Following the initial research I have done into my inquiry topic I thought now would be a good time to start to discuss some of these points with my colleagues. I have spoken to the art director at the school that I am working at and my old art teacher (I am hoping to use their department as a comparative school in my inquiry). They both seemed on board with the broader ideas of the inquiry but raised some logistical issues I might encounter, some of which I had already considered other I had not factored in at all and so am very glad I had these discussions with them. They also suggested possible ways around these problems which again I found very useful because they know much more about their schools policies and protocol then I do.
The first issue that was raised was if I want a student to participate in a case study whereby I track their progression from GCSE to A-level I will have to be very careful when selecting said student. I particularly noticed in the school that I work in it is hard enough to get the students to do their set work let alone optional extras where the benefit for them is not immediately obvious. To make the situation even more difficult we do not teach A-level in our school thus I will have to choose a student who is reliable and enthusiastic enough to get the work done with very little physical contact from me. I will be relying almost entirely on web 2.0 technologies, but what are the ethical implications of this? I have previously blogged about INSET days where we have discussed child safeguarding and the school’s policies on contact with students outside of school. It is very clear; you are to have no contact with an existing or previous student until they have been out of the school for two years. The art director says that this doesn’t really apply to me because it would be for the purpose of research and not social interaction, but it is still something I will have to take into consideration.There is one yr 11 student who we think might fit these criteria from my current school, another option is to only get feedback from these students on the GCSE course and rely on students from the other school (who teach up to A-level) for the full case study. The only issue with this idea is I know the students at my current school and their work much better then I will know the students from the other schools and I wanted to see them reflecting in action and even more vitally get their reflections after they have finished. I would like to see how their opinions change after they have been faced with a harder challenge. I think at this stage they will be in a much stronger position to suggest what changes could be made to the teaching of the GCSE course.
One of the biggest issues when collecting data from individuals is the reliability of the information that they provide you with. What do I do if none of the feedback I get is useful? Or I have implied that some student find the transition from GCSE to A-level difficult, what if I find that this is not the case with any of the student if have chosen to use in my case study? Do I then rethink this part of the inquiry? If none of them struggle then they have been properly prepared for the next stage so what improvements could be made? The art director at my current school has mentioned that the opposite is often the case with student from our school who go on to study art in local colleges. If anything they find themselves not stimulated. He explained that the reason for this is we have a very good art department and he pushes the students to work at a very high level particularly when it comes to commenting analytically on their work and the works of other artist. Other schools in the area don’t do this he suggests that they ‘spoon feed’ them through the course thus as a result the colleges have had to adapt their teaching style to cater for the majority. This means that our students who have come from an environment where they are pushed and challenged to one where they are limited in the way that you work and thus quickly become unmotivated. Another very important factor in this is, as an artist when working in an environment you are surrounded by people of an equal or higher level then you will constantly strive to improve, if not your work can very quickly become static. So there is a strong possibility that the feedback that I get from my current year 11 students will be the opposite of what I initially thought, hence why I am contemplating looking at a third contrasting, a school that has the budget and facilities to be as good as the other two school but at present is not performing as well. The aim is that throughout the course of this inquiry I will identify possible reasons for why it is not as successful. It has also been suggested to me that I speak to the head of the art department at the local college where most of our student move onto. Perhaps my investigation should also look at how the As-level/ A-level course tries to cater for this range of abilities and how successful they are.
At this stage of my initial research I think it’s a good idea to possibly use a third school to investigate as it will give me more A-level students to engage with, which I think will help to answerer my art director’s question of why investigate the teaching of A-level when the school that I work in only teaches up to GCSE? The answer to this question is, because when I become a qualified as a teacher I want to teach A-level. The third comparative school will also help because I want to look into departmental budgets and how much effect the size of the budget has on the work produced by the student. My current school has a very small budget but gets very good results, The school that I attended has a large budget and very good results were as the third comparative school has a large budget but is not producing as high a standard of work as the other two. Does money make a difference? It would appear not but what effect would it have on the teachers and the work produced if the budgets were swapped?
The question of whether or not a disproportionate amount of emphasis is put on academic subjects over creative arts was a question which he seemed very interested in and a topic that he has looked into himself. His suggestion was to look at the new British Baccalaureate system. Apparently in this the creative arts are no longer a mandatory part of the syllabus! In light of this I think my question has already been answered but I would like to find out why this is the case.
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