Complementaria: es aquella en la cual la biblioteca apoya y colabora con las diferentes áreas curriculares proporcionando sobre todo recursos informativos y ayudando a cumplir los objetivos de una o varias áreas Es decir que

From the outset of the data collection, preliminary analysis began. In the first instance, it was relatively informal and involved familiarising myself with the taped interviews while I waited for the transcriptions to be completed. As I listened I asked questions such as “what is the participant saying here?” and “what is the participant’s perspective on things?” and “what meaning does the participant ascribe to events and activities?” In the process of engaging with the data in this way, I was struck by how often my own perspectives and views kept coming to the fore. Stepping back from the analysis and

trying to bring the participants forward was a conscious process and enabled me to acknowledge some key beliefs or expectations that were not being borne out by the data. For example, one outcome of this initial engagement with data was to re-orient subsequent interviews away from a more exclusive focus on teaching career towards a greater emphasis on early life and experiences and their impact on the development of music leadership practice.

My initial expectation was that detailed content analysis (Berg, 2007) would underpin the overall analysis process, but my early efforts at such detailed data-splitting had the effect of reducing the data to units of meaning that failed to represent what I interpreted as the more subtle and finely-nuanced character of the transcripts and observation notes. Instead, as the data collection progressed, I undertook a form of open coding (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003) in which I identified key themes that threaded through the interview transcripts and observation notes. This process was consistent with what Saldana

(2009) described as ‘first cycle coding methods’ of descriptive and structural coding and together they contributed to refining and reducing the overall data set. In addition, I experimented with different interpretations of single narrative-like sections of data, as well as excerpts of data grouped around particular ideas or concepts and taken from a range of interview transcripts. Familiarisation with the data was ongoing throughout the data collection process and was facilitated by limiting the number of ‘active’

participants, those who were at some point in the interview and observation cycle, to two or three at any one time.

The use of analytic memos was an invaluable tool for identifying the key messages of the research. The following research diary entry, written in late 2008, provides an example of the shifts in thinking that came about through studied and prolonged examination of the data:

It has suddenly occurred to me that my whole orientation to this research has been in terms of the marginalised space that music occupies in the curriculum. To some extent this is true and it can certainly be eloquently argued if that is the purpose of some writing or research. However this research is about

discovering the ‘space’ in which teachers work and to allow them to talk about that space. This is in the nature of a blinding flash for me.

This section represented an occasion in which I consciously attempted to reorient myself, hermeneutically, towards the teachers’ interpretations of the discussion content, rather than fit it into my pre-existing frame of reference:

I have listened, read, thought with the ‘marginal space’ blinkers on. I certainly don’t wish to avoid this discussion because I am passionate about forging a new space for music – and this can become part of the discussion. So once I have analysed the ‘spaces’ for music, I can make a case for an enlarged or enriched space. However I need to hear what teachers are saying about the ‘spaces’ in which they work as music leaders. These are some of the questions that the data can answer:

What are some of these spaces? Physical? Emotional? Temporal? How are they negotiated?

Who has control in these spaces? What respect is there for these spaces?

Have they changed over the years? In relation to curriculum changes?

Following the above entry, I completed some exploratory writing about the significance of varied spaces to participants. Then came the realisation that I was attempting to impose an organising theme onto data that fitted more naturally within a different thematic structure. For example, the concept of emotional space emerged in relation to a whole range of roles, responsibilities and experience such as how to deal with

performance expectations placed on school music leaders, and the emotional investment made in supporting children with special learning needs’ membership of extra-curricular music groups. Likewise, temporal space was raised in relation to such diverse issues as the time required to arrange parts for instrumental ensembles, how the participant negotiated with the principal and other staff to schedule school singing at a more appropriate time of day, and how to organise the time available for lunchtime choir rehearsals.

Another diary entry illustrates how familiarising myself with the data contributed to the kind of intuitive leaps to which Harry, Sturges and Klinger (2005) referred. One teacher’s comment about the difficulty of focusing on the effectiveness and shape of a rehearsal while one’s head is buzzing with everything else that needs to be remembered, resonated with other participants’ comments and my own observations.

As I went through Sue’s transcripts last night I was struck by the conversation we had following the Middle School choir practice. We talked about the pace of the rehearsal and I commented that it flowed very well and seemed to move at just the right pace to keep the children focused and motivated. Sue was

pleasantly surprised and pleased to get that feedback. She commented that she wants the sessions to be relaxed and to move not too fast and not too slow but that it’s difficult to gauge how that’s going because her own head is so full of ideas and things she has to remember and impressions and noting stuff that needs to be worked on…

In the above passage, the teacher identified a range of matters that she attended to during choir practices: maintaining a relaxed atmosphere; keeping the practice moving at an appropriate pace; listening for what is happening in the singing and considering what that might mean for later rehearsals; remembering the ideas that occur to her while the singing is happening. I reflected on the busyness and complexity of the practice and related it to a well-known analogy.

I was reminded of the story of the duck gliding across the lake – smoothly moving over the water with no ripples and no apparent energy being expended. Look beneath the surface though and it’s a completely different story – the duck’s feet are paddling furiously in order to maintain the momentum and keep moving forward steadily.

From this point, I was able to translate the analogy back into the choir setting and move beyond description to interpretation. The experience of observing Sue, reflecting on that observation, and reaching a new insight could not then be reversed in subsequent observations. What I learned from Sue was in one sense not new, for I had experienced similar complexity in my own practice as a music leader. The newness was in bringing the idea of layers of activity to consciousness as an important aspect of practice, and ultimately led to the development of an important explanatory category in response to the question “what do music leaders do?”

When a skilled music leader is working musically with a group of children e.g. taking team singing, it can appear to onlookers that it is all effortless, automatic and as second nature as breathing. For the music leader there may be all sorts of things happening that are not evident to those watching and listening – these things may be emotional, cognitive, and physical.

Having identified the hidden nature of much of this activity, I went on to consider whether other aspects of the music leaders’ role also go unrecognised.

In addition to the performance/activity leading efforts that are not recognised by colleagues and the wider community, there are also many lead-in/preparatory tasks and roles that have not occurred to them – the choice of music (and all the skills and knowledge that inform repertoire choice), the preparation of music, the approach to teaching new material, rehearsal organisation (from initial set up of the group through to communicating organisational messages to children and parents), decisions about all manner of things – musical, practical,

organisational, people-related.

One of the important messages of this research is to bring to the surface the myriad of factors which characterise the person and the role of music leader in a primary school.

The above memo was the direct source for subsequent analysis and interpretation of observation data. Having identified different categories of action and task, I was able to organise observation data according to these categories, at times noting the presence of multiple, and often consecutive actions within the one task. The follow-up interviews generated additional data for categorisation with regard to the musical thinking or decision-making that informed particular actions or tasks.

In a later memo, I considered the possibility that although my data were not directly transferable to the wider population of primary school music leaders in New Zealand, it could be appropriate to think in terms of ‘fuzzy generalisations’ Bassey (1999), “general statements with built in uncertainty“ (p.52). This term acknowledges that tentative theories developed from a case or limited number of cases and in relation to a particular research context and report, may potentially be applied to an extended range of similar research contexts.

There is no way that my research data can be seen to be representative of all teachers with a music leadership role in New Zealand. However, there are aspects of their situations which may lend themselves to the following

speculation – that if a (music teacher with certain background such as sense of musicality, experience being taught and teaching music, personal delight in musicmaking) is placed in b (school in which there is the possibility of leading a performance group, where there is music of some sort at large group gatherings

such as assemblies), then it is likely that c (some satisfying musical events and opportunities for many or all children who come within the scope of the teacher’s work) will occur.

As data collection neared completion, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the approach to analysis that had served me well to that point. Having been through the process of separating data, I needed to bring them together within a new framework, and then re-analyse them in the light of that new context, a well-documented process in the methodological literature (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Evans, 2002; Saldana, 2009). The new framework fell easily out of the three broad research questions and I was able to develop three comprehensive data sets in relation to (1) who the teachers are, (2) what they do, and (3) the significance of their role. Re-examining these data sets involved yet another cycle of coding around themes that then became the headings and sub- headings for each of three data chapters that follow.