Module 2 Focus Zoom Call - February 18th

 On Thursday I attended the module two focus zoom call to discuss with my peers and Helen what exactly module 2 is all about and I definitely feel slightly more relaxed as a result. 

We started the call going through some important things to consider as we start to compose our inquiry proposals. Helen advised us that our proposal should explain what our area of inquiry is and why, a little bit about that area of inquiry but should focus more on demonstrating our understanding of research methods and methodology and how we will use them in our inquiry. 

We were encouraged to take note of the limited time frame we will have to complete the inquiry in module three to ensure that we're not trying to do too much and spoke about making sure the title of our enquiry is feasible and focused on a specific area. In order to formulate a research question we should first find a relatively broad topic that we are interested in to centre our preliminary research around to see what questions arise. From there we should narrow down our thought processes to an area that not only interests us but will aid in the development of our practice. We should look at what assumptions we are making going into the topic and make sure we are not basing our question on assumptions or leading with bias.

We were reminded that we are not aiming for an answer but to explore an area of our practice in a more in-depth way and that in order to do this we must look at the field around our topic to create context and  at what others have said to build on the debate.

Many of us were confused about how to go about conducting the literature review. One of the key points made in this part of the discussion was that we shouldn't allow the literature review slip into analysis but that it should explain what a few key practitioners/pieces of literature are saying about conducting qualitative research and the topic of our inquiries. We should look at what methods of research other than literature we could incorporate into our inquiry (such as interviews, case studies or focus groups etc) in order to find different perspectives and see which would work best for our particular topic. 

We then went on to clarify the definitions of some of the terms we are using and what exactly the MORE form is. The methodology is our approach and is the type of inquiry we are doing, whereas the method is what are actually going to do to gather research. Ethics is about minimising any potential negative impact our inquiry could have on any participants or the industry in general. The MORE form is the basis of whether or not our proposal is approved and we should use it to aid in structuring the proposal since it will make us think about things we may not have considered. To do so we should pull out and answer questions such as what impact the research will have on participants, what we plan to do with the information we gather and how we plan to analyse the data we collect and make sure we are using methods and methodology that correlate with each other. By doing this we will create a framework for our inquiry. Helen gave the analogy of being a choreographer that helped consolidate my understanding of this; as a choreographer the central aspect of your work is to choreograph a piece or show but there are also many other things to think about such as costuming, lighting, set design, music and copyrights. 

We ended the call with a couple of the girls sharing their proposed inquiry topics for us to discuss to see how we all have different perspectives and how those differing perspectives can spark other questions and ideas in our minds.