An Extraxt from my learning diary (25/02/2010)

After last week’s campus session I have been doing a lot of thinking about a possible topic and how I would research it.
The first idea that came to mind was something to do with different types of discipline when teaching. I then started to think would this hold my interest for a long time?, would I be able to cover such a huge area?
I then decided I wanted to do something I was more passionate about. I was watching a Tv show and there was a discussion about homosexuality and footballers, it was asking the question why is there a stigma surrounding gay man in the football industry and from that came a debate about homosexuality within the theatre. This led me to thinking about the stigma surrounding men in the industry, particularly in dance. I knew that this was something I was passionate about and began thinking of different topic ideas surrounding this theme.
As I am currently teaching in different schools, in after school clubs and PE, I began thinking of the boys I teach and there attitudes towards dance and felt this is something I could explore more.
The topic idea I am thinking of at the moment is “A research into effective stratagies for intergrating biys of pre secondary age into dance”. As I work with different ethnic minorities I wanted to incorporate something to do with this into my study so may add to the end of my title “ with particular emphasis on hard to reach groups such as ethnic minorities and white working class boys.”
Different ways I could research this
• Media research- Billy Elliot movie
• Media research – meet the Amish (coming on Tv soon)
• Interviewing young boys from my schools on there attitudes to dance

Notes on searching Journals
• Annotations – notes to yourself
• Include research books in bibliography
• Google scholar – cuts out commercial stuff
• G247-RESOURCES – library of journals- learning resources
-electronic database searching
-full text and citation
-Citation databases
-call / email librarians
Reflecting on what Ive written in this diary entry, I believe I have got a good basisto begin researching a topic area, my thought process and learning this week has gone well as it has made my objective a lot clearer to me. I now need to begin researching and collecting as many things as possible to do with my topic. I may begin by checking out a link that I saw on Danielle Stacey’s blog www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/brief.html-guidenceonresearch