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Showing posts from April, 2017

Limitations (and advantages) of a small scale inquiry....

It was an important learning discovery during the planning for my project to look at the limitations the inquiry would have as a small scale inquiry - as much as I would have liked to take on a large number of participants to get a larger amount of exploratory sample data, this would be impractical. It led me to reflect that the whole point of this degree is work based learning - we are working whilst learning, and we do not have the advantages of those who have their whole weeks dedicated to their research projects. So practically I need to do something that will not allow for any dips in my professional performance but instead will only enhance it. Therefore its really useful that my inquiry will be centered around my own work and won't be something I necessarily need to start from scratch to use in the project. However whilst we do not have as much time dedicated solely to our research project, we do have the advantage of working already in our field of choice and having that

Task 6b - review of inquiry tools

For my inquiry I will be choosing to use inquiry tools to properly and effectively analyse data. The tools I'll be looking at using are; observation, interviews, focus groups and surveys. Originally I like the idea of using all the inquiry tools but I appreciate it will be time consuming and don't want my work to suffer for the sake of trying to fit everything in. I would ideally like to use observation as my main source for collecting qualitative  data. I believe this is most appropriate to my research question and will give me a rich source of data to use. I would also like to use a focus group and survey but perhaps as an additional piece of data to support my findings from my observations. All of the inquiry tools have their own merits and limitations and I need to make sure I prioritize  what I want to find out to pick correctly the tool I will use. Merits and limitations to inquiry tools - Observation  Merits - Observation is a great way to collect qualitative  d

Arousal and performance in sports psychology

A colleague mentioned to me about looking into the theory of arousal in sports psychology. The main premise of the theory in a greater sense in that to keep someone happy they must maintain a balance of the right levels of arousal meant for them as an individual. Some individuals may have low levels of arousement and these may be satisfied by something like reading or sewing. Others may have a much higher level of arousement and need to seek out certain activities which are extremely exciting to them, something like roller coasters, skydiving, etc. People all have different levels that need to be satisfied. I'd like to look at the premise of this in sports and exercise classes. The premise of arousement in exercise and performance in general is that we need to have a high level of arousement to perform at our best  - however when we are over aroused we will begin to lose our technique and our performance will suffer for this. If we looked at say for example, music and arous

Ethics - an introduction

As an introduction to Ethical practice I wanted to quickly look at the 3 main components in ethics and how I personally view them before reviewing the case studies. Personal - my personal ethical practice comes from a place of trying to be kind to others and the world. I try to be kind always to other people in the hope if I was in a less favorable place someone else would be kind to me (so Karma essentially). I try to recycle as much as possible and have recently started to buy skincare that is cruelty free. I try to consider my meat consumption and give to charity. My ethical beliefs and practices have come from a range of people. My parents brought myself and my sister up as kind children and I hope people believe we have remained so. My Grandparents however, and I love them dearly, I don't believe are as ethical - and this shocked me and reinforced my need to practice ethics. Teachers at school also enforced in me a desire to be kind to other people. I have done charity mount

Locus of control Theory

After speaking to our clinical psychologist - we discussed many elements of different reasons people would come to class and come back to class after as well. The phycology behind how we learn and how we attract people to return to us after we've taught them is a massive subject, one that I wouldn't want to cover alone. I plan to look into all the aspects I discussed with Gabriella and then choose a strand to investigate further. We looked at the idea of attachment and how if a student can relate to some part of the subject and the teacher teaching they will be more likely to return to your class. The class itself is only one part of this. We also need to think about before the class and the lead up - any communication between student and teacher (eg. a potential student emails me and I respond in a way to make them feel like I want them at the class). It can also be that the poster or advert they have seen is relevant to them (maybe it looks fun or more serious and challen