Interview Process

As I have decided to only use Literature Review and Interviews for my research tools I felt I had a lot riding on my interviews!

Planning the questions:I decided to start with a few closed questions to put my participants at ease. These were the same in every interview.
My interview was semi- structed but I grouped the questions into 3 categories.
-personal experiences of creativity
-policies and creative partnerships
-current teaching practice

I also considered how I would introduce myself during my interview. I wanted people to be relaxed but well informed of my project.
I decided to conduct interviews with teachers in their own classrooms (before and after school). I hoped that this would help people to feel comfortable and allow them to speak freely!

The first interview:
Although I had conducted pilot interviews, I felt extremely nervous before my first official interview. I knew that I had one shot to get it right and wasn't totally confident that I'd chosen the right questions at this stage.
However, it went very well. My practice in layering questions paid off and the interview itself triggered off some more questions for me- that I added into the following interviews. I also adapted one or two of the questions.
My main point of reflection was the conclusion. I had not thought through or rehearsed how I would finish the interview. After this I decided to just add in a line before the final or penultimate question ...'we are coming to the end of the interview..' or word to that effect. This meant that when I did conclude the interview it didn't feel so abrupt.

Choosing participantsI went for a selection of male and female teachers. Those from different parts of the country and some not from the UK. I also wanted to have at least one from every year group reception- year 6.
I also chose teachers in specific leadership roles (most of these are classroom based aswell)
Creative Curriculum leader
KS2 phase leader
Artist in Residence/ Creative partnership co-ordinator
Music teacher
By coincidence one of the teachers I interviewed was also the communications leader.

Data
I now have hours of interviews to analyse!! And a whole lot of information.
In my next blog I will blog about the process I used to analyse the data.
If anyone has started this process or has any thoughts on effective ways to do so, please share!!

Professional Artefact

During the second campus session  Adesola talked about the professional Artefact. Here I blog about 3 things that stood out to me;

Significance of the Artefact:The Professional Artefact is equally important as the critical review. It's a different expression of the key findings from our research project. The critical review is the academic where as the professional Artefact should be accessible to those in your industry. It could be aimed at children, parents, management or teachers.

Not leaving it to the last minute:Although we identified that the professional Artefact cannot be finally decided on until we have analysed our data and gathered thoughts about this, it should not be left until the last minute. I have been bouncing ideas around for my professional Artefact but haven't quite decided on exactly how it will look. I think at this stage that's ok. As long as I continue to think about it. The other really interesting thing that came up is not to let the professional Artefact lead to another question. It should consist of our findings and not pose more questions for research.

Different types of Artefact:Adesola disscussed different types of professional Artefact and showed us some examples.
Jo Gunnel is going to record a song for her Artefact- this is appropriate for her because her project is about singing!
Natalie Less will put together a new showreel from her findings- which will include her old showreel to demonstrate what she has learnt.
However you could use a more traditional documentary style Artefact. Produce a booklet documenting your findings. There are many different ways to approach the Artefact. This has helped me to that there is no 'right' way to do it. It very much depend on our question and our findings.

Final Project- Getting started

This a brief blog about my 'getting started' experience for our final project!
The first thing to do was re read and reassess my inquiry plan.
After some careful consideration and consulting with my advisors I came to the conclusion that my topic, creativity in the curriculum, was far too broad. A lot of the questions I had posed have been asked many times before and some answered. Thus, leaving little room for my own personal discovery.
I needed to find an area of focus. I have since decided to focus on how a teacher perceives creativity ( from there own life experiences) and how this affects their teaching practice. I also wanted to discover how the Ken Robinson's report written on the cultural and creative curriculum has affected teaching practice and where the consistency lies, in the approach to creative teaching, within my school.
This shift in focus meant that I had to review the tools of inquiry I would use to most effectively carry out this research. I decided that I no longer needed to observe teachers but was more concerned with their opinions and experiences. For this reason I have chosen to focus on using semi structured interviews.
I have also revised the interview questions that I had prepared.
In my next blog I will discuss the interview process that I have used.