Professional Artefact

At the campus session yesterday we were talking about the professional artefact that we have to create as part of our final module and I thought I'd share some of the things that were said that I found most useful.

First thing to mention is that, unlike the critical review, the artefact doesn't have to have a specific form. In other words it doesn't have to be a piece of academic writing, although it can be. I think Jo Gunnel's artefact is a good example of this. She is doing her inquiry on singing and so her artefact is going to involve her actually singing. What better way to show your discoveries about singing than by actually giving sung examples?

I think the most important things that was said was that your artefact needs to be directly connected to your question. It is not and 'add on' and is not the next step. Make sure your artefact is the natural culmination of what you wanted to know. Don't get carried away using your artefact to pose new questions.

I think it is also important to say that your artefact should be useful within your field of work. Whereas the critical review academically describes your process and findings your artefact should be something that reveals your new knowledge in a format that is useful and understood within your professional environment.

I think with the artefact we have licence to be more imaginative and creative. Start thinking about it now though rather than leaving it until the last minute. Obviously we don't know everything we are going to find out yet but don't let your artefact end up being something you throw together at the last minute. I hope some of this is useful.

Professional Peer Interview 1 (part 2)

Professional Peer Interview 1 (part 1)

As part of my professional inquiry, or rather as a lead up to my professional inquiry I have decided to do a collection of short filmed interviews with professional musical theatre performers. I thought this would be an interesting way to talk over ideas and gain insight about my topic from other people who have first hand experience of the industry and its training. Also, I will eventually be carrying out a survey of professional musical theatre performers and I thought these interviews would help me evaluate which questions would provide useful answers when put in that survey. Below is the first interview with Suzy and some really interesting points are discussed. In fact there were times during this interview that I found my opinions completely changing from one end of the spectrum to the other. Maybe that is what happens when you are trying to be as impartial as possible? I hope you find these interviews interesting, and please feel free to comment with any of you own ideas and insights.

Inquiry Aims and Objectives

I told the people that I have arranged to interview that I would send them something which outlined my inquiry. Letting them know what exactly I was investigating and to what end. This proved to be harder than I thought but this morning I finally got something down on paper. No doubt this will change with things being added and subtracted but I feel that it is a start. I'd love to know anyone's thoughts.

Title (working):

An Investigation into how the training of vocational musical theatre students prepares them for the demands of the profession. Do you maximise a performers chance of career success by training them to be as versatile as possible or by allowing them to specialise in a particular area of musical theatre?

 Aims:

• To discover how musical theatre students are currently being trained on a range of London musical theatre courses, looking at the reasons behind the training methods.
• To uncover the student perspective. What are their opinions on their training and the direction in which it is taking them?
• To look at the demands made on professional performers in the musical theatre industry, and ascertain how their training has impacted their careers in either positive or negative ways
• To look at the views of musical theatre casting professionals (director/producer/casting director), shedding light on how they approach the casting process and what they look for in prospective cast members.

 Objectives:

• To improve my understanding of the way musical theatre students are currently trained on some of the top London courses and in turn make myself a better teacher.
• To improve my understanding of the demands made of professional performers in today’s musical theatre industry. By understanding what is being asked of performers I hope to be able to better prepare my students to attain these attributes.
• To improve my understanding of the casting process and of what is really important to the people who give the jobs.
• To come to a better understanding of the musical theatre industry as a whole. Linking all the strands of evidence to create a clearer picture of how to best prepare someone in training for their future career.
• To share my findings (in a controlled way, maintaining participant anonymity) with any person or institution within the industry also wishing to widen their knowledge.

Interview Questions

Procrastination is my life's curse. I think too much and do too little. It is however time to wake up and do some work!

My inquiry looks at the training of musical theatre students, focusing on what is the best way to ensure they have successful careers. Perhaps 'ensure' is the wrong word because in the performing industry there are no guarantees. Rather, is there a way of training musical theatre students that gives them the best possible chance of career success? And if so what is it? Versatility is often quoted as being the most important thing but is it in fact more advantages to be specialised in a particular area?

There is no current consensus on training methods and so as part of my inquiry I will be interviewing the head teachers of four professional musical theatre courses in London to gather and compare differing view points. I've arranged the interview dates and they are fast approaching which leaves me with the dilemma of what to actually ask them. Below is a list of questions that I think will help begin to illuminate my inquiry. If any of you have a chance could you please have a look at them and let me know if they are clear and relevant? Also let me know if you think there are any glaringly obvious things that I haven't asked.

• Assuming that I know nothing about musical theatre, what would you say was the purpose of this course?
• How do you go about achieving those goals?
• What skills do you think it is important for a graduate to leave with?
• Can you specifically describe to me the content of this course? (How much dance/singing/acting etc.)
• I've noticed that some musical theatre courses are accredited by the national dance council and others by the national drama council. Do you think that the accreditation of this course reveals its primary focus?
• Do you think that all musical theatre courses are designed to do the same thing?
• Did you decide on the content of this course? If so, how did you make these decisions and why? If not, how do you feel about the content? Do you think anything should be changed? If so, why?
• What do you look for when accepting students onto this course?
• Do you think you accept a certain type of performer? If so, what is that type?
• When training do you push students to excel at their strengths or to improve their weaknesses?
• Is it the same for every student? 
• Do you have to adapt this course to the changing demands of the industry?
• Do you think the industry has changed/ is changing?
• What do you think is now required from a professional performer?
• Is there an ideal of what a professional musical theatre performer should be? If so, what do you think that is?
• Is versatility important? If so, why?
• What are your feelings about the phrase 'jack of all trades, master of none'?
• In your experience are there many performers who are equally talented in all disciplines?
• If someone can't do one of the three disciplines, or even two of the three, does that me they can't or shouldn't do musical theatre?

I think there are probably lots more things I should be asking, particularly specifics about the teaching (any teachers out there please feel free to comment), but I suppose this is a start. Thanks in advance for commenting. I hope everyone is well and is getting back into it. Only one term left, arghhhhhhhhh! 

Critical Reflection and Summary: Digital Portfolio

At the beginning of term I had very little idea about what a professional inquiry was let alone what I might actually investigate, how I might go about it and how I would ensure that it was ethically sound. Thankfully by engaging in the various tasks of the module I am now able to answer these questions and look back at the evolution of my ideas. 


I have discovered that my professional inquiry will be a way for me to increase my understanding of my profession with the hope of opening new doors and moving forward. I have also become aware of the problems that may face someone doing an insider inquiry (Appendix A).


My interest and profession revolve around musical theatre so I knew my inquiry would be related to this. I therefore started a Musical Theatre SIG on the BAPP Facebook page to see if others shared my interest (Appendix B), inviting people to join through a blog entry (Appendix C). Many interesting discussions occurred regarding perception and performance ability, some of which are outlined in my blog (Appendix D).


I also joined several other SIGs that complemented my own interests such as Dance and Drama in Education (Appendix E), Education and Training, Was it Appropriate For Your Career? (Appendix F) and Jack of All Trades... And Master of None (Appendix G). The creation of the SIGs has enabled my ideas to evolve through discussion with my peers. For example, the conversations I have been having with Rebecca Jane Gaskell both on her blog (Appendix H) and my blog (Appendix I). The SIGs didn't come without their problems however, although I found it difficult to change anything (Appendix J).


I initially thought my inquiry would be based on the perception of musical theatre but after meeting with professional peers to discuss my questions (Appendix K) and thinking over comments from BAPP students (for example, Stephanie Thomas' comments (Appendix L)) it soon became apparent that I was more interested in investigating the way musical theatre students are trained. It now seems the perfect inquiry as it marries my love of musical theatre with my desire to move into the vocational training of other performers.


Given that my inquiry would now be about musical theatre training and that my prior knowledge of ethics was relatively small (Appendix M) it seemed appropriate to look into the code of ethics for both performers (Appendix N) and teachers (Appendix O). This investigation of ethics coupled with information from the reader enabled me to make decisions about what ethical standards I would ensure were in place for my inquiry (Appendix P).


I began researching musical theatre generally, thinking about which performances I admire (Appendix Q) and what types of musical theatre there are (Appendix R). I also investigated opinions on how musical theatre students should be trained (Appendix S) as well as the training actually available (Appendix T). I have used Delicious as a way of bookmarking and sharing my electronic resources (Appendix U) (as well as looking at the resources of other members of my SIG (Appendix V)) and I have used the BAPP references wiki to share other important, non-electronic literature (Appendix W).


This accumulation of resources however wasn't enough to inform my thoughts and ideas. It was only through critical analysis of the literature, three of which are posted on my blog (Appendix X, Appendix Y and Appendix Z), that I really began to understand the professional landscape in which my inquiry will take place.


The final challenge was working out how to obtain the necessary information needed to increase my understanding and draw conclusions. I carried out a pilot observation (Appendix 1), survey (Appendix 2), interview (Appendix 3) and focus group (Appendix 4), some with more success than others. The failures didn't matter however because all the pilots gave me insight into exactly what I wanted to find out and into what would be the best way to obtain the information needed. 

This term has brought me to a place where I am now excited and confident to ethically conduct a professional inquiry that will not only benefit my understanding but will hopefully also contribute to the industry as a whole.

Interview

A couple of weeks ago I conducted a pilot interview with one of my professional peers. I initially tried to conduct this over the phone and because it is not possible to record on my phone I made notes on the interview. This proved to be an extremely difficult process and the information I collected ended up being paraphrased and sketchy. I also felt that not being able to see the person limited my appreciation of the nuances of their responses. I therefore decided to conduct the interview again in person.

The second time around I recorded the whole interview so that I could transcribe it and revisit it whenever I wanted. I did still makes notes however in case something went wrong with the recording. I also tried to create what Judith Bell describes as a 'draft schedule'. This is where I had a sequence of numbers for each question that signified a range of responses. I would circle which number was closest to the answer of the interviewee.

This process gave me an indication of the area in which the interviewees thoughts lay but I think because of my inexperience the sound recording was much more useful because it gave the detail. During future interviews I will always try to record the process because it makes analysis much easier and more accurate (there is no risk of paraphrasing to suit you purpose). I must admit though that I hadn't realised how time consuming transcribing would be. I found my transcript vital but I am slow at typing so in future I need to set aside at least five hours to transcribe a one hour interview.

I decided to make my interview semi-structured, again at the advice of Judith Bell. She writes,

The advantage of a focused interview is that a framework is established beforehand and so recording and analysis are greatly simplified. This is important for any research, but particularly so for limited-time studies (2005).

I didn't want to make my interview completely structured as I felt I needed the possibility of following where the interviewee might lead. I also didn't want to make my interview completely unstructured as I am constantly aware of my limited time scale and knew that there was certain information I needed to collect in a certain amount of time.

I think ultimately this proved the best idea because it meant I could decide what information I needed before the interview started and make sure I had it before the interview ended. It also meant that a couple of times I could ask spontaneous questions that gave me information and insight on an area that I hadn't previously considered.

I spent along time before the interview preparing my questions in much the same way as I did for my survey. Generally I tried to use open ended questions that would encourage the interviewee to give expansive, explanatory responses rather than one word answers.

Even after this careful preparation there were however times when the interviewee asked what I meant by a particular question. I think this proved to be one of the positive aspects of the interview process. I was able to clarify and explain what I meant so that the interviewee answered the question I thought I was asking. If I had been conducting other interviews this would also have been useful because I could have ensured all participants understood the question in the same way.

I did however find a problem with explaining what I meant by a particular question. I occasionally found myself saying, "The reason I'm asking 'A' is because I want to know if 'B' or 'C' happens." I think my clarification sometimes lead the interviewee to give an answer they may not have given without prompting. Now I am aware of this I will try not to do it in future.

The interview itself was very illuminating. I used it specifically to discover my professional peer's experience of their vocational training, what has been required of them in their profession, and how they think their training has impacted this.

One of the interesting discoveries was that even though the interviewee trained on a musical theatre course, the course itself was very much taught from an acting perspective and this was the reason for their choice.

By going to 'School A' I knew I was going somewhere more weighted in acting, so it wasn't really a surprise that the majority of classes included voice, voice and text, playtext, acting theory, stage combat and neutral mask. Things like the voice and playtext classes would have about three classes timetabled in the week compared to maybe one or two of each style of dance.

It was also interesting that the interviewee believes they are an actor who just happens to work in musical theatre and that the majority of work they have done has been in character driven shows such as Les Miserables and Woman in White.

The interviewee still believes in the importance of versatility however,

I think it is vital to be versatile, especially given the competition and lack of work within the industry. I think it is important to know you strengths but in order to be open to the maximum amount of work I think you need to be versatile.

The analysis of interviews is difficult and I intend do a lot of reading over the next few months on how to effectively draw conclusions from the qualitative statements of expert individuals. Regarding this interview, I found it difficult to draw extensive conclusions because I had nothing to compare it to. It sits as a lone opinion. Judith Bell writes, 'So, we must be wise and vigilant, critical of out interpretation of the data, regularly question our practice and wherever possible triangulate' (2005).

For my professional inquiry I intend to use interviews as the primary data collection tool because I think they uncover such depth of information. They don't just tell what happens but give you the reasons why as well. I am however going to make sure I select a wide enough range of people to give a rounded view of the questions being asked so as to eliminate any possible bias.