Task 4A- Developing Questions for Professional Inquiry

After looking at Reader 4, I’ve spent some time thinking about areas of inquiry within my professional practice I want to explore more and develop to enhance my future career.

The difficulty I had whilst thinking of questions of inquiry is combining my singing teaching, my early years T.A. teaching and my experience of working as a professional Musical theatre performer together.  

My experience as a professional musical theatre performer has a great influence on my teaching style within the classroom setting and private setting, I feel it helps me look at teaching pupils from a different angle by bringing energy, enthusiasm and create ideas to the classroom.

It’s important for me to develop areas of inquiry that combine all my areas of professional practice that I participate in on a daily basis. By developing an inquiry that has this combination will give me confidence in applying for PGCE/QTS qualification after my degree, as this will give me an upper hand during interviews for future career opportunities discussing topics that are relevant to my daily professional practice.

Below are some possible questions of inquiry, please feel free to comment and suggest ways to improve and develop them:

·         How effective are the use of management signals/actions  to control behaviour within a classroom setting?

 

·         Does singing and movement help with early years development e.g. fine/gross motor skills, imagination, phonics, social skills etc.

 

·         Does learning phonetic sounds with actions and rhymes help pupils retain information and develop their pupil progress.

 

·         Having fun, energetic, fast paced lessons make learning more fun and enjoyable for pupils within a class setting e.g. singing lessons, Read, write, ink sessions?

 

·         Does a pupil gain from private singing lesson 1:1 than being taught within a group class?

 

·         Do ex performers make more creative, imaginative teachers?

 

·         How/Does my performing experience and professional training influence my singing teaching style and technique?

 

·         By planning and following a lesson plan for my singing teaching lessons are they more effective in developing pupil’s talent and progress?

 

When discussing ideas of inquiry with my SIG I also touched areas of the following;

·         Cognitive learning- Singing warm-up exercises tried out on older pupils compared to younger pupils.

·         Learning differences- speed of learning an exercise.

·         Competence of maintaining correction and ability.

 

Campus session Feb 13th

It was great to see old and new faces at the campus session on the 13th Feb.

Paula led the session by discussing how to research topics we're interested in, to benefit our studies.

She emphasised the use of  'KEY WORDS' to direct your search but also allow researching to discover new things and avenues you wouldn't think of.

Points to remember when researching are:

• What are the conventions around that idea?
• Time? Culture?
• Make sense of the idea.
• Use experts to define the idea.
• Look at different perspectives on the idea e.g. historical, feminist, modern?
• Map out ideas to come to an evaluation/conclusion to explore in more depth.
• Consider arguments FOR and AGAINST.

First part of the session we did an fun exercise in groups of 4 my group were; Amy D'Arcy, Geri Masucci, Phil Carroll and Me.

Paula gave us the topic 'LOVE'. We came up with various ideas, meanings, definitions etc. below is what our group brain stormed:

All the groups came up with various meanings and perceptions of 'LOVE' two that stood out for our group were:

• How do we define the image of love?
• How with age does love grow or weaken?

However, other groups came up with ideas about arranged marriages and dating? So it just shows how 1 word can have such a variety of topics.

Using key words based on our two questions; 'Loyalty', 'heart', 'holding hands', 'cuddle/comfort', 'security' we looked up information and sources of literature using the programme 'SUMMONS'. Paula showed us how helpful it is for looking for sources for our literature review and finding evidence to support our professional inquiry. 'SUMMONS' can be found on 'My library' section of My Uni Hub. You can find magazine articles, books, newspapers, online sources etc.

Second half of the lecture we broke up into Modules. Alan spoke to Module 2 about developing our questions of inquiry and how SIG groups can be very helpful in discussing your ideas and progressing them further. This discussion helped me think about my questions more and gave me the opportunity to discuss ideas with Geri and Amy as we all currently teach in a school setting.

The campus session left me thinking about possible professional inquiry routes my difficulty is do I look at my singing teaching? or look at my teaching within my reception class? I know I want to keep my Inquiry educational/teaching based as I want to complete a PGCE/QTS once I've achieved my degree and this style of inquiry will be a great topic to discuss within an interview for job/ training opportunities.
 

Its study time again!

After having a lovely break and the relief of submitting module 1. It's time to get focused and jump back into study mode.

I'm looking forward to see where my professional practice journey is going to take me and what I will discover and learn about my practice. There is going to be lots of challenges and obstacles to overcome but I'm sure with determination and the support of fellow students we'll get through it!

I'm currently working through Reader 4, and I feel it's going to take me a few reads to get my head around it.

Look forward to reading your blogs and seeing some of you at the next campus session!

Take care, see you soon!