Log 4- Critical Reflection of the BAPP course

The journey over the last year and a half taking part in a BA Professional Practice Course has enabled me to ascertain a clearer understanding of the academic side to social science and how this in turn, whatever career choice that you choose whether at present or in the future, can improve work based practice.

Enrolling originally on the course I did not know what to expect, looking back on my first few blog entries, my ideas are sporadic and distracted with no clear path, and looking back upon the time of which these were posted that was exactly how my career was panning out.

The most important strategy that was presented to me within the first module was Kolb's Learning Cycle. By using they 'feeling, watching, thinking, doing' cycle allowed me to develop what began as brainstormed ideas into a research proposal which aimed to help my organisation as well as developing my professional practice as a performer and teacher by allowing me to locate and analyse certain complexes within my work and making those more efficient.

The process of learning to write academically, rather than descriptively or in a marketing style proved invaluable when reaching the final two modules (project proposal and research project). This was a very different style of writing, and the inclusion of references was completely new to me. Although the module handbooks outlined the structure of the work a lack of straightforward instructions on how to structure and present our work were not included. This was very different from school and college (as a dancer, the ability to include footnotes in a word document was not covered!), a lot of time was wasted writing information in the wrong formats and unknown 'Uni' jargon was used so often within the handbooks, the first initial attempt of understanding each module wasn't very successful. The use of a blogging community aided my study and the explanations of the previous mis-understandings however only very few bloggers commented upon blogs, and some of the list of original bloggers haven't posted anything.

Entering the final module and the dissertation became much more relaxed as the handbook had been edited to a more user-friendly version. My advisors comments upon my project proposal and critical commentaries posted by other on blogs regarding the processes others had made gave me enough insight and confidence to start my dissertation. Once started, I saw the reason that our advisors had insisted that we must choose a topic we were interested in. The 12,000 words was just the beginning, months of research, scouring through libraries and planning survey tools required a passion about the subject. A particular favourite section of mine was the literature search, and as noted on one of my blogs,

'Must stop over indulging in google scholar, reading interesting literature on child development and elements of a professional dancers career and popping into the british library…!'

I did find much more research than was needed for the undergraduate degree however for future projects, maybe a Masters degree and development within my organisation, this literature helped shape my opinions.

In conclusion to my BAPP experience I am proud of what I have achieved and now have a further interest into academic writing alongside performing. By undertaking my project regarding the development of children I have also understood and developed my teaching methods which has allowed me to extend my knowledge and skills to other sectors, including toddlers, adults and children in areas of depravation. Each article that I read now whether in dance magazines, newspapers or the internet makes me think much more about the process of which it has been written and develop my own points of view that the writer hasn't expressed. As Kolb's cycle demonstrates, learning is continuous and I now hope from undertaking this BAPP course I can constantly learn and improve my work and skills.