Developing theory through a longitudinal study

There are three modus operandi which were considered during the design of this research project:

First, all the students could have been set a quantitative survey at the start of Y7 and then at the end of Y9 in order to measure changes of perception on citizenship awareness during KS3 (Lister et al., 2002 cited in Saldana, 2003). Questions based on factual societal information, such as: ‘How does our democracy work?’, ‘What are the rights of the child in law?’ could be tested but such an approach would favour those students who are best at regurgitating information under examination conditions. However, more personal questions, such as, ‘How can the ‘I’ contribute to society?’ and ‘What does the idea of ‘self-responsibility’ mean to you?’ would be less easy to assess. Further consideration would need to be giving to Blakemore and Choudhury’s (2006) assertion that young learners have difficulty with short-term ‘prospective memory’ (p.301) - so trying to measure the impact of Shakespeare’s stories over a three year time span (Buzan and Dixon, 1978) could be challenging for the students. Finally, this research design could not easily discover any partial connections between those slow, progressive, intangible changes in PSD which have been influenced by the PSD sessions, the Shakespeare input and the contributions of the ‘4 Ps’(Appendix D).

The second method could have been based on the NFER (2003) and CEDAR (Strand, 2008) surveys and focused on the randomly selected informers. During the first and final interviews of each KS3 year, the randomly selected informers could have been given a semi-structured questionnaire in order to explore their developing understanding of the relevance of citizenry issues (NFER), Shakespeare’s stories (CEDAR) - and the impact of said stories on deep understanding of the PSD topics explored. Presenting the questionnaires to the informers twice yearly should partially ameliorate the memory issue

alluded to above, however, the CEDAR questionnaire only became available in March 2008 and would therefore only be of use retrospectively15. And even if a CEDAR-styled questionnaire had been independently devised, Macintyre (2000) notes that such an ‘information gathering exercise’ (p.61) would have been challenging because learners find the concept that ‘knowledge from one subject can inform and enrich another’ (Whitty et al., 1994, p.26) a difficult one to grapple with without extensive dialogic exploration with a facilitator (Reid and Scott, 2005) - and such facilitator-input could skew the spontaneity of the informers’ responses. This second research design would be unlikely to produce any partial connections (Haraway, 1991; Strathern, 1991) between Shakespeare’s stories and the PSD sessions - let alone reveal any influences from the ‘4 Ps’.

A third approach could have been a one-off Y9 questionnaire for all the Y9 students based on the IEA (1999) study and the CEDAR (Strand, 2008) survey, which would examine citizenry learning and the impact of Shakespeare’s stories on deep-understanding of PSD topics during KS3. However, there were a number of concerns about such an approach. It could fail to make partial connections between the impact of the action research, Shakespeare stories and the ‘4 Ps’ (especially as such impact is amorphous, and a timed examination is not conducive to self-reflection). It could offer some information on those students who respond best to knowledge regurgitation under examination conditions (Egan, 1989) and, if memory retention of hard facts is difficult at KS3, self- reflection over a three year period could have been extremely challenging - though the questionnaire could include some open-ended conundrums which might have mitigated

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that concern. Finally, students with study-competence variations could have been disadvantaged - especially those who were more oral than writerly responsive (Saldana, 1996) which could have caused those contributors ‘psychological harm’ (Angrosino and Myas de Perez, 2000, p.690; 3.3) - which would have been hardly ethically sound.

What none of the above research approaches offered was ‘a deeper understanding of the significance of the childhood experience’ (NAGTY, 2007, p.8) in as much detail as possible in order that the impact of the action research could be rigorously explored. The challenge for this researcher was to design the ‘archive’ - that ‘diverse collection of material that enables you to engage with and think about specific research problems or questions’ (Rapley, 2007, p.10) - in such a way as to keeps the informers involved throughout a three year period yet yield, ‘under the microscope’ (Mol, 2002, p.30) of dissemination, depth not breadth of discoveries.

A well designed longitudinal study could enable the researcher to see the informers’ values at the start of the research programme and discern the impact ‘through time’ (Saldana, 2003) of: the researcher’s input, the informers’ biological development (Ibid.) and the ‘4 Ps’ - those ‘critical factors that shape behaviour in virtually every sphere’ (Royce, 2002, p.27). In a longitudinal study Denscombe (2003) makes the case for a ‘grounded theory’ (p.110; Glaser and Strauss, 1967) approach - one in which the researchers and researched do not build on previous work or particular paradigms but jointly enter into a dialogue with their research by developing methodology in parallel with the informers’ emergent biographies (Dick, 2005; Flick, 2007). This would be a less

safe, less structured, less scientific way of conducting research, which demands an open mind by the researcher - for ‘though we should always expect the unexpected when we embark on any long-term project, we should also expect the possibility of change to occur - never a guarantee’ (Saldana, 2003, p.17).

Though the strength of qualitative research is its ability to examine ‘the multiple dimensions of social context and individual human agency in concert with other individual’s human agency’ (Ibid., p.141; Gibbs, 2007), ‘Multi-methods of triangulation’ (Denscombe, 2003, p.131) could be designed to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative research - because both methodologies acknowledge the nonlinearity of developmental pathways and human life trajectories. Through the use of quantitative surveys (NFER and CEDAR) there is an opportunity for discoveries to be seen ‘from different perspectives’ (Denscombe, 2003, p.132) which could add validity, reliability, objectivity and understandings of the research question under investigation in a more ‘rounded and complete fashion than would be the case had the data been drawn from just one method’ (Ibid.)

What a longitudinal study offers is development, or change, through time. If the primary objective of this project is to assess the impact of Shakespeare’s stories on personal and social development, then the methodology needs to factor in time for the informers to develop. This research project has a practical prosocial objective and, though such research might be carefully planned, ‘unexpected opportunities, uncontrollable forces, detours, and revised plans are part of the fieldwork and data analytic process’

(Saldana, 2003, p.15). By the very nature of an experimental participative research project, informers need time, space and freedom to develop citizenry sensibilities at their own individual pace in line with ‘moral reasoning’ development (Kohlberg, 1981) - not simply physical maturation (Piaget, 1977; 2.3). And despite Pettigrew’s (1995) assertion that longitudinal research can be ‘complex and haphazard’ (p.93) and can never accurately predict the future lives of a group of contributors - the aspiration which underpins this research project is succinctly encapsulated by Solomon et al. (2001) when he wrote:

Experimental research can provide information about the conditions likely to produce actions that have the appearance of being altruistic or prosocial (and) such information can lead to a better understanding of the meaning of behaviours and hence of ways to promote moral-prosocial development in schools(p.570. my brackets).

Time is also needed after gathering the archive material (Rapley, 2007) as analysis starts and dialogue begins ‘between fact, observation, concept, proposition and theory’ (Flick, 2007, p.31) which could reveal or, of equally importance, not reveal (Spencer et al., 2003) partial connections between PSD in the informers’ and researcher interventions.

Saldana (2003) asks seven core questions which underpin emergent theory through this analytic and interpretive inquiry. First, ‘What increases or emerges through time?’ (p.99) - what perceptions and responses can be mined from the archive, and in particular the transcripts of the informer interviews, which may suggest some change in their PSD?

Then Saldana (2003) asks, ‘What is cumulative through time?’ (p.103) Saldana (Ibid.) argues that:

...as various social interactions accumulate, accompanied with the natural, physical growth and development of the brain, the constructions of children’s knowledge progresses towards enhanced abilities to perceive, remember, differentiate, conceptualise, abstract, and so on.When it comes to researching children, cumulative development is a combination of ‘body biology and social environment’ (p.106; 2.3).

And though ‘body biological’ growth needs acknowledging when evaluating discoveries, it is the measurement of the ‘development of the brain’ with regard to empathetic moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1981) which exercises this research project because developmental variables are, ‘cumulative’, ‘quantitative’, ‘ephemeral, socially constructed (and) not accessible to precise measurements’ (Saldana, 2003, pp.104, 105, 103. my brackets and emphasis)16.

Saldana (2003) explores ‘What kinds of surges or epiphanies occur through time?’ (p.108) Saldana’s definition of an ‘epiphany’ has no quasi-religious connotation but is to be regarded as ‘a significant event that takes participant change to a different level, direction, or quality’ (Ibid.) This ‘surge’ might not be linear, because life-worlds consist of ‘uneven terrain’ (Royce, 2002) but continuous observations can enable the researcher to contextualise maturation variances. And Saldana (2003) notes that it is not the quantity

16_{The question of how to measure the informers PSD through time will be explored in 3.9 (below), 5.2 and} 5.2.1.

of epiphanies the informer has but the quality which offers credible research - which, of course, needs to be triangulated from both the informer’s perception and by other contributors. Saldana (Ibid.) also asks ‘What decreases or ceases through time?’ (p.101); ‘What remains constant or consistent through time?’ (p.116) and ‘What is idiosyncratic through time?’ (p.117)

Immersion in a longitudinal research project can also reveal apparent “nonchanges” (Saldana, 2003, p.116) through time, for constancy and consistency can indicate either stability or stagnation in cumulative development. It is this researcher’s task to microscopically look at the informers’ archive in order that, through a comparative analysis of past transcripts with current attitudes, imperceptible changes might be revealed. The researcher needs to be aware that in ‘ex post facto research’ (Cohen et al., 2006, p.205), what might appear as a random and idiosyncratic development could, on deeper analysis, be a new pattern in construction. And Eisner (1991) reminds researchers that young people have their own ‘ideas, motives, needs, and feelings about what they want to do and be’ (p.102) - so when a group of learners get together, ‘our ability to predict outcomes becomes even more difficult’ (p.102) because research of adolescents is ‘messy, slippery […] complex, oscillating, and erratic’ (Eisner, 1991, p.119; 2.3).

Finally Saldana (2003) asks, ‘What is missing through time?’ (p.64) Strauss and Corbin (1998) offer two approaches to completing the analytic cycle: first, that analysis is work-in-progress and that ongoing analysis can reveal ‘notable absent’ (p.122) gaps in knowledge which can generate provocative questions in subsequent interviews. The pitfall

to this approach is that there could be an unintentional temptation to weight questions designed to fill such a gap in the researcher’s knowledge, which could affect case study analysis (Way, 1998). The second approach, which could be deemed a riskier modus operandi but more unbiased, leaves analysis till the end of the field work when, at the ‘Final exit interviews’ (Saldana, 2003, p.35), the researcher fills those gaps in knowledge with the informer in order to ‘confirm whether the absence or presence of particular phenomena or data have shaped their (the informers) course of action (or non-action) across time’ (Ibid., p.124. my brackets). As has already been noted the disadvantage of taking this course is that time past can dulls recollection in young learners (OECD, 2002, p.7, f/n 69) - and, as with the first approach, questions aimed at filling gaps in knowledge could be deemed self-serving for the researcher.

At the end of a longitudinal study Saldana (2003) offers two higher-order analytical and interpretive questions which could help understand the discoveries and go beyond ‘how much, in what way, and why’ (p.157) to a deeper understanding of the impact of the researcher interventions and remove potential researcher-bias (above). The first question is ‘What are/were the participant’s rhythms (phases, stages, cycles) through time?’ (p.141) Researchers might find ‘serial, cumulative, or repetitive actions embedded within a longitudinal research project’ (Ibid.). There is a need to look for partial connections (Haraway, 1991; Strathern, 1991) between the informers’ PSD and researcher interventions which have impact, beyond a ‘phase’ - a short term anomaly or deviation; beyond a ‘stage’ - a growth period which is either physical or cognitive; to a ‘cycle’ - a

repetitive waves of clustered actions by the informer (Hargreaves, 2001 cited in Saldana, 2003, pp.142, 143, 145).

And the second question is ‘How meaningful is the change - and which changes interrelate through time?’ (Saldana, 2003, p.134) This is a very subjective question which has to be addressed with rigour and complexity if analysis is to be ‘trustworthy’ (Stringer, 2007, p.57). In final analysis, the researcher’s primary objective is to attempt to weave the possible interrelationships embodied in the primary research question, through ‘logic, common sense, life experience, intuition, and - first and foremost - good data’ (Saldana, 2003, p.134).

Two reflections: Saldana’s (2003) dissemination of longitudinal research suggests that the resultant archive will be large, and though personal development is an elusive phenomenon to abstract into transferable theory, a longitudinal study could generate a great deal of credible evidence (Spencer et al., 2003). Drawing on my life experience of text analysis (1.2), the transcripts of the case studies might reveal clusters of motifs - a single word, a phrase, even a sentence which describes and/or interprets change in the informers PSD through time - and which might be partially connectable to the action research.

My second reflection is on a concern that has vexed me throughout the action research. Schwandt (2000) drew my attention to the issue that, during longitudinal research, I have to factor in the potentiality of my being oppressively omnipresent. And though the final discoveries could have resonance for pupils and pedagogues alike, the ethical question that comes to the fore is: ‘Could a longitudinal study be deemed to be a greater imposition on the informers than other research methods?’ And if so, should I, for ethical reasons, adopt a quicker, less intrusive method than say thrice-yearly home interviews?

I have to remind myself continually of the three criteria formulated by McCorm (1973) for research studies: ‘ONE: The means used will not cause more harm than necessary to achieve the value17. TWO: No less harmful way exists at present to perfect the value. And THREE: The means used to achieve the value will not undermine it’ (cited inAngrosino, 2000, p.693). And only if I can honestly affirm each of these questions on an ongoing basis throughout the planned four year study can I ethically start down this long research road.

With McCorm’s (1973) criteria in mind, ethical issues need to be briefly revisited.

17 _{For McCorm (1973), ‘value’ means, ‘the hidden moral question(s) embedded in the research’ (cited in}