Critical Reflection on Professional Practitioner Inquiry

Throughout this second module, I have engaged with others and thought hard to develop professional questions, consider all ethical rights and procedures and also evaluate the tools of my inquiry and how these will help continue and progress into my next and final module.

Developing my Professional Inquiry

When first embarking on this task, I was reluctant to pinpoint exactly what it was I wanted to plan my inquiry about, I was honest about this on my blog post (Appendix A) in the hope that it would bring me to some conclusion, which it certainly did. Upon coming to a decision about my role and wanting to expand on this, I joined a ‘Special Interest Group’ (SIG) on LinkedIn that my BAPP colleague Sarah Pearson had created, entitled ‘Arts in Education’ (Appendix B). Here I was able to engage with other professionals who were inquiring about similar points. For my own inquiry I began to brainstorm (Appendix C) about where I wanted this inquiry to lead me, and I also questioned my own views on professional training within an education setting (Appendix D). This led to further questions for myself and others that I wanted to explore in my full inquiry. I felt to do this I must ensure I had a true understanding of the different teaching qualifications, and began researching what literature may help me along the way. Finding websites such as ‘Youth Dance England’ (Appendix E) allowed me to look at teaching tips and read reviews on subjects within my chosen field. I then began to plan how I would go about this and looked at the other factors I needed to consider to move forward with it.

Ethical Considerations

From working with children and working with schools for many years, I know there are strict rules to adhere to, each school may have their own specific codes of conduct, but I was aware of the Data Protection Act in place for all public services and enjoyed reading Sarah Pearsons blog post (Appendix F) about what should lawfully be agreed to at all times. I then explored my own views and thoughts of Codes of Practice (Appendix G) and thought about this further when planning my inquiry. Confirming what information will be asked of my peers and colleagues and ensuring I had a full understanding of what ethical procedures should be adhered to.

Tools of inquiry

Throughout Module 3, I will be using basic tools such as Google to help with the understanding of my inquiry. I will also be looking at collecting all my data through different ways. Initially I will be asking my volunteers to answer my questions through Survey Monkey (Appendix H) , then from these answers I hope to expand further by interacting with the individuals via email and face-to-face Q&A sessions. Having the understanding of the different teaching qualifications is something I will be familiarising myself with, and keeping up to date throughout my inquiry, referring to this ‘Get into Teaching’ website will allow me to do this (Appendix I).