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.