6C Award Title draft

Choosing my award title.
Options...

BAPP Dance: This title is too specific, I want to be able to teach all performing arts subjects and I feel this award title might limit me to do so.
BAPP Performing Arts: I feel that this title would be best for my future, as I already have a Diploma in Performing arts, I'd like to add 'Teaching' onto it to be a little bit more specific and it also relates to my inquiry.
BAPP Musical Theatre: This title is also quite specific, I don't want to limit my title, Musical Theatre only covers 'musicals' and I have been trained in other types of performance such as ballet for example, I want my degree to allow me to teach many other subjects.
BAPP Arts Management: This title doesn't relate to me or my inquiry at all, I am not researching into management though I might need to in the future perhaps.
BAPP Performing Arts Management: like above, this doesn't reflect my inquiry in any way, though performing arts management is something I may look into.
BAPP Theatre Arts: Similar to Performing arts though not quite as broad so I won't be choosing this one.
BAPP Dance Teaching: This relates to me very much as my passion is dance and I'm currently teaching a lot of dance classes. Though I want to follow on from my Diploma and keep my award title open to be able to teach other subjects.
BAPP Graphic Design: This title would not benefit me at all, I know nothing about it and I have never learnt about graphics and design in the industry.

This is a first draft of my award title form. Something along the lines of this...

I feel that the title 'performing arts teaching' will be best suited to me. I am currently working as a Dance, Acting and Musical Theatre teacher hence choosing the broader title would best reflect my current status. In the future I am aiming to continue teaching as well as performing professionally in all areas of the Performing Arts industry. This particular award title also relates to my line of inquiry for my final 2 modules of the BAPP course. I am researching the methods of teaching, studying the different qualities of teachers and their qualifications that enable them to work. I want to be able to use my award title to show that I will be a professional in Performing Arts Teaching, not just dance or musical theatre teaching; I have been trained in all three aspects for three years and gained a level 6 Performing Arts Diploma so this award title would best benefit me for my future career of teaching.

If you have any advice or ways I could improve please comment :) 

Thanks 

5D - Ethical Considerations (notes)

Planning Ethical Considerations

I've just made a few points from my thoughts and discussions. I've also used some questions from the reader to help me think about all the ethics I will need to consider and help me fill out my ethics forms in Task 6. 

Participants: I want to use my employees during my inquiry, some performing arts students above the age of 18 and some workers like myself, preferably older than me though with more experience in teaching and the industry itself. 

I have chosen these participants by selecting those closest to my job and and easier to arrange interviews/observations etc. 

I chose these people because they have all trained/are training and some have been in the industry and have turned to teaching. I believe they are intelligent, well-experienced and I feel they will be able to give me truthful and reliable answers to help me within my inquiry research. 

I will contact my participants via email or in person to arrange the parts of my inquiry that they will be involved in. 

I will have to ensure that I have a few backup participants similar to those I intend to use just in case my participant no longer wish to continue participating in my inquiry. I will explain before commencing that there will be no issues should they want to leave the inquiry. 

As of now, not all the participants have my contact details. I think I will make a information sheet, explaining my inquiry and their contribution to it, I'll add my contact details should they have any issues or questions prior to the start of my inquiry. 

I will be making notes, maybe recording voices, keeping forms that my participants fill out. I will ensure all of this data is stored privately where only I will be able to use it. Also, I'll make sure that the participants are aware that I may be recording them and using their information privately. 

Considering that my some of the participants I plan to use are work colleagues and friends, I will need to be completely professional when carrying out the parts of my inquiry. Atmosphere should feel comfortable and not too over friendly to ensure reliable and sufficient answers/results. 

4D - Literature 1

I have left this task out for a while. I wanted to ask a few more of my questions to my colleagues and SIG group on Facebook. My topic/thoughts for my inquiry have moved on and are mainly based on teaching methods and how teaching qualifications and experience in the industry affects ways of teaching and how people get jobs as Dance and Performing Arts teachers.

I looked around on the Internet for pieces of literature, also the 'summon' part of the MDX library.
Here is a piece that interested me to read on expand my general thoughts.

1 - Google search, newspaper article.
Firstly,  I chose to search on Google, my primary (favourite) way of researching. I typed in 'articles on teachers without qualifications' there were some pages from schools and associations that talked about how to gain and train to be a teacher though I thought this link to The Guardian would best benefit my research and learning. 

The Guardian 

It first caught me when the first line read 'Do teachers need to be qualified?' which is pretty much exactly what my inquiry is going to be about. This article should delve deeper into what I'm looking into. I want to find out what qualifications are needed to become a teacher and if we really need them. Are they beneficial or can we get jobs as teachers without them? Ideally, I'm searching for more information on performing arts teachers (and their qualifications) but I wanted to do a broader search first. 

The article is a viewpoint from a teacher. He talks about how he felt he could not have become a teacher without working towards his qualifications first. He discusses the advantages and disadvantages of schools employing teachers without qualifications and he asks many questions which got me thinking about my own opinions on the matter. He finished off with some advice and final statement 'Teachers should be qualified'. 

The article was quite informal and definitely reader friendly. He was very opinionated in his writing though never overly persuasive towards the reader. There was a box below which allowed readers to post their comments and opinions on the article. I was happy after reading the whole page to find that this was helpful in my research on 'teaching qualifications'. I felt as though I had personally asked him my question (similar to the one I asked my SIG members on Facebook) and this was his answer. Though this piece that I found was similar to my line of inquiry, it didn't give me many facts or theories on the subject. I will need to look for other pieces of literature to help me learn more. 

5C - Reader 5 Professional Ethics

Reader 5

Not knowing much about ethics before researching for task 5B and reading the 5th reader; i found this really helped me learn about the separate groups of ethics.

Personal
Professional
Organisation
Society

There are many different theoretical ethics...
Some people are Consequentialists (JS Mill) - they believe that you can do something that isn't necessarily seen as 'correct' as long as it maximises the good. 
Then there are Deontologists (Immanuel Kant) - They feel that 'Lying' for example is always wrong. The motive behind an action determines whether or not it is morally right. 
Last of all the Virtue Ethicists (Plato and Aristotle) - being rather than doing, virtue ethics emphasises the character of the moral agent rather than the rules or the consequences and what actions taken reveal about one's character. 

I personally feel that depending on the situation I'd react differently. I would say that I am most definitely more of a consequentialist rather than a virtue ethicist or deontologist. I feel that though you may do something that might not be abiding by the rules of your job, for example, if it is correct in the circumstance that you're in then you should do it. 

Religion and Law ethics - Laws exist to provide societies with a framework for a civil and ordered society. The religious ethics basically my own personal ethics and the way I live day to day. I am christian and one of the 10 commandments 'Thou shalt not kill' just so happens to be an act of the law here in the UK. 'Thou shalt not steal', also illegal which is one of the main codes of practice used in all businesses and work places over here. There are some commandments that are not a Law here in the UK, for example, 'Thou shall love thy neighbour', but religious people would follow these types of ethics and that creates the kind of person they are. 

Ethics and Morals - Comparative Ethics
Professional Ethics - by law teachers are not allowed to touch children which I completely understand and agree with, though I know that many teachers would have to disagree with this and feel that to teach a physical subject like dance (especially ballet) you simply have to correct a pupil by moving their arms and legs etc.
At my work there is a rule about leaving children if their parents are late to pick them up. I abide by this rule and leave the children at the after school club though I feel bad and would rather just sit and wait with them. Sometimes pupils get upset about things and naturally I would give them a hug which shouldn't be done. I think this is an example of work ethics going against my morals. In case study2, the photographer that left the African girl to die, perhaps because his job required him not to touch anything that he was photographing; this is an example that I personally feel is wrong. How can you leave a person, a human being to die when you could have helped. If I was ever in a situation like that, I know that my instinct and own personal ethics would take over. 

Normative and Descriptive inquiry questions. 
This part of the reader helped me to learn and focus on how I will word my questions surrounding my inquiry.  
Normative questions - examines principles that people use when they make moral choices. 
Descriptive questions - (factual) reasons behind moral choices and values in society. 

Case Study 5 is a clear example of a bad inquiry. The language used was inappropriate. I could tell that the writer was biased in the way that they described some groups of people, I would consider calling an older generation of people 'old dears' quite offensive. I know that I need to be very careful when directing questions and when writing about people.  I must not show any opinion or seem biased in anyway. 

5B - Ethics in the Workplace

I did some research online, looking for sites that showed ethical codes of practice in schools/businesses. I looked on a few different sites to see which codes of practice are similar to those in my own work place and which ones were different. 
'Ethics' is a subject that I was not particularly familiar with before starting this course. I knew that there were rules that I had to go by when I first started working but I didn't realise just how many different ethics there are in the workplace. Module 2 has helped me to further my understanding and learning by guiding me to research Ethics/Codes of Practice properly.

Overall, I found that there are personal ethics which people must then apply to their professions and depending on the company/business you are involved in, some different rules/ethics apply.  
There are some extra ethics that need to be considered for teachers in schools. One site that interested me was The Institute for Learning. IFL's code of professional practice came into force on 1 April 2008. The code was developed by the profession for the profession and outlines the behaviours expected of members – for the benefit of learners, employers, the profession and the wider community.

• Integrity

• Respect

• Care

• Practice

• Disclosure

• Responsibility.

These are the sites I used for extra research.
http://www.slideshare.net/sankarprasadmohanty/professional-ethics-for-teachers
http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/leader_model/development/media/Targeted%20Lessons/workplace_ethics.htm

This post/web page I found was my favourite. It gives 5 characteristics of having good work ethics. Each point has an easy reading summary and covers most of the ethical codes that I feel are most important. 
- Honest
-Refrains from Gossip
-Values Diversity
-Respects Others
-Cooperative

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/five-characteristics-having-good-work-ethics-11917.html

I feel like I have picked up different ethics over my years of working. I started working from the age of 16 as an assistant and from then I learnt the basic ethics such as working well with the teacher, being helpful, answering phone calls and questions in a professional manor. 

When reading about Ethical codes of practice for teachers, at schools, in the work place etc I figured that most of the ethics I naturally apply when working. I suppose they are considered as personal ethics; being responsible, reliable, respectful and so on. There are some "rules" that are set by my work company, such as uniform and appearance, that I must abide to follow the standards and meet the requests required by the company. I have learnt that there are many types of ethics in the work place that I never really thought about before now. The ethics that are set by the law, rather than "rules": 'do not steal' is an obvious example. 

5A - Ethics

These are my first initial thoughts on the ethics in my workplace and some precautions that I'd have to take when using my colleagues as part of my inquiry. 

I am currently working in 5 different schools, teaching a variety of Peforming Arts subjects and dance styles. One of the schools is a Saturday school, the other schools are primary schools where I am sent to teach at by the company I work for. 

Here is a Brainstorm of some ethics I feel I use whilst teaching. 

Ethics in the work place - with fellow colleagues. 

I suppose it would be quite helpful to ask some of my questions to the children I teach to get their feedback but this would be difficult and it might be more useful if I was to ask their parents instead. To delve further into my other questions, I'd need to speak to/question my colleagues and employer to help me with my questions. 

I would need to be professional when asking my questions, I'll need to ensure that my colleagues and employers are comfortable talking to me and don't feel that I'm interrogating them or being nosey in any kind of way. I need to word my questions appropriately and make sure that my questions do not require them to tell me any personal details. I may need to make notes or record them speaking, so I'll need to get their permission to do so first. I don't think that any of my questions, at the moment, would require me using my pupils which is good because I know that asking children questions might result in unreliable results and answers; also I would need to get permission from the school and parents first.  

Campus Session 6th March

Hi everyone! 

Today I attended the 2nd campus session of the year. I had my first ever lecture from Alan Durant and discussed Module 2 and our progress. 

(brief summary)

The lecture was about Positionality - thinking of where you are in context. You have to think about how you are viewing a situation from the outside, or from which angle. 
Different methods like surveys and interviews will result in different answers. It depends on if you're looking for a broad result or if you're delving deeper into a subject. 

We learnt about the different accounts of knowledge
- Metaphysics
- Rationalism 
- Empiricism
- Pragmatism

How we come to make sense of things depends on where we are coming from. 

The Knowledge Landscape ( created by Alan ) 

- Theology (Supernatural) - cannot be explained naturally
- Humanities (analytical, critical, speculative) 
- Natural Sciences (demonstrable truths)
- Social Sciences (demonstrable qualities) 

The Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self - Daniel Kathneman 
'All of our experiences pass away forever...only our memories that we make remain'

Alan is going to post a blog about the whole lecture with more information.