Analysis of data

In Chapter Two, I discussed the relevant literature relating to my study and my chosen research questions31 using the following theme headings:

a) The nature of musical ability and socially constructed notions of talent b) Teachers’ perceptions of musical ability - their own and children’s c) The musical confidence of primary school teachers

d) The nature of partnership

The eventual findings and resultant theories derived from the study are presented in Chapter Six under four new theme headings:

e) Roles and titles f) Relationships g) Teachers as artists h) Dialogic interaction

In what follows, I will describe the process of analysis and interpretation of the data collected during the study via the bricolage approach described in the previous

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section, along with an explanation of how the four new themes listed above were identified and justified for subsequent discussion and theory making.

Just as my overall methodology in terms of collecting data was designed to be flexible in order to incorporate the ideas and voices of the teachers and children (whom I considered to be co-researchers, based on my earlier experience of having felt negatively subjected to being researched), my approach to interpreting the data was intentionally flexible for the same reasons. In order to ensure that the findings that I ultimately present within this thesis can be considered reliable, I needed to ensure that my own interpretations of what had happened in terms of the development of

teachers’ musical confidence and of more equal relationships between teachers and musicians during the study, matched the perceptions of all participating adults. In this endeavour, I sought to extend the privileging of participant voice, or the ‘polyvocality’ suggested by Gallagher (2008), along with the ongoing facilitation of relationships between teachers and musicians through the research, beyond the process of data collection in the field and into the data analysis stage of the study. It was my intention in doing so to further attempt to diminish hierarchy within the teacher-musician/researcher-researched relationship and to challenge the primacy of the researcher. To have consulted with the teachers so closely throughout the field study as it happened and then to withdraw in order to make assumptions about the meaning of our interactions alone, and without their continued input, would have undermined the entire research process and our developing relationships up until that point by recasting me once more as the more powerful ‘expert’.

The flexible bricolage approach to data collection described earlier, combined with the dialogic, inclusive and hermeneutic approach taken to data analysis thus served to facilitate and preserve the relationships I was developing with the teachers.

Hermeneutic phenomenology

My research broadly represents an ethnographic study that owes to ethnomusicology. In-keeping with such research, I adopted a hermeneutic phenomenological analytical approach to interpret the findings of the study. A hermeneutic approach invites

reflection upon meaning arising from lived, human experience (van Manen, 2014: 27). Van Manen elaborates:

Hermeneutic phenomenology is a method of abstemious reflection on the basic structures of the lived experience of human existence […] Hermeneutic means that reflecting on experience must aim for discursive language and sensitive interpretative devices that make phenomenological analysis, explication, and description possible and intelligible. (2014: 26)

In addition, Gobel and Yin Yin (2014) describe hermeneutic phenomenology as a methodology ‘best learned by doing it’ and state that as an approach it comprises the following tasks, ‘formulating phenomenological questions, identifying and collecting experiential material and reflecting on concrete experiences.’ (Gobel and Yin Yin, 2014, blog post 16/10/14).

First stage of data analysis

In order to reflect upon the ‘concrete experiences’ of the field study I made use of aspects of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) in the following initial analyses of the data:

• Repeated close listening to audio recordings of classroom musicking • Repeated readings of my field notes and reflective research journal • Repeated close listening to audio of teacher interviews

• Making note of tone of voice and pauses which might give further insight into interviewee’s views, along with recurring words or terms, such as ‘teacher’, ‘musician’, ‘role’, ‘job’, ‘musical’

• Line by line reading of each written teacher interview transcript

• Cross referencing the three teacher interviews for recurring use of key words/terms (see above) and for other resonances (such as reflection upon previous musicking ‘partnerships’32

• Cross referencing the three teacher interviews for contrasts or dissonances

• Making note of resonance, contrasts and irregularities arising across the whole body of data

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• Making note of areas in which the data was either confirming or conflicting with the literature and themes identified prior to the commencement of the study and

discussed in Chapter Two

• Continuously checking my interpretations of meaning with the teachers to ensure accuracy

I did not extend the initial use of IPA methodology into formal coding of the data using qualitative software as is now fairly common practice. This decision was based on the small-scale of the study itself, focused as it was on the relationships developed through musicking between five participants, two musicians and three teachers. What the small scale of the study did allow for was a closer and more in-depth means of analysis making further use of the dialogic relationships developed within the research as an interpretative tool through which the teachers’ perceptions, narratives and voices made as substantial a contribution to meaning making as my own.

Kincheloe confirms that a hermeneutic approach enables the drawing together of data gathered via multiple or bricolage means in order to arrive at meaningful

interpretations by stating:

With the benefit of hermeneutics, bricoleurs are empowered to synthesize data collected via multiple methods. In the hermeneutic process, this ability to synthesize diverse information moves the bricoleur to a more sophisticated level of meaning making. (Kincheloe, 2001: 691)

The methods of analysis listed above were utilized over a period of many months, during which time removed myself from the data for short periods of time before returning to it as and when new insights occurred to me. This is in alignment with van Manen’s assertion that:

Phenomenology is more a method of questioning than answering, realizing that insights come to us in that mode of musing, reflective questioning, and being obsessed with sources and meanings of lived meaning. (van Manen, 2014: 27)

Considering and reflecting on the data over time and in dialogue with the teachers and others involved in the study, allowed the hermeneutic construction of a composite picture of what had occurred and its meanings to emerge.

Second stage of data analysis: composing and analysing narrative

Following the initial interrogation of the data and having checked the accuracy at this point of my own interpretations of the data with the teachers, I began the task of writing up the field study (Chapter Four) and three teacher case studies (Chapter Five) in narrative form, using the now analysed and annotated field notes and journal entries derived from my participant observations, along with the content of the teacher

interview transcripts.

The composition of these written narratives allowed for a further textual analysis of the data, rooted as these ‘stories’ are in the real-life experiences of the participating teachers and musicians. Making use of ‘discursive’ language as advised by van Manen (2014: 26), the narratives contained in Chapters Four and Five of this thesis are indeed lengthy and detailed, using much ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973). This is a necessity in order to delve as deeply as possible into the data gathered and to portray as accurate a picture as can be of the lived experiences of the teachers, musicians and children involved.

Through the use of narrative inquiry in order to analyse and present the data, the reader is able to get a direct connection to the voices and perceptions of the teachers themselves. Their stories are held up as equal to that of mine, the researcher. In this way, the meaning derived from the data as presented in Chapter Six has been arrived at collaboratively, contains ‘multiple perspectives’ (Kincheloe, 2001: 687) and has been ‘checked’ for reliability by and between all research participants.

Third stage of analysis: Interpretative devices for the identification of themes and for theory making

As discussed in section 3.5 of this current chapter, I used narrative inquiry as meta- method in that I employed it to collect data, to construct the narratives presented in subsequent chapters and then later, in the analysis stages as an interpretative device. Becker asserts that this kind of approach to the construction and interpretation of narrative involves ‘a continuous redefinition of what the theory is explaining’ (Becker, 1998: 58) and indeed, through interpretative, textual analysis of these narratives, I began to locate further resonances in the form of points of shared

experience with the teachers within my own, personal narrative of my musical

‘history’. The significance of these points of shared experience only became apparent at this point of the data analysis. However, as will be discussed in Chapter Six, this turned out to be pivotal in terms of the development of the theory and model of dialogic relationship presented later in this thesis. These ‘auto-narratives’ are woven throughout the thesis to illuminate recurrent themes and to prepare the reader for the themes, findings and new theory presented within Chapter Six.

In addition to narrative inquiry as an interpretative device, at this point I also began to apply new literature to the data being analysed, most notably in the form of the entire body of work of Christopher Small33. As discussed in Chapter Two, Small’s work on the theory of universal musicality34 (1998a, 2006) provided direct inspiration for the undertaking of this study and wider reading of his work confirms many thematic resonances with the field study data.

In illustration, much of Small’s theory is concerned with the relationships explored and realized through collaborative musicking. Applying thematic resonances such as this within the writings of Small to the emergent findings of the study as an additional tool for analysis and interpretation led to the construction of the four new themes listed above (see 3.7). These new themes provided the basis for the discussion of findings and theory making, that is, my contribution to new knowledge, contained in Chapter Six and expands the study and its findings beyond the literature and themes identified prior to the study35, already well-documented in the field in connection with the issue of teacher-musician ‘partnership’ in primary music teaching.

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See Figure 4 for a visual depiction of the trajectory of Small’s work and theory over the course of his career.

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In Chapter Two (2.2.2) I describe the concept of universal, or human musicality as embraced by Small (1998a, 2006), Blacking (1976) and Paynter (2002).

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3.6.3 Conclusion

In summary, the methodology and methods chosen were intended to both elicit findings and to support the development of the overall model of partnership under investigation.

Thus, my study overall can be conceived of a narrative-based inquiry into a case study in which the concept of partnership in music education is closely explored within an

overarching methodology of partnership between researcher and participants. It takes

a characteristically qualitative research approach, incorporating an action research framework, and underpinned by a commitment to the perspective of universal musicality. The earlier Music Potential study has served as a pilot and baseline model, providing now the basis for both methodology and further exploration and improvement of the collaborative ways of working with teachers that it identified. As an early career researcher, interested in the concept of action research, I initially found it challenging, in both the design and application of my field study, to move away from a more positivist paradigm of educational research in which I would be intervening in order to change what happened in the classrooms for the teachers, and towards the narrative research paradigm in which shared ‘stories’ could come to light and enable co-construction of knowledge with the teachers. This will be further discussed in the next chapter and subsequent chapters.