Teddy’s 9 “How to get started?” Research Questions

Posted by on February 10, 2010 
Filed under Uncategorized

Autumn Leaves

Teddy’s 9 “How do I get started?” Research Questions

Posted for class session 02.09.2010

Question 1. Think about a teaching and /or learning issue, problem, or question that you have about your students, a course, an assignment, a pedagogical strategy, your program, etc. Briefly state that issue, problem, or question as a question(s). Problem: Why are college undergraduate programs still training skilled music students to seek traditional modes of employment rather than modes relative to entrepreneurial/indie commercial music?

Question 2. What do you know about this topic and about ways to study this question from the extant literature in your discipline and in higher education more broadly? Answer: I can only state what I have basically observed/witnessed about the programs and various colleagues as an adjunct faculty member.

Question 3. Given your question, what type of information or artifacts do you already have that will help you answer this question? Answer: Presently, I possess a host of other music scholars who have passionately discussed this topic in various forums. Their perspectives and resolutions are many, as are the pros and cons of the issue!  

Question 4.  Given your question, what type of information or artifacts will you need (and from what sources) to answer this question? Answer: To properly answer this question, I feel directed to acquire personal background data about administrators, professors and students of current music programs that are for the most part traditionally engaged in their pedagogical approach to prepare undergraduate music students for the workforce. This would equate to knowing their goals or mission statements, program history, structure and/or configuration of their department, funding, graduation rates and their global vision for their school of music.

Question 5. Given your question and the information you need, what research strategies might you use to obtain this information and answer this question? Answer: I would use interviews, employment-success rates of students to non-traditional/commercial employers, internet research data, human resources department data from school systems, employment data of public music stores and a single university data bank of music school graduates employed the prior year.

Question 6. What time frame will be most appropriate to answer your question? Answer: One year!

Question 7. What are some practical problems you might face in doing this study? What resources would you need and how might you obtain these? Answer: Privacy issues, intimidation and rejection towards discussing the topic are some of the practical problems that could arise in researching this issue. I would need department files, personal information of graduates and their employers from universities and this could prove to be the tough cookie to crumble.

Question 8. What ethical issues should you consider in doing this study? Answer: Privacy and non-biased accurate reporting!

Question 9. In what ways and in what outlets will you be able to obtain peer feedback on this work and make this work public? Answer: Blogs, conferences, seminars, online surveys, books, email & via-media.

Comments



One Response to “Teddy’s 9 “How to get started?” Research Questions”

  • Darren Cambridge on February 16th, 2010 1:47 pm    

    The sounds like a fascinating study. I wonder, though, how you see this fitting into the scholarship of teaching and learning, as opposed to educational policy? Are there ways you could further develop your question so that it examines the learning of specific students, perhaps examining contrasts between the kind of learning they pursue independently in pursuit of the their own professional goals as compared with the learning that is support by the formal educational programs on which you focus?

Leave a Reply