Tuesday 27th February Skype Session Module 3 at 12:30pm

Today was a Skype session that was very beneficial to the attendees in Module Three. 

We began by sharing what stage we were all at and I found myself discussing the fact that the Literature Review had helped me incredibly. This was extremely useful particularly for Emily to hear, as as she had many questions about how to progress with her inquiry. 

I talked about how literature had opened new doors for me and that I had already began creating and distributing a survey that current teaching and educational professionals could fill in. I explained that after receiving feedback from Adesola, I was thinking more about how I could 'reach out' more in terms of finding out about my topic in the world and what it shows for us within the UK. 

As a result, I feel as if I'm climbing over a hurdle that has been stopping me recently from progressing. I have found the literature freeing in the fact that I'm now wondering about things as a result of things that I have read and am now not trying to predict or preempt answers to questions. I have to remind myself to explore and not try to answer any questions. But to instead have the mindset that I want to look at everything and see what this could potentially say about my practice. 

I used an example of a book I had read about the Arts culturally within Greater China, sharing the fact that we are actually very lucky to have the Creative Arts that we have within the UK, because there are some rural areas in China who do not even teach Art. Adesola, elaborated on this, explaining that we should not just take this as 'fact' but instead use pieces of information like this to ask questions about our practice and see what they might inform us of.

Eleanor extended this conversation to talk about how she herself had looked at literature and in particular historical literature in order to inform her of attitudes and opinions of appearance within the acting industry. Henry also mentioned that he has done the same in order to give context to his inquiry. Eleanor made it clear that she wasn't trying to find literature that was just about her specific practice or topic of inquiry, but that it was more about finding what RELATES to her practice and to see if their were common themes or ideas coming through that could help her assess her practice. 

I then discussed things that I had noticed from my surveys already and how I had made sure that there were opportunities to answer freely in open boxes, rather than just 'tick the box' answers. I discussed how the open answers told me much more about my practice than the closed questions and answers did and this was interesting for the likes of Emily and Henry to hear, because they had reservations about analysing both quantitative and quantitative data. Jess mentioned that she had been looking into data techniques within inquiry making and these are things I want to look more into myself.

Just from looking at Henry's blog from the previous Skype session which I could not attend, I can see that they had discussed this type of data already together and had noted that qualitative data provided more of a deeper understanding about practices, which I can see very clearly from my own research already. It's almost as if I care about qualitative data more? Because the opinions of experienced professionals can assist me in practice methods!

Adesola said something along the lines of, "If you don't care about the data, then what's the point of it within your inquiry?!"

Helen also talked about this and the importance of trying to make things as open as possible. This led me to encourage Eleanor to go even further with being an absent interviewer where she only lets interviewees read the questions that she sets, answering them to a camera in a self-type style. I told her that instead of questions, she could think about writing open statements instead, like "Tell me your thoughts on Appearance in the Acting Industry."

This would leave the person open to discuss whatever they wanted to without 'questioning' with Eleanor not asking for specifics which could make the answers more closed. I guess it's seeing how far you can push the openness of the entire process?

Data methods are something that I haven't looked into as much as I would like to yet, so I am going to keep on researching the best ways to gather evidence that enables me to understand my practice.

Helen and I even talked about how allowing answers to be open gives you more of an insight and is incredibly creative in itself! I keep asking questions like 'how can I be more open?' and 'how can I let people have more of a say?' This means I'm being creative myself with survey making. 

Henry also asked about the Artefact and there was a clear response from the course leaders that this is not something we should be thinking about just yet! The Artefact is something that comes after you have made your inquiry and is influenced by your findings. In an essence, reflecting what you've found from your inquiry. Therefore, we should not be reflecting on this yet, because we have not yet explored all of our practice!

All in all, this was a very useful Skype. People could share and consolidate thoughts and make decisions of the next actions to take the inquiry forward. 

Successful Skype!