Online Portfolio

Hi Rosemary,

Please find here the link to my personal Wiki which contains my Online Portfolio for assessment:
http://privilegevspassion.wikispaces.com

Kind Regards,
Lisa

Tools of Professional Inquiry - Task 6A

Survey:
As with the SIG I decided not to carry out my survey online but instead to go to a dance school with hard copies and ask students to fill them out. I really am more of a hands on kind of person when it comes to learning and I find it much easier to process research if I actually have it in my hands. This is not to say that in the future I wont be tempted with sites such as surveymonkey.com but for now I didn't feel it would be beneficial. I ensured my participants were over the age of 16 and happy to fill out the surveys before I handed them out. As I handed them out in a dance school I knew that I would get answers relevant to what i was researching and this was a great help.

Focus Group:
I decided to hold my focus group at my house and invited 4 of my old college friends around to participate. I chose Purposive candidates and not representative ones as I felt it would be more beneficial to my inquiry. Each member is now working in different areas of the industry and found their views to be extremely valuable. As we have known each other for several years I found they were all very willing to open up about their financial situations and whether or not they would be where they are today without the financial backing they received. Every time I steered the conversation in a certain direction they were very quick to follow, although it was a relaxed environment everybody knew there was a purpose behind our meeting and they were more than willing to contribute. Again I recorded the meeting for reference, as I knew the participants so well I didn't make them identify themselves each time they spoke. At the beginning of the meeting I asked everyones names and occupations and from then on I was simply able to identify them by the sound of their voice. I didn't think it was necessary to have a gate keeper as i wasn't having a discussion with a specific group of people or minors. The group didn't represent anything as a whole it was simply 4 individuals putting across their views on a particular topic and although they didn't i knew they would have said had they thought any of the questions to be inappropriate or unnecessary.

Observation:
I found that this method alone was of no use to me. In order to establish the help they had received to get where they are today I had to give each person I observed a questionnaire to fill out. I carried out my observation at my old dance school back in my home town, it was a group of 16 and 17 year old dancers all considering whether to attend University or Performing Arts College. Whilst watching them dance I made brief notes on their capabilities but in all honesty wanted to get them in a focus group and talk about their experiences thus far. Once I could see that they could all dance to a high standard I had no further reason to observe them and because of this I carried out minimal observation. Instead I convinced them to be part of a small focus group which I held in the corridor of the dance school with their teacher as the gatekeeper. This 5 minutes I spent talking to them was far more valuable to my research than the hour I spent watching them dance.

Tools of Professional Inquiry: Task 6D - Delicious

It's taken me a while to get to grips with this but now that I have I find it very useful. I am often in a situation where by I don't have access to the Internet at home and have to go to Internet cafes or libraries in order to gain access. With Delicious I am now able to locate useful sites quickly and easily and without having to remember the addresses each time. As I am new to the site I don't have that many bookmarks yet, here is a link to several that I found very useful in starting out on my inquiry into funding for less privileged young performers: http://www.delicious.com/lisajbird. I am sure as I continue my research this list will grow and prove invaluable to my final module piece.

Professional Ethics - Task 5c:

Whilst looking into the professional ethics and codes of conduct that surround my industry I have found that perhaps I already knew more than I first thought. True I may not have known the theory behind it or why we behave in such a way, but I do know how to behave in a professional environment.

I have found the many theories I have studied to be useful in various ways, but each have now been joined together in order to form the rounded view I now believe I have. I think that my personal ethics have a large impact on the way I approach my professional ethics. Although I am not necessarily religious or particularly set on a certain way of beliefs, I think that this only enhances my ability to encompass other peoples views into my own. I am always looking to broaden my outlook on life and I am more than willing to listen to others speak and take from it what I find valuable and leave the rest without discrimination.

The times where personal beliefs contradict with professional ones can be impossible to handle for example; I don’t believe that the way you look makes you a better person or performer, but it is so important to the Performing Arts industry that I have to conform. I also don’t believe that dressing provocatively will make you a better dancer but I can see why it could help you look more confident and therefore more likely to get a job!

As I am not overly religious I tend to use the law as a basis for my ethics. I think this fits in with the consequentialist way of thinking and J.S. Mills theory of ‘the greater good’ for example; cutting funding to a small school with a poor success rate and splitting it between children in a better school with more prospects would be fair under the view of consequentialism. Unfortunately it’s a dog eat dog world out there and I believe that mob mentality will always prevail.

The case study into the ethics on photography where Carter left a child to die is very poignant. I think it’s such strong evidence that you can only follow professional ethics as far as your conscience will allow you. Had he have been able to live with his decision nobody could have really questioned his code of conduct as a photographer, he was after all only there to observe. But as a human being he knew personal ethics should have taken over and the fact that they didn’t led him to take his own life.

I have found that during my research I am now able to separate personal and professional ethics if. I know I won’t be able to sleep a night because of a professional decision I’ve made then I wont take that route in the first place.  Have found this way of thinking very much supported by theoretical normative ethics, what is morally acceptable to you should be able to influence professional decisions.

The question “who stands to benefit most from your research?” is one that I intend to keep close to mind when carrying out my inquiry. I want to prove to people that by making the rich richer they are in turn making the poor poorer. I am aware that there are always anomalies with any set of results and I wont be afraid to publish these. The main aim of my research will be to help the talented performers of tomorrow to get the funding they deserve in order to keep their dream alive without discrimination.

I think that the codes of conduct put forward by the British Educational Research Association to be very valid and I shall definitely be following them throughout my inquiry.  I shall also work closely with the Data Protection/Human Rights/Children’s and Equality Acts and hope that all these combined with my own personal and professional ethics should help me to conclude a fair and detailed inquiry which leads to valuable data being produced.