Task 6b: Critical Reflection

Module 2 'Professional Practitioner Inquiry' has been a difficult task for me but really insightful at the same time. I struggled with starting this module as I was finding it troublesome to determine my inquiry question(s). 

When I came to a brain-dead status over my inquiry question(s) I decided to use my SIG as a method of brainstorming and bouncing ideas back and forth. I had a few main themes that I wanted to throw out into the world and see what came back. These were

•   Vocal Coaching vs. Singing Teaching

•   Do you need to have qualifications to be a successful vocal coach?

•   Can you develop your business as a trusted service without qualifications to back it up?

It was only when I started to bounce these ideas to and fro that somebody pointed out to me that I was almost looking for a yes or no answer to these questions. Almost as though I was trying to prove something. It was then that I realised that I was setting myself up for disaster as there was no discovery to be had and the answers were going to be hard to find. During one discussion with a successful business owner and close friend of mine he suggested that instead of asking if one particular aspect was going to help me successfully develop my business, I should broaden the spectrum and ask 'What action can I take to help me successfully develop my business?'. This then opened my questions up to a multitude of options to explore and pathways to discover. I was able to also bring the subject of qualifications under this umbrella topic. 

After deciding that this new question was going to be more accessible to research I was still toying with the 'Vocal Coach vs. Singing Teacher' aspect of my proposed inquiry. I wanted to ask questions focussed on my professional practice but didn't quite know how to go about it. After one campus session I was speaking with another student from the course who kindly suggested that the statement 'Vocal Coach vs. Singing Teacher' was like asking for one or the other. As an inquiry question, was this going to be too difficult to answer?

I sat with a pen and paper and jotted down that one statement. I was stuck. How was I possibly going to even BEGIN with that one? So I got into contact with one of my old friends from college who is now a singing teacher. After an hour phone conversation she asked me if I had considered finding out what prospective clients look for in a teacher/coach. This question almost ran parallel to my questions about business development and it was then that I decided on my Inquiry Question:

What action can I take to ensure successful business growth and guarantee my service is first choice for clients seeking a Vocal Coach/Singing Teacher?

Once I had decided on this Inquiry Question I was able to start looking at the ethical considerations surrounding this topic.  To help me with this I looked at the ‘BERA Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research 2011’ which was really useful in terms of finding out about minors and vulnerable adults and informed consent for different categories. These frameworks were great for providing me with guidance for carrying out my research focussing on confidentiality, integrity, safe practice, permission and professional code of conduct. All of these established guidelines have played a huge part in helping me to effectively plan my research.

I was also able to look into vocational business development and regulations for new small businesses including tax codes etc. There is a lot of useful information surrounding this topic online as a lot of what I need to find out for these sections has already been explored by others and therefore the information is readily available for me to use. There is plenty of literature available on successful freelance business development. One favourite of mine is a book – ‘Successful Freelancing: The Complete Guide to Establishing and Running Any Kind of Freelance Business’, Marian Faux, (15 Mar 1997). Topics include establishing a business plan; setting up an office; negotiating fees; handling contracts and agreement letters; tax, insurance, and benefits planning; expanding your business; advertising, publicity, and marketing; and measuring your success.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/books/dp/0312152159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430391887&sr=8-1&keywords=successful+freelancing      

When deciding on research tools I established that participant observation, questionnaires and reviewing documents/literature were going to be most effective for me. This is because I have a limited amount of clients/students and a limited SIG. Most of my research will be qualitative for these reasons.

In conclusion I believe that the tasks and readers in Module 2 have encouraged me to develop my knowledge and research skills and fully take into account all ethical considerations when dealing with human/sentient beings. I feel ready to launch my inquiry and am excited about what I will discover and the opportunities that my knew knowledge will enable me to relish. 

Tasks 4b & 4c: SIG's and Developing Questions Within My Professional Community

I have recently been looking through some blogs to try and identify some useful sources for my research. I am having a bit of difficult doing so as I haven't seemed to come across many people with such a specific interest as mine. However I HAVE managed to discuss some of my questions and ideas with my private pupils, their parents and also some old peers who are now teaching themselves.

I have mainly been focussing on the questions I have regarding teaching and whether it is deemed necessary to have teaching qualifications or whether experience is more preferable. After collating my notes I have come up with the following answers...

Are a teachers qualifications more important to a student than a teachers experience or credits?
No. Most students find it more interesting when their teacher has some experience of working themselves say in the West End or in a Recording Studio. The fact that their teacher has done such things gives the pupils a sort of 'wow' factor. The evidence of this is that when trying to engage a class some teachers find it helps to give an example of a job or experience they have had as this prompts the students to ask questions and spark their interest to keep them engaged. Often if you have worked in a well-renowned show or with a famous company/person a student will take on the task in hand as though if they achieve this then it may be them one day working for/with a famous company/person. It gives them something to aspire to be or achieve.

Further from this question a topic and further question that arose was..

Does having qualifications make a teacher a 'good' teacher?
The general consensus was no it doesn't. Not because qualifications don't stand for anything where teaching is concerned but because you could have a teacher with all of the qualifications in the world yet they may have no industry experience or previous teaching experience which may in fact hinder their ability to teach as effectively as is possible. You can't learn experience in a classroom.

I will continue to ask my other questions within my professional community as and when I see the members and once I have do so I will continue to blog the answers!

Task 4a: Developing Questions for Professional Enquiry

After reading Reader 4 I have been developing some questions relevant to my practice. These are topics and ideas I would like to develop further to enable me to enhance my level of practice. 

In practice I am a 'Voice Coach'. I chose to trade under that title as I believe 'singing teacher' to be misleading. Personally, I do not believe singing is something that can be 'taught'.  In my opinion, for something to be taught it requires universal understanding - something like maths and science -something that is the same no matter who you are and where you're from, whether you're old or young or whether you're male or female. Maths will always have equations that will always take the same format and produce the same answers. Science will always follow the same rules, with the same equations always producing the same reactions. However each and every voice is different and therefore I don't believe that singing is something that can be taught.

'The sound of each individual's voice is entirely unique not only because of the actual shape and size of an individual's vocal cords but also due to the size and shape of the rest of that person's body, especially the vocal tract, and the manner in which the speech sounds are habitually formed and articulated.' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_voice

It is for this reason I believe that the term and practice of voice coaching is more appropriate than singing teaching.

I am a singer with vast experience in many different performance areas such as; live musical theatre performances; live solo performances; original cast recordings; solo vocal recordings; live choir performances and recorded choir sessions. I base a lot of what I coach vocally on experience and technical knowledge. I do not have any teaching qualifications. I am aware that some mothers of students and older pupils alike would be dubious about paying for coaching from a voice coach with no 'teaching qualifications'. But that is exactly the point. I will not be teaching a student to sing. I will be coaching them on how to develop, protect and maintain their own completely individual voice. I will be technically manipulating all areas of the voice to create new sounds, a lower/higher range and a healthier singing experience by using various exercises and vocal techniques to do so. With my experience in performance I will also focus greatly on the performance from within the voice as well as external performance.  I do not need any qualifications to do these things. What I need is a clear understanding of the voice, how it works and vocal health. I also need the ability to recognise strengths and weaknesses in ANY individual voice and I need the experience in which to fully utilise each voice by using specific exercises and techniques tailored to suit.

There are many 'singing teachers' out there who will have some form of teaching qualification and will sit at a piano next to a student using old hand scales and arpeggio exercises to briefly cover the full range of notes he/she may have and then sing the same song over and over whilst giving direction such as 'sing from the diaphragm'. They are not shaping the voice, nor are they focused on breathing, stance or performance. I mean, how can they be if they are forever staring at sheet music and a keyboard? 

Another thing that has always bothered me about 'singing lessons' is that in the early stages these are often offered in groups as a choir/classroom format. I have no problem with this being the case in Primary education as it can definitely help to encourage children to be comfortable with using their voice to sing but once the student reaches Secondary education age I believe that singing lessons in a group can serve to be a hinderance. The nature of the voice is that it is more adaptable when it is younger than when it grows older. Therefore I believe that honing in on the voice of an individual at a young age is paramount for technical development and vocal understanding. In a group of students it is not possible when they are all singing at the same time to asses a voice and discover any issues that may be present in the voice. Nor is it feasible to donate enough time to focus solely on particular voices in order to really make a difference to the voice. 

These are a few main reasons for why my belief is that of the above.

Based on the above points the questions I have decided to explore are:

•    Are singing lessons in groups/classes beneficial to pupils further than a means of simply becoming comfortable with singing?

•    Can an individual voice be developed and/or adapted when having lessons in a group/class?

•    Does teaching in groups/classes allow individual pupils/voices to develop properly and to their full potential?

•    Are a teachers qualifications more important to a student than a teachers experience or credits?

If anyone reading this feels as though they have any comments or points for or against any of the questions I am intending to explore then please do comment! Any opinion is appreciated!

Many thanks x

Task 3a: Current Networks

Networking is a fantastic way of meeting and interacting with new people in both your personal and professional life. Sometimes is is appropriate to link the two (e.g having your colleagues on your personal profile and at your birthday) and other times it is not (e.g having your friends on your professional profile or at a work-related event).

For me personally I have to take three types of person in to account when I am using social networking sites and networking in general - my friends, my colleagues & my students.

Facebook: I use facebook on a daily basis to communicate with my friends and family and also my colleagues who cross over as my friends.  I only have one profile on facebook and that is my personal one. My facebook is set to private & so people have to send me a friend request before that can see any more information that just my name and profile photo. The reason I have done this is 1. because I am quite a private person but mainly because a lot of my students use facebook. When I was at college it was a rule that my teachers could not accept or add us on Facebook - until we had left the institution in which case it was our ex-teachers own decision. I totally agree with this because there are some things that are maybe written by me or written on my profile by my friends that would be inappropriate for my 10 & 11 year old students to see. However the Theatre School I work at does have its own Facebook page which allows me to comment and my students to comment back on so I can interact with them without causing any harm. The only other concern I have with Facebook is that it uses something called 'location services' which basically means that automatically your posts or private messages will be 'stamped' with your location. Should somebody not have their account on private it would mean that anyone in the world would be able to see exactly where you are at any given time of you being active on Facebook. However there is an option for you to 'disable location services' which means that if you are tech-savvy and aware of this then you can feel free to have a non-private account but just turn of your location services.

Twitter: Again I only have one Twitter account which is a personal profile. My Twitter account is also set to private which means that people have to send me what is called a 'follower request' before they can see more than just my name and profile photo. The main reason for this is because, without a private setting, people can follow you and see EVERYTHING you write and send you messages without you even agreeing that it is okay for them to do so. I find without this setting Twitter is far less secure than Facebook as, even without a Facebook profile being set to private you would still have to accept the other persons friend request before they can directly contact you. Obviously I have taken into account that I have students that are likely to use Twitter and so I would have set it to private for this reason if the first reason wasn't there.

Blogger: Okay so I use Blogger only for my University studies and it enables me to communicate and most importantly learn from others on the same course as me without ever meeting them face-to-face. I don't have to worry about security issues with Blogger as there is hardly anything about my personal life on here. It is all educational.

Google+ (1): Firstly I used Google+ only as a means of setting up my Blogger account. I had NEVER heard of Google+ before and it took me a while to get my head around how to use it - especially since it was linked with my Blogger account. Google+ is similar to Facebook and Twitter but it has different options of how much information and interaction you can give people as you can add them to different 'circles' and 'communities'. Firstly, I only used my Google+ account as a means of communicating my University work to others on my course. However.....

Google+ (2): I now use Google+ at work! It has been introduced as a way of making communication across the Partnership more efficient. This has enabled Partners from all different branches and all different strains of the company to communicate ideas & topics to one another. In our branch we have set up different communities for different sections so that each section can see what is going on and what is up and coming. We have many members of staff who only work mornings or only work evenings and so some of them have never met!! And so Google+ gives them a chance to 'meet' and communicate and discuss different 'topics' such as section issues or good news/achievements etc. It is also useful for creating events - our branch's 5 year party is coming up soon and so our 'Google Guide' (one of our managers) has created an event and invited everyone as guests to RSVP either 'Going' or 'Not Going'. We keep calanders, events, news, rotas and all sorts on our Google drive and it has made communication across our company much more effective so far.

Meetings: Last week I attended a meeting with other Partners from other branches across the company to discuss certain topics. I met people who I have never met before who do the exact same job as me but in a different location 1 hour away from me. It was a great opportunity to get their take on things and find out their ways of working which i could take away and learn from. I have already managed to put some of these ideas into practice and so having one simple meeting has enabled me to achieve more in my current role at work!

Parties/Events: Now this is the fun one.. Even at social events it is a great place to meet people and expand your current networks. Wether it be personal or professional. In some cases it is appropriate to mix the two and in others it may not be. However even in a 'social setting' such as a party there can be great business opportunities to be discovered. Sometimes social settings can be more beneficial as people are often more relaxed and free-spirited (and drunk lol) and so conversation flows more freely and there is more opportunity for networking successfully in these circumstances. As long as one is sensible in these circumstances it can often be a great way of starting new business ventures or simply just meeting people you can gain knowledge from and possibly call on to assist you professionally in the future.

To summarise, there are plenty or reasons why networking and social networking can be beneficial but they must be used ethically and in the correct way. As I have mentioned previously, social and professional networking can be linked and can go hand in hand but in the right setting. I think social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter etc are what one needs to use with care as there are so many ethical considerations to be taken into account.