6c) Award Title

I was slightly concerned when beginning my draft for my award title rationale that I would not be able to decide upon the correct title for my professional inquiry. Thankfully upon speaking to those who had completed this course in previous years it became clear that the aim of the rationale is to clarify the knowledge I have already gained throughout my training and career as a dancer, my future aims within my career, and therefore the reasoning behind my chosen subject for my professional inquiry.

My chosen award title is: BA(Hons) Professional Practice (Dance)

The subject of my inquiry is the necessary nutritional needs for dancers to be able to excel throughout the range of expectations within their work. I will analyse the importance of nutritional knowledge throughout a dancing career, developing specifically designed diets and producing beneficial guidelines for future dancers and organisations. This would be solely for the benefit of dancers' development, whether in training or professional career. My motivation for investigating this topic comes from my future goal to be a nutritionist once my own performing career has ceased.

My proposal for this award title is due to my overwhelming and continuing passion for dance and my professional experience. Having spent the maximum eight years in vocational training, I succeeded in acquiring a Level 6 National Diploma in Professional Dance and proceeded to join a professional touring ballet company of which I am presently a member. The concise nature of my current company and its continuous travelling throughout the United Kingdom has forced me to undergo various challenges with the upkeep of energy and my body's well-being. I believe these experiences have highlighted the ignored and under-rated importance of nutrition within dance education, which my inquiry will address. 

I felt as though the rationale needed to be concise and to the point so that it is clear although I still wished to include as much as possible about my knowledge, experience and reasoning.

Any advice about how this could be improved would be greatly appreciated.

6a) Informal Trial

In order for my to collect information for my professional inquiry I will need to use a variety of methods. This is due to the fact that as my inquiry is based on nutrition for dancers, and therefore the immediate effects on humans, quite a range will be needed in order to collect information that will be reliable.

Within Reader 6 a quote that I felt a particular connection with was Black's "quantitative research is quite good at telling us what is happening, and often qualitative studies are better at determining why events occur". The interesting argument that although quantitative research mainly referred to for data results, which would largely not be appropriate for my particular line of inquiry, is sometimes necessary to get a solid base for the inquiry, is one I related to for my own. With the ideology that then using qualitative research prior to the data in order to elaborate upon the inquiry and therefore make the results more reliable. For this reason I decided to make my informal trial a survey for others partaking in this course based on the series of original inquiry questions I had designed at the beginning of the module.

I was able to create the survey and then share amongst peers using the popular website:
www.surveymonkey.com
This website has enabled to me to make many surveys in the past and shows the responses clearly for analyses.

How much knowledge do you believe you have about nutrition? 

Where did you learn this?

Is it an aspect of your profession you find important? Why? 

Are you always able to fill your dietary requirements? 

What do you find most difficult about keeping to your dietary needs?

Does your profession affect your opinion about your dietary requirements? 

Were you advised about nutrition during training? 

How helpful did you find it? 

Do certain foods seem to affect your dancing abilities? 

Have you been injured during your training/career? 

What was the injury? 

What do you believe caused the injury? 

Do you often feel tired or unmotivated when dancing? 

Do you find it difficult to stay focused whilst rehearsing/performing? 

If given the opportunity, would you wish to learn more about your nutritional requirements? 

I would greatly appreciate any more responses, although this survey is aimed at dancers only, using the link below:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S367K2K