Methods of research Year 1: Diary notes

The research diary is a valuable research instrument when there is a need to report behaviour. It is a recording form seen in action research together with research logs and field notes (Newbury, 2001) but also a research tool seen in medicine and health care (Broderick et al, 2003; Elliott, 1997; Stopka et al, 2004; Thomas, 2007), domestic labor (Craig, 2006), language learning (Rao and Liu, 2011), and psychology, sociology and social geography (Hislop et al, 2005). Its distinct nature of reporting is based on the fact that it presents evidence in a non-linear way, in a ‘halting time-line’ trying to

‘capture the real inner drama’ of research (Kaplan cited in Marshall and Rossman, 1995:15) and to ‘add detail about a person’s experiences to research’ (Worth, 2009). Diary notes are meant to record observations, thoughts and questions and they are distinguished into two types, the ‘event-based’ (entries describing an event at the time it

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occurred), and the ‘time-based’ (entries describing all events happening within a regular time period) (Levesque, 2011:692).

Diaries report an experience or event close to the time it happened. Therefore, memory relates to factual information, something that adds to the reliability of the method. In contrast, retrospective reporting (narrating a past event much later in time) usually offers a reconstructed account of the past (Eisenhower, Mathiowetz and Morganstein, 1991) under the influence of the personality and mood of the person recalling the past event (Goodwin and Sher, 1993).

I kept a diary on a weekly basis. It was considered a ‘research diary’ aiming at collecting qualitative information about the process of personalisation in class (‘time- based’). Its notes proved valuable to capture events at their happening time (Mechanic, 1989; Verbrugge, 1980), to record routines (Pavis, Masters and Cunningham-Burley, 1996), and - used in a reflective mode - to develop questionnaires and interviews

afterwards (Corti, 1993; Silverman, 1996; Zimmerman and Wieder, 1977). Basically, the diary method was not used for generalisation reasons but for its potential to extract essential information out of raw data (Ely et al, 1991).

I had a specific format that I followed in diary data collection which seemed to reflect its essentially ethnographic nature, the focus being more on organising than categorising the note-taking work (Sanjek, 1990; Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 1995). I made rough notes within the period of a school week; they were notes-as-reminders, verbatim when possible, which I expanded into fieldnotes within the same day I happened to take them. I kept them coded (by date) in an electronic form for easy retrieval and safety reasons. The notes were brief, reflective pieces of writing which described, and raised questions about particular events or processes happening in class. It was my recording

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means of observing something at its beginning (i.e. of the intervention of personalised learning), which neither I nor my students were familiar with.

For this reason, the diary had an ‘open’ format (Corti, 1993; Elliott, 1997), that is, I had a rough plan of what to look at. I only focused on four areas, which were about the following:

 how my students and I felt about in relation to collaborative work (group roles, group dynamics, group emotional life), argumentative processes (negotiation skills), learning tasks (explicit objectives, challenge, clear information about success) and assessment procedures (feedback, summative and formative assessment) (e.g. Diary Notes Y1/November, no.4a; Chapter 5, p.161).

 ideas about what the cause of the problem was in relation to collaborative work (group roles, group dynamics, group emotional life), argumentative processes (negotiation skills), learning tasks (explicit objectives, challenge, clear

information about success) and assessment procedures (feedback, summative and formative assessment) (e.g. Diary Notes Y1/November, no.5a, 5b; Chapter 5, p. 162)

 what actions were in relation to collaborative work (group roles, group dynamics, group emotional life), argumentative processes (negotiation skills), learning tasks (explicit objectives, challenge, clear information about success) and assessment procedures (feedback, summative and formative assessment) (e.g. Diary Notes Y1/November, no.5d; Chapter 5, p. 164)

 how the actions seemed to affect the class and me in relation to collaborative work (group roles, group dynamics, group emotional life), argumentative

processes (negotiation skills), learning tasks (explicit objectives, challenge, clear information about success) and assessment procedures (feedback, summative and formative assessment) (e.g. Diary Notes Y1/January, no.8; Chapter 5, p. 172)

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The research diary was seen as ‘the melting pot’ for all the different ingredients of a research project - prior experience, observations, readings and ideas (Newbury, 2001:3), and as ‘the vehicle of ordered creativity’ (Schatzman and Strauss, 1973:105). In this sense, the research diary worked as a ‘mirror’ (Clayton and Thorne, 2000:1520) reflecting matters prior to, during and after data collection. Accordingly, the diary notes helped me to take in issues which were ‘at the back of [my] mind’ and ‘lay behind normal behavior’ (Elliott, 1997). For instance, by studying the notes later during Y1, I noticed how group dynamics in class developed (e.g. Diary Notes, Y1/November, no.4b; Chapter 5, p.170)

I started with a personal diary as a data collection method. Every event put down in it was titled and details of the incidents followed. No further data analysis was done. Yet, diary keeping is an improbable task if the diary keeper does not invest

considerable time and effort in writing it, or does not find this kind of writing comfortable enough (Stone et al, 2002). In this research study it was easy to decide on the method of diary keeping (Sheridan, 1993:35) as I was a person with a predisposition to keeping and collecting items.

A diary is a notebook where often sensitive data is kept. As such, it should not be read by others. For this reason, I coded the children’s and their parents’ names, and treated the diary data with much confidentiality (see Appendix, Various 11, Ethical Approval

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