope with the pressures
of the industry?
Finally, sometimes
a key piece of literature can help to identify a focus for a line of inquiry
and I thought this extract led the student to look at a range of issues that
could form the basis for a great inquiry. I though this was worth sharing and
worth following the rationale given by the individual on their blog:
I have found while
researching my inquiry a piece of literature which struck my attention [that]
made me interested to look into it more. It is titled "Psychology of
Dealing with the Injured Dancer" www.citraining.com/pdfs/Psychology-of-Injured-Dancer.pdf
OK, that is my trawl through some excellent Blog posts on
Part 4. Well done to all and I hope the feedback helps!
