Choosing a Topic & Developing a Research Question

Upon embarking on DAN4630's Research Inquiry, I decided to do a little bit of brainstorming on my reflective journal, to figure out a topic that could potentially both fit the program's outline & also be something that I truly was interested in and invested in. 

I found a super-helpful step-by-step youtube video by Oregon's School's Library, which truly helped me develop a valid "work-in-progress" research question that I could start working with. 

If you want to check out their video and try out their process, you can find the link by clicking here.

The first step to develop my research topic idea was to brainstorm an initial list of topics that could be related both to my professional practice and to the MAPP Dance Technique Pedagogy Program. 

Here is what my initial list looked like:

I then selected a couple of topics that felt like they were 'talking' to me more, and developed a new list of possible topics, by brainstorming all of the sub-topics that came to my mind when thinking about them:

After that, I proceeded to choose one main topic to narrow down the list, and 'dealing with dance injuries' was drawing me in more than any other topic. I felt it was the topic that not only I knew the most about, but it was also the one that I was genuinely the most curious to find out about more.

Oregon's School's Library's Video Tutorial, advised to proceed with a K.W.L. chart:

- Know | What do I know about the topic?

- Wonder | What do I wonder about the topic? What do I want to know?

- Learned | What have I learned from the process? (Only to be answered when reflecting after the research process is concluded). 

This is how my chart looked like:

The next step was to focus on the "Want to Know" questions, to start forming relevant research questions. 

Research questions should be open questions that are complex and have more than one possible answer. They also may lead to more questions rather than simple answers. 

I started revising the questions that I wrote in my KWL chart and came up with seven new potential research questions:

It was finally time to start forming a rich and open-ended essential question for my research project. 

I was looking for a question that I wasn't able to foresee where it would lead me. 

After reviewing one more time my newly found open questions, I found a way to intertwine two of them to determine my work-in-progress essential question:

"How can vocational dance training be re-designed to break the toxic narrative that 'great dancers work through pain', and find safe ways to involve and support dance students through their injuries?"

Although targeted to much younger students at an earlier step in their scholastic journey, I did find Oregon's Library's YouTube tutorial extremely useful to help me initiate my personal brainstorming for my MA research project. I would definitely recommend it at all academic levels as a tool to help students figure out their main research interests.