Reflections

The willingness and commitment of my participants should be acknowledged. The participants were open and forthcoming about their experiences and willing to engage with questions that were not always easy or comfortable to answer.

6.3.1 Research design and implementation

Conducting and analysing so many research interviews while also in full-time employment was challenging. However, conducting multiple interviews with the same participants revealed developments in the participants' thinking, and I was able to revisit items of interest from previous interviews. The multiple interviews also enabled the establishment of trust and a productive relationship with each participant, as well as developing my practice as a researcher. As a novice researcher, during the interviews I noticed sometimes a difference between what I

thought my questions would elicit and how the students interpreted them. Often the open nature of the questions had the effect I wanted of encouraging the participants to 'think aloud'; at other times the questions caused confusion and I had to re-phrase them into a more closed form. Sometimes participants provided detailed answers to subtly different questions from the ones I thought I was asking.

The subject knowledge diagrams proved to be a useful tool for structuring the individual interviews and for providing a scaffold for the participants to construct their ideas. The use of post-its during the focus groups had a similar positive effect of providing an artefact around which the group participants organised their discussions. I intend to explore the use of such graphical tools in future research.

The reliance on individual interviews as the primary data collection approach perhaps did limit the insights that could be developed. I have justified use of this approach in chapter 3 and I maintain that much of interest and value was collected during the interviews. Time and logistical

constraints influenced my data collection design, but I also recognise that boundaries have to be placed around any research and methodological choices are driven by pragmatism as much as research ideology. I would now try and make greater use of focus groups as a tool. Time and space has been a constraining factor in their use during this project. I am keen to explore further the potential for making use of the interaction of a focus group (Belzile and Oberg, 2012;

Wilkinson, 2011) to explore how participants conceive of subject knowledge.

There are two further changes I would make. First, I would also collect data from physics- background PGCE students about their conceptualisations of subject knowledge. This would provide some additional context in which to place SKE subject knowledge diagrams, at the risk of diluting my original aim of exploring the SKE students experiences rather than conducting a comparative study. Second, I would consider making greater use of a participant validation approach, where I would share with each participant the individual accounts I created for chapter 4. This would enable additional data to be collected in the form of the participants'

6.3.2 M y positionality

I discussed in chapter 3 issues of my status as an insider-researcher (Sikes and Potts, 2008). One of the challenges I experienced during this research was dealing with the change in my status during data collection from being a course tutor researching his own students (cohort 1), to a former course tutor researching some former students (cohort 1 during their PGCE year) and some 'new' students (cohort 2). This change was unavoidable as a result of me leaving Albion University. In some respects, the change was positive, in that it addressed a tension I experienced about researching some of my own students who I had responsibility for as a tutor. I noticed that I felt more at ease with continuing to collect data from cohort 1 during their PGCE year/when I was no longer based in Albion University or involved with the SKE course. My former-insider

knowledge proved invaluable in making sense of many of the participants' responses. With cohort 2, recruitment of participants was more problematic than with cohort 1 because I had very little opportunity to build a relationship with that group of SKE students so that they might feel 'safe' with volunteering for this research. I tried to pay close attention during data collection and analysis to any signs that my status influenced the participants' responses or behaviour. I recognise that it is unrealistic to conclude that my insider status had no influence on the

participants. I have already commented, for example, that the participants appeared to be more willing to verbalise criticisms of the SKE course to me while in the relative safety of the focus groups than they were individually. However, some unprompted criticisms were voiced during the individual interviews, and my impression was that all of the participants felt able to share their thoughts about the course and about peers (evidenced by participants' comments about relationships and experiences with peers and other tutors, which I have kept confidential). I am wary of overstating the positionality problem to the extent of concluding that the research should not have been carried out. I contend that some useful and valuable insights have been generated, and I am mindful of the warning from Miles and Huberman (1994) not to "inflate the potential problem; you are not really such an important presence in the lives of these people" (p.266). Clearly, this research is open to criticism because of my place in it, but I am confident that I took

as much account of this as was reasonably possible during data collection and analysis, while also making effective use of my insider knowledge of the research setting.

6.3.3 Implications fo r my practice

Conducting this research has raised my awareness and understanding of several aspects of my practice. During my work with PGCE students I had always seen part of my role as to model pedagogical practice to student teachers. One of the lessons for me from this research is the importance of being aware of the messages I communicate about pedagogical practice and the subject of physics to all ITE students. When working with SKE students I need to pay attention to their prior experiences as learners, and create time and opportunity for them to make explicit their personal learning histories of physics how those histories might inform their practice as physics teachers. In my role as a teacher educator I am continuing to explore the implications of viewing the students as a community of practice and in particular, my role as a broker of connections between the communities of pre-service and in-service teachers. As a result of this research, I have already incorporated reciprocal peer learning into my work with ITE students. In my other role as a novice educational researcher I am developing my membership of the

community of practice of education academics as I negotiate new meanings about educational knowledge. I have learned the value of exploring in depth individuals' experiences of an educational setting and some of the pros and cons of a wide range of research methods.