#knowledgeinquiryandpractice

The day of the experiment arrived. De-tagging and sorting the soft toys was simple. Though I found not all of them were black and white as I had expected; also that the amount of soft toys may have even correlated to the colour change. If I had a few more participants I could have checked this theory.

I decided to have each person choose their own soft toy instead of the “get what you’re given” method. I thought it might start a connection more quickly. Though I also realise that it wouldn’t work as well when there were few soft toys left.

I know that we don’t need to blog for this paper, but I think that it’s a pretty good habit to keep. I’ll document a bit of what I’m doing.

For my research project I am quite interested in the social phenomena of carrying around soft toys. As a child my parents let me keep my important soft toys on hand always, but slowly and kindly pushed me to be more independent as I got older. I noted that a lot of children didn’t seem to get that kind of treatment, they had their most important toys taken away from them quite young. I felt like a bit of a “one off” case. I have also started to carry around a new soft toy of different significance in the last year because of mental health and comfort. Being an adult I got maybe one or two questions near the beginning, but other than that no one seems to mind, even so far as not to really care. So why is it such a big thing for children to stop carrying around their important soft companions?

My idea has morphed along the way, especially while taking a look at how to research it. Originally it was looked at that I do a meta study on attachment theory. Though I’ve been finding it a bit difficult to slog my way through the dense texts, finding they all reference a small pool of texts I cannot seem to put my hands on myself. So talking with Andy today we redefined how I could do the project, also looking at how to write out the proposal I was having some difficulty figuring out. I will still be looking at the soft toy attachment, and attachment theory, but making an actual study with my peers. I will “hopefully” get a group of about 10-15 “young adults” (BCT students), to carry around a soft toy each, for a week. Afterwards through a survey of the toy holders, I hope to gauge some of the reactions of the people they passed or interacted with throughout the week and their own prospectives and experiences.