Mid-way discussion with colleagues and tutor
I felt like I was a bit behind with where I wanted to be in the inquiry and felt a little lost. I had a good chat with Adesola about some difficulties I had been having. We discussed the idea that perhaps I was looking at doing too much data collection for the project. I had already done interviews from professional instructors and was preparing to do a couple of focus groups with my colleagues at workplace and then several observations with different teachers. If there wasn't a time constraint on the inquiry then I would have still quite liked to do these observations and I think I will set these up after the inquiry is over because I know it will be good for my own professional practice - in the vast majority of the interviews, exercise and dance professionals stated that to improve professional practice shadowing and observing fellow professionals was key.
Adesola reminded me that having too much data collected and then not much time to anaylse would make my inquiry quite shallow, so instead we discussed the idea of using the data I have already collected and focus on anaylsising that in depth.
I had booked in a scheduled time with my work colleagues for the focus group already, so save wasting time I instead changed this to a midway discussion point where I wanted to discuss emerging themes and attitudes towards my set of questions.
My colleagues were extremely helpful and all had very different backgrounds which allowed me to extract useful topics from each of them. We looked at the emerging themes and had in depth discussions which led to the idea of everybody being an individual; so there is no one size fits all in how to increase participants enjoyment in dance and exercise classes. There were definitive strong emerging themes which led us to believe in the majority of classes these teaching and coaching behaviours would be successful in creating enjoyment in class. We also looked at the differences between group exercise, dance and team sports, and how those differences may affect adherence and social groups.
We then went a little bit deeper into looking at the differences in the environments of the different exercise professionals. I had the advantage of knowing the context of the instructors/teachers background well and their places of work. There was a clear difference in attitude to particular questions depending on the environment the teacher had come from. For instance I interviewed several people from a gym one of my family members attends, I have also been a member of the gym and know lots of the staff there. The gym has a huge community feel, with gym members constantly arranging socials outside of class, charity classes or themed classes. The answers regarding social group from the instructors who worked there we found to be saying that "good exercise class creates a social group anyway". I really liked the idea that because the gym has such a community feel that social groups naturally happen in those classes, and they do not need to create them as such. The teachers who taught classes at our workplace, instead focused on the idea that it was necessary to "create" a social group within classes - perhaps this could be because there is a bigger client turnover in those classes due to their being an intoductory offer of six free sessions and the subsquent ones being paid for. We work in areas of high deprevation which can affect people's adherence in classes.
This led on to us looking at some practical ways to implement social groups into classes. An idea I heard from a fellow exercise professional was his techinque to 'add' someone to a social group the first time they arrive at class. Introduce them and then take them over to one or two members of the class, introduce them and explain they will look after the newcomer for the class. They also said that even if it turns out you put them in the right social group, similar to looking for a job - its easier to look when you already have one. They explained their thoughts were people who get on with each other normally are naturally drawn to those people anyway. So its just a way to get that newcomer over the initial period of coming to class alone, which can be very frightening, especially relevant to some of our clients of whom many have led sedentary lifestyles. If this happens every week then social groups and that 'community feel' in class will always be there. My colleagues were keen on this idea and thought it would definitely eliminate the tension for the newcomer slightly, however they thought maybe more techniques were needed to create that wider social group inclusive of the entire class, to avoid any cliques.
The discussion was really useful and gave me some good insight to the emerging themes so I was really glad I still wen ahead with a discussion. Hopefully now my anaylsis will be much easier to do as I have much more clarity.
Adesola reminded me that having too much data collected and then not much time to anaylse would make my inquiry quite shallow, so instead we discussed the idea of using the data I have already collected and focus on anaylsising that in depth.
I had booked in a scheduled time with my work colleagues for the focus group already, so save wasting time I instead changed this to a midway discussion point where I wanted to discuss emerging themes and attitudes towards my set of questions.
My colleagues were extremely helpful and all had very different backgrounds which allowed me to extract useful topics from each of them. We looked at the emerging themes and had in depth discussions which led to the idea of everybody being an individual; so there is no one size fits all in how to increase participants enjoyment in dance and exercise classes. There were definitive strong emerging themes which led us to believe in the majority of classes these teaching and coaching behaviours would be successful in creating enjoyment in class. We also looked at the differences between group exercise, dance and team sports, and how those differences may affect adherence and social groups.
We then went a little bit deeper into looking at the differences in the environments of the different exercise professionals. I had the advantage of knowing the context of the instructors/teachers background well and their places of work. There was a clear difference in attitude to particular questions depending on the environment the teacher had come from. For instance I interviewed several people from a gym one of my family members attends, I have also been a member of the gym and know lots of the staff there. The gym has a huge community feel, with gym members constantly arranging socials outside of class, charity classes or themed classes. The answers regarding social group from the instructors who worked there we found to be saying that "good exercise class creates a social group anyway". I really liked the idea that because the gym has such a community feel that social groups naturally happen in those classes, and they do not need to create them as such. The teachers who taught classes at our workplace, instead focused on the idea that it was necessary to "create" a social group within classes - perhaps this could be because there is a bigger client turnover in those classes due to their being an intoductory offer of six free sessions and the subsquent ones being paid for. We work in areas of high deprevation which can affect people's adherence in classes.
This led on to us looking at some practical ways to implement social groups into classes. An idea I heard from a fellow exercise professional was his techinque to 'add' someone to a social group the first time they arrive at class. Introduce them and then take them over to one or two members of the class, introduce them and explain they will look after the newcomer for the class. They also said that even if it turns out you put them in the right social group, similar to looking for a job - its easier to look when you already have one. They explained their thoughts were people who get on with each other normally are naturally drawn to those people anyway. So its just a way to get that newcomer over the initial period of coming to class alone, which can be very frightening, especially relevant to some of our clients of whom many have led sedentary lifestyles. If this happens every week then social groups and that 'community feel' in class will always be there. My colleagues were keen on this idea and thought it would definitely eliminate the tension for the newcomer slightly, however they thought maybe more techniques were needed to create that wider social group inclusive of the entire class, to avoid any cliques.
The discussion was really useful and gave me some good insight to the emerging themes so I was really glad I still wen ahead with a discussion. Hopefully now my anaylsis will be much easier to do as I have much more clarity.
Comments
Post a Comment