6.2.1 Setting
The pilot study took place on Thursday 9th July 2015 with a class of 30 Y6 pupils at Smalltown Community School. It was a class I had worked with before and knew well. The aim of the pilot Story Tent day was to explore the viability of using SR with primary pupils and to test out the tools and methods planned in the research design. I chose to present the story of Noah from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith tradition, and structured the Intervention in a series of four sessions spread over a single classroom day.
6.2.2 Trial Questionnaire
I initially wanted to gain a baseline assessment for the pupils participating in the research. Pupils were asked to complete a questionnaire which was based on the ten ICC outlined in the AIE. I chose to use a five-point Likert scale to gauge the positive or negative
agree, 2 agree, 3 not sure, 4 disagree, 5 strongly disagree.). The questionnaire was completed at the start of the day and then again at the end to explore the impact of the Intervention. Questions were phrased using clear, positive, unambiguous statements: for example, “I find it easy to listen to the ideas of others with respect.” The pupils circled one of the numbers on the Likert scale between 1 and 5 to indicate their response. The pupils’ initial engagement with the questionnaire suggested that it was too complex and needed to be revised before the Autumn Intervention. The format of the questionnaire was too text- based and appeared to be more complicated than necessary. The pupils also struggled with the concept of the Likert scale, in some cases even completing it in reverse presuming that 1 meant strongly disagree and 5 meant strongly agree. I realised I had assumed a left to right orientation which had caused some confusion. We decided that a future questionnaire did not need to consider all the competences and would focus on a smaller selection of competences, bearing in mind that other assessment tools were also being used to broaden the range of observations.
6.2.3 Trial Self-Assessment Sheet
The self-assessment sheet required pupils to reflect on their attitudes and skills at the end of each of the three taught sessions. Pupils were asked to reflect on their learning and to rate how well they felt they were demonstrating ICC on a scale of 1 – 10. The attitudes assessed were Respect, Openness and Curiosity; and skills assessed were Discovering, Relating and Interpreting information. The group facilitators supported their pupils during these self-assessments. The pupils also had the opportunity to reflect on one aspect of the session that they wanted to remember to further embed their learning. Overall, this assessment process was well received, and the pupils were able to reflect and discuss their learning in small groups and complete the self-assessment independently.
This tool was helpful in that it not only provided space for reflexive learning but also maintained a focus on the ICC as a core part of the learning.
6.2.4 Trial Reflections
At the end of the Intervention day we asked the pupils to reflect on the day’s activities
and consider which aspects had gone well and which could be improved. From these written comments I became aware that the pupils felt that the first session was too long and had too much listening with new information to remember. During the second session, the pupils perceived the drama and storytelling activities as very effective with almost all the pupils recalling this as one of the best parts of the day. During the third session I was impressed with the depth of insight and religious literacy the pupils were exhibiting and felt frustrated that this had not been captured for further detailed analysis. I decided to record and transcribe this session to further explore how pupils
demonstrated ICC competences through interactions with each other. At the end of this pilot Intervention, I had given the pupils the opportunity to ask any remaining
unanswered questions. Although this had not originally been part of the Intervention, it was clear from the pupils’ engagement with the research team that such an opportunity was helpful. I decided that future iterations should incorporate this aspect as it provided an extended opportunity for pupils to further develop and demonstrate their ICC, and to resolve any unanswered questions.
6.2.5 Trial Adult Reflections
During the pilot Intervention the research team kept a record of observed ICC on a formatted sheet. I hoped that this would be an aide memoire to focus attention and document the behaviours taking place during the Intervention. This however proved to be difficult to complete whilst maintaining the teaching programme. Instead, the team decided to use the time spent with the pupils to engage fully with the facilitation process
and then reflect afterwards in an informal semi-structured group interview. I subsequently analysed a transcription of this interview to obtain data on team observations.
6.2.6 Data Collection Revisions
As a consequence of the findings from the pilot study several revisions were made to the data collection process. I developed a more age appropriate questionnaire which focused on the attitudinal competences of Respect, Openness, Curiosity and the skills of
Discovering, Relating and Interpreting. A simple set of six questions were presented with a visual rather than numeric representation on a five-point Likert scale.
Instead of using written observations the research team decided we would review each session at the end through an informal interview session to reflect on the research questions. This review was recorded and later transcribed to record the adult observations of how the pupils were responding to the Intervention.
I chose to keep the self-assessment sheet the same. It had been well received by the pupils, acting not only as a useful teaching tool, but also provided a significant amount of data on pupils’ perceptions of their learning.
The pilot Intervention revealed an unexpected depth of religious literacy during the afternoon session. We decided that one of the five groups from this activity should be recorded and transcribed to provide evidence of ICC worked out in practice, and that the pupils from this group would take part in a follow up AIE interview the day after the Intervention. I did not trial the AIE interview at the pilot school as it was a tool I had experience of using during my MA.
This information formed the basis of a case study folder for each of the pupils
session and the adult observations were all entered into Atlas.ti; a computer assisted qualitative data analysis software program (CAQDAS) which provided a systematic database to process the coding analysis of the transcripts. This enabled some standardising of codes to ensure there was consistency across the transcripts.