Reflections on Research Tools:

Following my research into the possible tools to use for my inquiry I can conclude that I plan to use lesson observations, surveys/questionnaires and interviews. I had hope to use focus groups to get the three age groups together to discuss their thought on the course but upon conducting a pilot focus group the possible problems with this research tool became apparent. The pilot involved students in the current year 11 with that hear of the department acting as the gatekeeper. This is a trying group at the best of times and do not reflect the average standard of students in this art department. The majority of them have a very immature attitude which was very apparent in this discussion. It started off well, I asked them to reflect on their experiences on the GCSE course and encouraged them to talk about any regrets they might have. A common theme amongst them was they wished that they worked harder in yr10 to take some of the pressure off of them in yr11 and would have liked to have completed their coursework earlier so that they could have gotten unit 2, the externally set assignment finished earlier. All of this would be very useful for the current yr10’s to hear as this is something we stress to them constantly. Unfortunately they very quickly went off topic and the discussion erupted into an argument with the less outgoing and confident students getting lost in shouting. On a number of occasions the teacher and I tried to calm them down and get them back on topic with little success. I think one of the main problems with this group is there are a lot of loud and aggressive characters who tend to dominate situation. I was disappointed with the outcome as I feel that it would be beneficial for the younger years to learn of the older groups experiences and hopefully try to avoid making the same mistakes as them but in the case of this pilot I think there would be little useful information anybody could take from this particular focus group. I am not ruling out this tool entirely but as it is time consuming and the time that I can spend with the students is limited I am unsure how useful it will be.

Before conducting the survey pilot I had planned to use this tool as one of the ways of communicating with some of our current yr11 students who are leaving at the end of this year but I found that to get the information I would like from the students would be very time consuming using this tool. Many of the questions which I had planned to ask are open questions which would require a lengthy answer. I my experience of dealing with students of this age is if the work is not mandatory a massive amount of thought will not go into it. I fear that I might end up with over simplified answers which will not give me the incite I desire, but if you were to ask them this question verbally you would get a much more in depth response. This method could also prove to be very time consuming for the students and I in no way want their involvement in my inquiry to encroach on their time spent on their school work. As a result the surveys/questionnaires will be used to gather quantative data.