Below is the Critical Reflection that I will be submitting along with my Inquiry Plan at the end of Module 2.
Critical Reflection on Professional Practitioner Inquiry
During this short essay
I’ll be reviewing the key stepping stones which have helped develop my ideas
for the inquiry since I started Module 2.
The initial task was to
review Reader 4 on Professional Inquiry and develop a set of questions relevant
to my practice. Looking back on these initial questions (Appendix 1) I think
it’s clear to see the progression in the quality of my questions.
The starting point for me
developing my questions was reading the section in the Reader on Penelope
Hanstein, the professor and director for dance at Texas Woman’s University and
author of many articles on the nature of dance.
The paragraph which stood
out to me was from the book Researching
Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry co-edited
by Penelope Hanstein and Sondra Horton Fraleigh (Appendix 2).
Hanstein highlighted the
difference between a genuine question and a pseudo question, the former truly
seeks an answer and the latter cannot be answered nor has an answer that is
already known to the person asking the question. I immediately identified that
the set of questions I had come up with at that point may have been more pseudo
than genuine (Appendix 3).
Following this
realisation, I rephrased the questions and scrapped some questions entirely
which I felt could not be answered through investigation. Further analysis
showed some of the questions needed to be more genuine in order for them to be
answered satisfactorily through research (Appendix 4).
However, this was still a
work in progress and after much thought, research on relevant literature and
drawing from feedback received from experienced teachers and from the SIG my
set of questions went through several changes before arriving at this stage where
I am confident about them (Appendix 5).
Reader 5 opened my eyes to
the necessity of ethics in the work place and inquiries carried out there.
For the first task in part
5, I considered the ethics in my work place relying on my own thoughts without
the help of documents and discussion (Appendix 6).
I then researched the
codes of practice which provide the ethical framework in my work place and to
consult the Reader on Professional Ethics. I discovered there were some ethical
standards I wasn’t adhering to as explicitly as ISTD demands. The ISTD Code of
Conduct is comprehensive (Appendix 7), whereas my list of ethical standards
just covered the surface and entirely missed some integral parts. I feel ethics
are important for my inquiry and having researched the ISTD guidelines I feel
better equipped to carry out my inquiry in an ethical manner (Appendix 8).
Following the completion
of this module, I am now at a stage where I am confident to carry out my
inquiry in a professional and ethical way with the tools that I have chosen (Appendix 9). My questions have been shaped and
adapted from a primitive set, of which some could never have been answered
satisfactorily, into a more mature set which should help me genuinely gain more
understanding about my chosen topic.
