CRITICAL REFLECTION ON PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONER INQUIRY

 

 Developed professional questions

This course helped to actively reflect on how to personally and professionally develop from a teaching assistance to an art teacher in an EBD (Emotional Behaviour Difficulties) school. Module 2 took me on a journey which enabled me to inquire into the codes of practice that guide and govern my work place and at the same time reflect on my own ethics and values. My aim is to teach art in EBD schools which will combine two of my passions that of art and of supporting young people who are deemed to be emotionally and behaviourally challenging. 

 

To develop ideas for my professional question I began by evaluating and reflecting back on art programmes offered to students in my school and in EBD schools I have previous worked. This process has led me to create and facilitate an art club in my department for year 11 students who cannot access the art programme offered in my school. This project was inspired by my early attempts to develop ideas for my inquiry. By working with the students I have developed my question further to enquire as to the effectiveness of art programmes offered to students in EBD schools.

http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/task-4a.html    

 

 

Ethical considerations

The task of writing about the codes of practice where ethics apply in my work place was both challenging and informative. Every year since I started working in the school we have been given updated version of the school policies and expectation guidelines in our handbooks, of which I have always tended to skim through. These tasks made me realise how easily we can take for granted the importance of understanding the ethics that mould the organisations we work for. Through doing this task I have broadened my knowledge and therefore have a better understanding of the type of organisation I work for, its goals and aspirations. This has reinforced the need to strive in my pursuit to further develop my professional practice to meet the needs of the young people I work with.     http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/task-5b.html, http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/task-5a_8597.html

 

 In this module I have been introduced to consequentialism theory, which focuses on the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This has emphasized that it is critical that I am conscious of the ethics of being honest in my inquiry: the drive of desire to make a change in the art program in my school should not override the natural outcome. There is the possibility that majority of students in my school and other EBD schools may not be interested in art qualification and/or art as core curriculum subject.  

http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/task-5c_3363.html

 

The tools of inquiry

 

Tools of inquiry pilots made the experience of conducting research real and helped me to refine my inquiry question. The opportunity to facilitate a focus group and an interview helped me to evaluate the basic interview skills I possess. Having done this I can focus on areas I need to improve on in order to collect viable data that will allow me to conduct sound research. http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/task-6a-focus-group-pilot.html

http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/task-6a-interview-pilot_16.html

 

Researching materials for literature reviews was a very usefully and informative exercise that broadened my knowledge on the ideas and theories on EBD education and art education. This process encouraged me to critically reflect on the literature I have come to read in this process. The literature also helped me to gain a more knowledgeable background and comprehension of ideas about how young people diagnosed with EBD respond to learning. This new and deeper understanding is vital as it will influence how I structure my art sessions and my inquiry.       

http://thulanishuku.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/task-6c_4271.html

http://www.delicious.com/thulani_shuku

 

 

 

Task 6d

Here is the URL to the articles I have posted on Delicious.

http://www.delicious.com/thulani_shuku

Task 6c

My inquiry will focus on whether art is more effective as an extra-curricular activity or as a core curriculum subject in Emotional Behaviour Difficulties (EBD) schools and in particular my work place. Art is offered both as a curriculum subject and as an extra-curricular activity, but there has been very little interest from students on choosing art related subject for further education after finishing year 11 in my secondary school. I am very interested to find out how different art programmes in mainstream and other EBD institutes compare to my school. In this task I will review the writing of American art educator and writer Elliot Eisner, the report document from UNNESCO on the World Conference on Arts Education: Road Map for Arts Education and the Guardian article: Arts education defended by star-studded campaign, by Vanessa Thorpe.

From early in Eisner career he found that “most schools were failing to properly appreciate the significance of art, were offering an unnecessarily and seriously unbalanced approach to education”. He recognised the current forms of learning and teaching was inadequate because they lacked artistic modes of thinking (Uhrmacher 2001: 247). Eisner concept is that art is not only driven by emotion (“creative force”), but rather an approach that is developed towards cognitive art and that art has a “unique contribution to make to growing children” (Uhrmacher 2001: 248).  

“He was later to argue that approaches which simply gave children arts materials in the hope that their creativity might flow resulted in programmes 'with little or no structure, limited artistic content, and few meaningful aims' (Eisner 1988)”.

He questioned the strength of art programmes offered to students and whether art was presented to students for art sake and as light subject with no real purpose. He argued that the skills learnt in art by students are very much transferable to other subjects and student’s social and cultural life will also benefit from schools providing a well structured art programme (“cognitive art”).   

In his Artistry theory he writes about educators needing to be more creative rather than ‘one moulded clocklike character of the assembly line’ and he believed that the field of education has much to learn from the arts about the practice of education.

“Viewing education work as an expression of artistry allows us to look beyond the technical and to develop more creative and appropriate responses to the situations that educators and learners encounter”. 

Smith, M. K. (2005) 'Elliot W. Eisner, connoisseurship, criticism and the art of education', the encyclopaedia of informal education, www.infed.org/thinkers/eisner.htm.

In 2006 UNESCO held a World Conference on Arts Education, titled “Road Map for Arts Education”. The resulting document states that the conference, “aims to explore the role of Arts Education in meeting the need for creativity and cultural awareness in the 21st Century, and places emphasis on the strategies required to introduce or promote Arts Education in the learning environment”.

UNESCO recognised the importance that art education has in all aspect of education. Their document seeks to promote a common understanding to all stakeholders of the essential role that art education plays in improving the overall quality of education. The document is meant to act as a reference point that outlines concrete changes and steps required to produce or promote art education in both formal and informal settings and to establish a solid framework for future decisions and actions.

The “Road Map” aim is to bring together delegations from different countries to establish a “vision and develop a consensus” on how important art education is to building on the following: “creative and culturally aware society; encourage collaboration reflection and action; and garner the necessary financial and human resources to ensure the more complete integration of Arts Education into education systems and schools”.

The conference objective was to address questions that remain to be central issues that affect the approach of arts practitioners, teachers, students and policy makers. The Road Map seeks to attempt a comprehensive response to the following questions and to emphasises that creative and cultural development should be a basic function of education;

“Is Arts Education taught for appreciation alone or should it be seen as a means to enhance learning in other subjects?”

“Should art be taught as a discipline for its own sake or for the body of knowledge, skills and values to be derived from it (or both)?”

“Is Arts Education for a gifted few in selected disciplines or is Arts Education for all?”  

http://www.unesco.org/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_3B467F3E109115E1931A1403AEB5E2F6C6630300/filename/Arts_Edu_RoadMap_en.pdf

The Guardian article ‘Arts education defended by star-studded campaign’, documents the actions of various famous people including artists, teachers, parents, theatre directors, writers and performers. Together they formed an alliance against government plans “to concentrate the British schools' curriculum on a core of "traditional" subjects”. They signed a document, put together by the Cultural Learning Alliance, to show the government that the participation of a broad mix of cultural experience from a young age improves attainment of students. The report claims that: “taking part in arts activities, can demonstrably increase children's cognitive skills”. Professor Mick Waters, a curriculum expert and member of the alliance, claims that providing children with the opportunity to visit galleries and museums is invaluable.

The National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Woman Teachers outlined their concerns in a survey, which suggest that, “one in eight schools is planning to reduce the provision of arts, drama and music. The poll of 2,500 teachers revealed that 13% had already cut those subjects”.

This curriculum move is blamed on the impact of the government’s English Baccalaureate (Ebacc), that requires students to gain good GCSEs in two sciences, a language, English, maths and in either history or geography. These requirements will push schools away from arts subject and pay more attention on reaching the target set by the Ebacc.

The alliance provides evidence that students who take part in art subjects have a high employability. Students from low-income families are three times likely to obtain a degree if they have previously taken art subjects.  Partaking in art subjects increase students’ transferable skills by about 10% to 17% and based on previous research show the student’s cognitive skills could be increased by 16% and 19%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/nov/05/arts-education-defended-by-campaign

Taks 6b

Interview

Not only does an interview provide a very effective way of collecting data it also provides a great opportunity for self-assessment, which is particularly useful at this stage in my inquiry. Writing the questions and listening to the responses expands your knowledge as a researcher. The responses are instance and interviewing a person who has experience in the subject or situation can provide the researcher with insightful and new information. The face-to-face aspect of the interview allows the interviewer to view the emotional reaction of the person being interview. This really bringing the subject to life and allows the researcher to determent if the person being interviewed is giving a genuine responds.

I found it difficult to keep my interviewee on subject at times and felt that I could be viewed as impolite whilst steering them back. In face-to–face interviews it is important to ensure that the interviewee knows that you are grateful that they are there and that you value their responses.

I recorded my interviewee’s responses by hand. As I did not want to misinterpret or misquote it was a very time consuming process. In fact, I was so concerned that I conveyed her answers correctly and in the tone at which they were meant, that I sent the answers back to her once I have typed them up. Although this was good for clarity, it is not practical on a larger scale and not all participants would be prepared to do this. I will, therefore, record the interview with sound equipment and play back the responses in my own time.

Focus Group

Focus group is an excellent tool because it gives the researcher an opportunity to listen to a whole group of people debating and giving different points of view on a subject.

I managed to organise a group of people that have the same role as me in my workplace. I chose this group as they are not associated with the arts, so they would offer me more varied responds.

What I liked about the tool is that more participants provide responses, through discussions, that are more varied and in-depth that in a single participant interview.

The focus group pilot provided the experience of how to overcome and anticipate possible obstacle that may affect my inquiry. One obstacle that I came across was to find a suitable time and place for everyone to attend my focus group.  It was difficult to arrange a time that was suitable for all participants, which resulted in me having to cancel a number of prior sessions. I must allow for extra time for this in my future planning.

The last interview I conducted was almost four years ago. I couldn’t remember how to use my Dictaphone at the start of the focus group, so used my phone instead. This taught me to prepare equipment in advance, so as not to waste valuable time learning how to operate and retrieve data.

 

Survey and Q

A survey is a useful tool to collect data, but it is essential to design the questions in a way that the participants find easy to answer and for them not be too time consuming.

In order to obtain broad and representative responses, it is important to survey a wide range of people. To achieve this I will need to make contact with other organisation to find relevant group of people to add credibility to my research.

For my questionnaire pilot, I sent a web-based trial to people in my contacts list to view. This resulted in only one person responding, this gave me no comparative data to work.

This experience has emphasised the important of not relying on one method of distributing questionnaires for my enquiry. 

    

Observation

During my observation pilot I found it very tempting to guide the students during abstract painting. This task was intended to see how they responded to art sessions that don’t focus too much on teaching basic painting and drawing techniques, but to allow them to produce work that is solely based on their feelings and emotions. This experience provided me with a good insight on how the students work and cope without too much guidance.

This process reminded that we use observation on a daily bases in our workplace. We observe the student’s behaviour, how they react in different situations and read their body language in order to work out their mood and how we should approach them.  This tool is about being able to read situations and accurately record what we see.

I think the limitations and dangers of observation as a tool, is that people can behave differently when they know that they are been observe - this is especially true of young people. Therefore, recordings can be misleading, providing inaccurate conclusions.