How?

Last week I was part of a Skype conversation which focused on the 'Practicalities of doing a practice based inquiry. Prior to attending this conversation I was slightly unsure of what this title and topic actually meant. I had some vision of it looking at how practical on inquiry topics were within our field.

The title actually looked at the physical and practical steps that we were taking to execute our research and how we implement these into our inquiry plan. With this confirmed I was extremely grafetul to be challenged on this as I was previous looking at where I was within my study and felt very much like my work was generalised. Questioning the practical elements of the inquiry process thinking about the 'how' in relation to my previous understanding of 'why' really allowed me to add specificity to my choices or rethink some of my previous writing.

Adeolsa asked us to write down a couple of ides we had for our data collection and then write down specifically what practical steps we needed to take to be able to execute this within our work. An example I explained was to contacting people that I would like to interview. It dawned on me that it was very easy to say in my plan that I had or intended to do this, but the importance and relevance to discuss is the steps into doing it. For example, 'From recently reading the published 'All Change Please' book I was inspired by the author Lucy Kerbel's discussion into gender equality within performing arts. Within this book there was a link to her Theatre Company's website, 'Tonic Theatre' which offered a direct email address to Lucy. With this I emailed her to inform her of my inquiry and ask if she would be available to meet with me to discuss the topic further...'

Adesola explained that by adding specificity to the inquiry proposal it gives a stronger indication to the university as to the specific steps that we are taking, and for us to ensure that the proposal is not illusive and had a plan in place that is clear to see.

I can relate this very much to myself within my professional practice. When I enter into my teaching I feel much more confident in my delivery knowing that I have spent time previously completing a lesson plan that creates a structure that can be used. This structure allows me to meet the aims and objectives of my teaching sessions whilst maintaining an element of freedom to ensure that learner's needs are met or if the class takes a route that explores an element that is slightly off of my initial plan but feeds into the subject being covered.

I would love to hear from others on the practicalities of their inquiry proposal and what challenges they feel they may face with these.



image source: http://www.eurodiaconia.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ndDRwBv3X3QW86aCs23TVRiV804.jpg

Comments

  1. Hi Andrew, this was a very helpful post. It made me think of approaching my proposal in the same way I approach lesson plans within my teaching practice. By asking questions of : What needs to be done (questions that need to be answered)); How to do it? What are the time frames for each activity?

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