Browsing

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/letter-to-the-dancer-who-had-to-say-goodbye

My Artefact

Through the findings of my inquiry ‘How do freelance dancers achieve a positive career transition and career development?’ It was identified that pre-planning is one of the main factors when trying to attain a positive career transition, however many dancers do not to do this. It seems they deliberately choose not to think about until it is too late. Once the transition is upon dancers it has the potential to take a very negative route with some dancers suffering depression. Pre-planning can help prevent this downward spiral and I want to help prevent dancers finding theirselves in that position. Hence why I have made a short interactive video meant for dance students who are about to begin their career in dance. A task sheet is to be downloaded before so they can take part and complete the tasks throughout the video. I have made sure that the video is light and fun to watch even though transition can be dark as I do not want to dampen students spirits when they are just about to embark on probably the most exciting journey of their life. My aim is to ‘plant the seed’ and hopefully they will take it onboard to not only create their own pre-plan but start to put it into action.

Please follow this link to print the task sheet before watching the video-

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3eZ2ba6GbViVl9lTkxMeG9oakU/view?usp=sharing

D. Austen Oral Presentation BAPP Middlesex University

This is my oral presentation, I'm not sure if it was quite along the right lines however, this is what I had on the day so I rolled with it. (the sound on the quotes is not great).

well well well, it is the end of that chapter.

Yesterday was my oral presentation. I felt so nervous but it was actually a really nice, relaxed, friendly experience. It was so good to finally meet the Bappers, everyone was so lovely. My presentation could have gone a little better, I feel I missed a few things out, stumbled over my words, lost my place, didn't look up from my notes enough but all in all it was ok, I guess it could have been worse and to think how much I practiced it before hand as well, I think my husband knows my presentation off by heart as do my mum and dad, ha ha.

Well it is all finished now (well, providing I pass). Although times have been stressful I have enjoyed this learning journey . My inquiry was not perfect, however I did my best, I made mistakes but most of all I have learned from this experience to which has improved me as a professional and my practice in the sense of being a more informed individual. I can take this life long knowledge away and apply it throughout my life. I feel this process has helped me to ‘let go’ in a way but also, to keep hold. The way I see transition now is ‘if a dancer dies twice”, a dancer most definitely lives twice and in addition to that, I am excited to be starting my second rainbow.



                   'A dancer lives twice' Austen, D, BAPP Arts Student, Middlesex University, (2016)

Ethical Considerations

Ethical Considerations

As I learned from module two, ethical considerations are very important. A lot of my fellow students I believe have very complicated ethical issues due to working within schools and working with children. I feel quite lucky in that respect as I am working with adults who are well over 18 so I do not have as many implications in that area. However, my inquiry is not without ethical concern.

My topic of ‘career transition in dancers’ can be a highly sensitive subject for some individuals and I was fully aware of the impact it could inflict on my participants if not approached with caution and sensitivity. This  means I did need to tread very carefully. I was very mindful when putting my questions together but still made sure that all my dancers were aware that they should not answer any question in which they did not feel comfortable with and they could terminate the interview or withdraw from my inquiry at any time for any reason with no repercussion. 

I verbalised that all was confidential with great attention to the (Data Protection Act 1998) and that I would follow the BERA (British Educational Research Association) guide lines. I also sent out consent forms to make them aware of this too. I made sure I stuck closely to the ethical guidelines to ensure I did everything correctly. My main aim was for the welfare of my participants to which I think I managed achieve.

References

British Educational Research Association (2011) Revised ethical guidelines for educational research. BERA

https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/resources-for-researchers

Data Protection Act (1998) http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents

Tools

Here are the tools I used within my inquiry

Interviews

I decide to use qualitative research over quantitive because I really wanted to get  thoughts and feelings. I wanted to know  how people coped with the transition process because it can be a very distressing for some dancers. I felt that I was just not going to get those thoughts and feelings through questionnaires. Doing interviews allows you to explore deeper into what the person is meaning. Questionnaires provide good factual statistical data and are good for anonymity but I did not feel I would get the data I was looking for that way.

“this is not a question of which is better, quantitative or qualitative; rather, the question is, Which is a better fit for the research questions to be studied?” (Grady. M 1998 p.9)

I selected my dancers very carefully, I wanted to have a well rounded group to get true to life results. For example I did not want 6 dancers who have all transitioned into teaching, I wanted a mixture. I had dancers who are now teaching through to one who  now runs her own business in the catering industry. I did not want 6 dancers who had all got injured because I feel that could bias my results. I selected 3 girls and 3 boys who have all been colleagues of mine at some point in my career. I decided to keep it to 6 because it is my first ever inquiry and I did not want to bite off more than I could chew.

I enjoyed putting the questions together however, I do feel that they could have been better. I put them together quite early on and did one interview early on which then meant I could not change them because everything needs to remain as consistent as possible. I did find it interesting how each person could interpret the question a little differently and end up talking about something else but I was very mindful of trying to explain what I meant at times because I was worried I was ‘leading a question’ which I did not want to do for obvious reasons, so that was a tricky one. If I wrote my questions now they would be quite different. I wrote so many questions covering so many things because I was worried I would miss something. I would try and keep my questions to a minimum but try and explore deeper into them for example a few questions I received a simple yes/no answer and I left it at that because I had so many questions to get through and I did not want to take up too much of their time, I tried to keep my interviews to 30-40 minutes. If I only had 10 questions I could try and encourage them to go into more detail if they were willing to by asking how and why? Having said that though I did manage to extract some really good data from the questions I did ask.

Transcribing was a torturous affair. I really did not anticipate how long that was going to take. It took hours and hours to do just one. I did not find it easy because how we speak does not necessarily transfer to paper very well, people start to say something then half way stop and say something completely different so on paper it makes absolutely no sense but it has to be verbatim regardless.

Once the transcribing was over the coding started which was a long winded process and very confusing trying to sift through reams of information that all seemed extremely relevant but unrealistic to use it all. It was really satisfying once things start to click into place and I could start to make connections to theories or the same themes kept reoccurring. I don't think I have got this down to a fine art though, I need more practice. I found this youtube video by (Löfgren, K. 2013, online) very helpful, https://youtu.be/DRL4PF2u9XA. 

Focus Group

The focus group I coordinated was a mixture of colleagues, friends and fellow students. We only got together 3 or four times mainly on Skype but the sessions we had were invaluable. Everybody got really into it and got quite passionate about their thoughts and feelings, each challenging the others ideas and challenging theories and themes in which I instigated. It really was thought provoking and unveiled new ideas to which I had not thought of before which got me thinking to an even deeper level. Although the focus group was for my benefit everyone seemed to really enjoy it. I am aware that focus groups can encourage some people to shy away and not say too much, but that really didn’t happen with mine, everyone contributed and everyone seemed very comfortable in doing so. 

I conducted one of focus group at my house when one of my other friends happened to be over from Portugal for the weekend, she is a nurse. She sat in on the focus group but remained quite quiet. We were talking about passion and how we all have passion for performing and we were unsure we would ever find that level of passion anywhere else. For example I asked my husband ( who is an engineer) are you passionate about engineering? do you think ‘oh I cannot wait to take that engine to bits? do you get a buzz from putting it all back together?’ his reply was he gets satisfaction from it and he does very much enjoy it but he is not passionate about it like we are with dancing. I think the only thing that would give hime the same passion and buzz would be being a formula one driver. So I asked my nurse friend, are you passionate about nursing? is that all you have ever wanted to do? her reply was very similar to my husbands. She loves nursing and helping people and she is very good at it too,  but she could not say she was passionate about it like we are dancing. I asked her what she would have loved to have done, she said dance and sing. Unfortunately she wasn’t given the same opportunities to do that when she was younger. I found incorporating ‘outsiders’ opinions and experiences very interesting. It made me realise we are very very lucky to have been given the opportunity to live our dream because many are not granted that chance.

Observation

At first I thought I cannot really do an observation, how can I observe someone’s transition, transitions can take years, but then I realised I have actually already observed quite a few. A lot of my friends are no longer dancing anymore for different reasons and I have remained in regular touch with them, so I have actually witnessed quite a few transitions, some positive, some negative  and some almost neutral. So I could call upon those experiences in order to help understand theories and related them to real life.  So it wasn’t an observational exercise I conducted as such but still very much an observation which really helped with my understanding and relating to the theories.

References

Grady. M (1998), Qualitative and Action Research: A Practitioner Handbook, Phi Delta Kappa International, - Action research in education, Indiana USA.

Löfgren, K. (2013) [online]. https://youtu.be/DRL4PF2u9XA

Getting there

I feel like I am sort of getting there, although what I have written might be a right load of old waffle. As Jessica mentioned that she was struggling with the word count, I am also. I have managed to get my introduction bob on with 500 words! Boom! I was going to try and carry on the word count perfection, however it hasn't happened and I probably shouldn't  go down the road, it's not necessary, I have bigger fish to fry right now. 

Those transcripts took a long time, I almost wanted to defer 😂. I am using a lot of quotes  from them, I hope I'm doing this right. I almost feel like I'm sailing somewhere with no map, compass, in thick fog, blind folded and just hoping I'm going in the right direction. It's ok though I have acquired some help.