Methods used for data collection

4.5 Gathering the data

4.5.3 Methods used for data collection

A researcher whose objective is ethnographic description of classroom activity needs to attend, capture and transcribe multilayered, multivoiced and chronotopic features of the system, in terms of how, by whom, mediated by what tools, and when and where actions are uttered and done. Aligned to and sometimes distinct from spoken and written discourse, movements, gestures and expressions play critical roles in signalling power struggles over agency. This evidence of counteraction may well offer innovative means by which teaching and learning processes need to change, and, most importantly, how collective action towards a shared objective might be repaired and regained (Reed, 2008, p. 204).

Qualitative data collection methods were chosen to reflect the complex and multimodal nature of interactions. Qualitative methods ‘aim to reveal the nature, patterns, and quality’ of interactions (Mercer, 2010, p. 6). Field notes, interviews, audio-visual

recording and informal conversations all contributed to gathering data for analysis. One criteria for the evaluation of research proposed by Silverman (2001) is that methods of research are appropriate to the nature of the question(s) being asked (p. 222). Therefore, I have used methods which enabled me to explore the activities, motives and intentions of the participants closely and over an extended period of time in different activity settings.

Participant observation

Observational methods are used as a means to describe content and context of the activities and interactions in which participants engage (Tudge and Hogan, 2005;

Silverman, 2001). ‘When researchers observe a class or group of students working together, the interaction observed is located within a particular historical, institutional, and cultural context. Students and teachers have relationships with histories, which shape the fluid process of classroom interaction’ (Mercer, 2010, p. 5). My methodological approach was also inter-relational in that it paid close attention to how children behaved and reacted to the actions of others and the physical environment (Tudge and Hogan, 2005). Dunn (2005) argues that naturalistic observations ‘provide invaluable evidence on children’s real-life experiences and their reaction to those experiences’ (p. 87). Rather than systematic observation which is used to provide quantitative data on interactions for analysis (Mercer, 2010), this study used participative observation methods to provide qualitative data about children’s experiences in both the classroom and Forest School settings (Robson, 2011b). This method involves entering ‘into the institutional practice where a child spends his or her daily life and, by thoroughly participating in the child's activity settings, making records about the child's interaction with other participants, focusing especially on the child's intentional acts’ (Hedegaard, 2018, pp. 3-4).

Each session of fieldwork lasted for at least 1.5 hours (the length of a Forest School session). Wachs (1985 cited in Pellegrini et al., 2004, p. 100) recommends a minimum of

1.5 hours per observation for field observations. Observations within the classroom were undertaken in shorter bursts, according to the children’s schedule; in general, I stayed for a whole morning, a whole afternoon or a whole day, taking breaks for lunch to organise and write up field notes, having coffee with teaching staff in the staff room, or watching play on the yard at break time and chatting with teaching staff.

Pellegrini et al. (2004) assert that participant observers ‘want to be considered as part of the natural setting’ (pp. 96-97); while I did help both children and staff while undertaking fieldwork in order to contribute and be less intrusive, I found that children as well as adults were obviously aware of my presence, since I had a unique role in each setting and was not there every day. For instance, children often sought my attention which they did not necessarily do with the regular staff, indicating that although I came regularly,

perhaps I was still a novelty – and I had cameras, paper and pens, which several of the children wanted to use, look at or talk about. Therefore, it was necessary to use what Corsaro (2005) refers to as a reactive or semi-participant approach to observation for the fieldwork: the researcher only participates when approached by children, in order to gain insight into children’s cultures from their perspectives. Corsaro (2005) describes the role of the successful ethnographer in children’s cultures as ‘an atypical adult’ (p. 6), as contrasted with ‘typical adults’, who are ‘primarily active and controlling in their

interactions’ with children (p. 9). The children often solicited me to join in their play as I was observing them at play. I used discretion in doing so, needing to approach each instance by weighing up whether I needed to focus on my own goals for the session (more likely by the end of the field work). The benefit of an ethnographic approach is that joining in is not to be discouraged in fieldwork as it can contribute to building

relationships and gaining further insights into participants’ experiences (Hedegaard and Fleer, 2008). However, the researcher also needs to maintain boundaries and focus on the aims of the research (Robson, 2011a).

Additionally, the researcher has a dialectical relationship with the participants in what Hedegaard (2008d) refers to as the ‘double-ness of the researcher in the research situation’ (p. 205). She argues that this means researchers should take reflexivity ‘one step further’ and attempt to develop an awareness of how the researcher’s role straddles both participation in the research setting as well as analysis of fieldwork data (Hedegaard, 2008d, pp. 205-206). An articulation of how the researcher contributes to the activities being observed, influences activity and communicates with the participants is an essential component of the dialectic-interpretive approach used in this study. Indeed, during the last phase of the fieldwork when I needed to get interviews with particular children in order to complete my fieldwork before the end of term, I often needed to explain to some children that I was unable to help them, i.e., draw unicorns, and refer to my aim for the day. I felt that this contributed to the overtness of my role as a researcher in the classroom.

82 Interviews

This study attempts to explore the positioning of the individual child within the environment without losing ‘the voice of the child’ (Fleer and Quiñones, 2009, p. 89).

While informal as well as semi-structured interviews were utilised with adults (primarily audio-recorded in order to be transcribed and reviewed later), many informal

conversations with children also took place and contributed to field notes, rather than being recorded audio-visually.

In order to more formally interview the children and also to provide a way to ensure assent, I set up ‘interview sessions’ with children in the school setting. These sessions were scheduled during ‘free play’ time and were an option that children could choose to participate in. They could also come and go as they chose. On these occasions, I

provided a table upon which I had large pieces of flipchart paper and felt tip pens; on others, I had my laptop set up at a table with video clips and photographs I had taken of the classroom and Forest School activities. Sometimes, the table contained both. In these sessions, I asked the children if I could record using the iPhone, or record audio-visually using the video setting on the camera. In sessions with children for whom English was an Additional Language, the Polish speaking teaching assistant was also present.

When there were groups of children, the audio-visual recording allowed me to record their peer interactions as well as their intra-actions with the art materials and the laptop, thus contributing to further collected data.

Toward the end of my field work, when I had specific episodes that I wanted to interview particular children about, I arranged with the teacher that these children would be asked if they wanted to come to a staff room, located outside the classroom, or to the empty dinner hall to watch video episodes of themselves and their play and be interviewed.

Again, they were able to come and go as they pleased as it was located next to the classroom.

Also in the final stages of the fieldwork, I asked children and adults (parents, teaching staff and Forest School leaders) to view video-recorded episodes and comment upon them in order to gain further perspectives for my later interpretations and analysis.

These comments and discussions that ensued were recorded, with consent/assent, and later transcribed to become part of the interview data gathered. The children’s viewings of their photographs and video-recordings contributed to the first stages of analysis and provided insights that framed subsequent interview sessions with adults. In this sense, the children contributed to the interpretive analysis, thus demonstrating how children’s

‘accounts… can be integral in giving a place for starting fine-grained analysis and close examination’ of data collected (Theobald, 2012, p. 36).

Therefore, these viewings and subsequent transcriptions are used as a dual data source:

both observation and interview. The interaction between the participant(s) and the taped episode is considered in relation to the video episode, but also in relation to the

interaction with the researcher and with peers who may have been in the interview

room. Indeed, the word interview itself suggests that there is an interactive process to looking at something, either concrete or abstract, together.

Children’s drawings, writing and mark making

Knight et al. (2016) assert that ‘alternative educational research processes and tools’, such as collaborative drawing, are inclusive and socially just methods which are ‘highly receptive’ to the diverse ways in which children communicate (p. 323). During classroom fieldwork, children were invited to come to sit with me at a table in the classroom upon which sheets of paper and felt tips were placed. Collaborative and independent drawing, or other work that the children wanted to do – this often involved grilling me in forming letters of the alphabet and how to spell – could take place as what I called the ‘interview station’. I audio-visually recorded our conversations and their interactions with each other and with the drawing materials, with their assent. On occasion, this table was set up in the school cafeteria or in a second staff room (in an underused wing of the building by the reception year classroom, which was useful to minimise disruptions), in order to have the laptop out and they could watch the videos that I took of them while they were drawing and interacting; they were able to come and go from the ‘interview station’ to class as they chose.

Children’s drawings were also used in the data collection in the outdoor environment, although this methodological tool was not initially planned for my outdoor data

collection. When I had my notebook out to take field notes, one girl in particular wanted to write and draw as well. The following week I brought a few extra notebooks and pens in so that I could provide for those children who were wanting to write and draw, using tools like mine. I continued to do this throughout the fieldwork. The first child in

particular regularly wanted her specific notebook and pen each week, which contributed to the data collection in that it instigated communication between us. I also showed her that I had taken a photograph of her work to be used in my research ‘to keep and use’, and she kept the original. She had development delays in language as well as not having English as a first language. The notebook became an important tool for our

communication and the drawing was used to ‘make visible children’s thinking and meaning-making’ (Knight et al., 2016, p. 333). In order to use these drawings and emergent writing as data, I asked the children if I could take a photo of their work or of them drawing and writing in order to gain assent.

Audio-video recording and still photographs

I used a Canon camera for audio-visual recording and photographs, as well as an iPhone and iPad. An iPhone worked well for audio-recording interviews with adults, while the camera was useful to audio-record interviews with children as they were very active during interviews, so their body language and gestures were of interest. Both the Canon camera and the iPhone were useful for capturing informal interview data with adults, i.e, when we were talking while I was filming children at play. I would ask if they minded that I was filming the children’s activities as well as recording our conversations. This was

successful in gathering their comments, and thus perspectives, on activity that we were observing together while it was occurring, as well as interview data that was unrelated to the simultaneously occurring activity. This use of audio-visual recording provided multiple means of data collection in that I was able to have an informal interview taped at the same time as an event sequence of the children.

The Canon had a better zoom lens than the iPhone, so I used it most often to be less obtrusive. However, the children were used to being filmed with iPhones and iPads by the teaching staff in the classroom, so those means of filming and recording may have been less novel, and therefore, less distracting, for them. For instance, several times a few wanted to use my camera, but no one asked to use my iPhone. After the pilot study, I did not use the iPad or the GoPros again. All of the filmed and recorded data were

uploaded to computer and saved to a hard drive immediately following the fieldwork session, and was then stored in a locked filing cabinet. After uploading to the hard drive, these data were deleted from recording devices.

All of the audio-visual recording devices I used had screens so that I was able to show children what I had filmed and photographed, so that they could see themselves

immediately if they asked. Over time, they were less concerned and waited until we had our “movie presentation” sessions on the classroom whiteboard or our individual or small group sessions to see themselves and each other.

I used the audio-video recording to capture what Silfver, Sjöberg, and Bagger (2013) refer to as ‘subtle events’ (p. 12), i.e., body language and tone, as well as action, wider events and context. It was particularly useful later to be able to go over and over a particular sequence of events and look for more and more detail in the detailed analysis stages.

Fleer (2008) asserts that within the cultural-historical tradition of researching children’s development, the researcher is not attempting to ‘capture everything they see’ on video-recording (p. 106). Instead, the intent is to document the ‘dynamic and changing nature of the social situations in which the children are located’ and the child’s motives, goals and intentions within everyday activities in order ‘to focus on the child’s perspective’

within institutional practices (Ibid.). While video technology allows the researcher to capture events in order to later repeatedly observe what might only been seen once if not captured on film, Walsh et al., (2007) warn that the researcher must be aware that there always will be events and contexts and action that have not been recorded and are, therefore, outside of the researcher’s attention. Yet, my analysis of events benefited from what my supervisor called my ‘data hoard’ (Waters, pers. comm. 12 May 2017) in that I was able to piece together what happened prior to and immediately after events of conflict that I filmed. Because I was taking multiple snapshots and filming periodically, I was able to piece together later what activities were taking place before and after the episode of conflict, which gave further insight from an interpretive whole child

perspective.

Einarsdóttir (2007) asserts that methods such as photographs and drawings alone provide

‘limited information’; it is the ‘interviews and discussion with the children and their interpretations of the pictures and explanations’ that prove to be ‘essential’ (p. 203).

Therefore, the audio-visual recordings and the photographs taken during the fieldwork were used to stimulate more data gathering in interview sessions with participants using photographic and video stimulated interviews as an additional method, described below.

In the pilot study, I tried to use Go-Pro cameras to capture the ‘child’s perspective’. What I gained from this is that children enjoy playing with the settings on the cameras, thus distorting the images captured; and that watching the footage later made me suffer from motion sickness. I then encountered Hedegaard’s methodology which demonstrated that there were other ways to also consider the perspective of the child, rather than asking them to use the camera themselves. As Rautio (2013, p. 396) argues:

It is quite possible to consider, however, that children, like any beings, might not need support in encountering the world and expressing to others something of these encounters – this takes place anyway, all the time. Children might not need adults to provide them with equipment and allocate special spaces and time for participation. They might need an adult to take seriously the things and actions with which they encounter their worlds anyway: say, things called toys (Woodyer 2008), or stones.

Nevertheless, to contribute to the process of interpreting children’s perspectives, I did provide structured opportunities to gather children’s input, namely by using video-stimulated interviews.

Video-stimulated interviews

The viewing by participants of the researcher’s audio-visual data is increasingly

recognised as a useful methodological tool. It can be useful for several different reasons:

to encourage participants to remember their thought processes during an event, to reflect upon their activities, and/or to provide an account of particular events and to engage in conversation with the interviewer or others about an event or episode of filmed interactions (Lyle, 2003; Silfver, Sjöberg, and Bagger, 2013; Theobald, 2012, 2017a;

Tanner et al., 2011). Literature on methodology distinguishes between three methods using video-stimulated dialogue: video-stimulated recall, video-stimulated reflection, and video-stimulated accounts, all of which have subtle, yet distinctive, differences. The difference particularly relevant for this study lies within the researcher’s intentions and purpose for using the method. Stimulated recall (SR), and its off-shoot video-stimulated recall dialogue, is a method most commonly employed in studies which ‘necessitate a technique with which to investigate cognitive processes such as decision-making’ (Lyle, 2003, p. 862).

Stimulated reflection, too, is used within psychological and educational research; its intention is to provide the opportunity for the research participant to reflect upon his/her

practice or activity in order for the researcher to explore the participant’s metacognition and metacognitive awareness (Tanner et al., 2011). Its use is particularly valuable for communicating with education research participants about their beliefs, self-perceptions, and self-regulation (Ibid.).

A third use of video-stimulated dialogue is referred to as video-stimulated accounts (VSA) by Pomerantz (2005) and Theobald (2012, 2017a). Video-stimulated accounts are

comparable to semi-structured interviews in which open-ended questions by the researcher provide opportunity to explore both topics of interest to the researcher as well as matters of interest to the participant (Theobald, 2017a). Indeed, some of the video-stimulated interview sessions with children were more similar to unstructured interviews in that our conversation was triggered by the photos and videos that they wished to watch; I gave them access to the laptop screen to pick out photographs and videos that they were interested in, in addition to asking them to watch particular ones I

In document Exploring young children’s participation and motive orientation in the classroom and at forest school (Page 94-102)