Critical Reflection and Summary: Digital Portfolio
What do you need to know to be a professional practitioner? This is a question I was asked in the first lecture of Module 2(3835) this seemed an easy, self explanatory sort of question to ask, but 12 weeks down the line I’m still constantly adding to my originally seemingly small, narrow minded list. “It’s about finding our speciality within our sphere of Profession. I now realise I have much more to learn about the meaning of Knowledge by itself as well as how I need to look at my own knowledge and categorize it in more detail” This is a snippet from my blogpost reviewing the campus session. Through reflection I realised my knowledge is Tran disciplinary because I carry the knowledge I’ve gained from my musical theatre training across to my solo Jazz singing therefore I am using specific knowledge for personal experiences.
To clarify and condense the reader I put Scholarly Research into simple steps, guidelines. This is one of the technical research structures I will be using in my Inquiry so it’ll prove useful. Throughout the first part of the module we discussed big questions and the purpose of our inquiry topic. Judging from reoccurring traits in my reflective poems my interests were veering to such questions as-How much and when do I listen to music? What effect does it have on my mood?
For the first task of the module I thought up some sub-questions but realised that my original ones could be answered already, which is uninspiring. Therefore I wanted to broaden from just the ‘I’ questions to a larger scale, as singing effects so many more people than just me, this led to my new Inquiry proposal of Why is singing such an important use of communication? On that note I set up my facebook thread to get my S.I.Gs started which has worked as a great way to communicate regularly with course associates. This resulted in ideas and helpful resources being developed. I’ve reviewed these in one of my Blog posts back in February.
Our Introduction to professional ethics at this campus session really inspired me to dig my teeth into the course reader, I can now define the difference between personal values and virtues which helps me when analysing ethical issues that occur in my professional practice. I put together a code of conduct, this ethical stance clarified the moral implications that were naturally in place within my professional environment.
After discovering that every practice has an ethical dimension I decided to find a relative to my profession I looked into specific moral dilemmas we encounter in music today I proposed normative questions to analyse the situation and looked at moral axiology using the applied and comparative ethics to analyse the different perspectives. Throughout this module I have kept track of my references and recently experimented with sharing these on a great bookmark and tagging site delicious.
To practice data collecting tools I composed a pilot survey and Interview. After deciding that singing as a communication was still too broad of a topic to base my inquiry on I realised that I was heavily interested in the effect that music has on both the singer and listeners, therefore I would focus on; does singing affect your health and wellbeing? I gained both qualitative and quantitative information from a variety of people as I used a representative sample of participants allowing me to analyse a reliable amount of data.
During this process I realised there were far too many sub topics and questions I wanted to answer in terms of my inquiry. In the midst of this confusion I met with my advisor who asked me; “In your profession what do people expect you to know?” I thought about the process of walking into a recording studio and getting to know the producer/song writer I’m working with and making them familiar with the music I want to make and why. In order to be more specific, make more links and to generally sound more intellectual on the background and traits of the genres I want to infuse; I need to Learn, clarify and relate everything I should and need to know about the material I sing. Therefore I decided to base my inquiry on- What are the Links between Jazz, Pop, Soul and R’n’B and how have they changed over time? I can use all the information and data I’ve gathered over the past twelve weeks as resources for when I encounter the emotional links between these genres. After writing my plan I’m now looking forward to implementing the tools and techniques I have learnt during this module to my Inquiry.
