Data was collected from the piloting of my semi-structured questionnaire (see p. 231- 243, Appendix f). However, I saw that modifications in the structure of questioning were required where limitations of the semi-structured questionnaire were exposed. These included the ordering of questions; the format of the text and spaces for writing; and in some cases further or less information required by the trainee- teachers in order to answer the questions. All of these modifications are discussed further below.
My modifications included opening the revised semi-structured questionnaire (see p. 244, Appendix g) with the question: ‘What has been your study of history as a subject?’ I decided to move this question to the beginning and within ‘Part 1: About
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You’, as I saw that it helped to signify a greater importance to the purpose of the study: for understanding perceptions of trainee-teachers on my questions based upon their subject knowledge or non-subject knowledge i.e. those processing the Key Stage 2 history curriculum without an understanding of the subject as opposed to their opposites (Guyver and Phillips, 2004).
Through another question in ‘Part 1: About You’: ‘Have any particular life
experiences that you have had served to influence, develop or extend your interest or placed a greater emphasis on learning and/or teaching about history?’, I found that all responses from the trainee-teachers in the piloted semi-structured
questionnaire seemed to be influenced by the examples that I had provided i.e. ‘your travel, your family, current affairs, etc.’ For my revised semi-structured questionnaire, I withdrew those examples that I had originally offered. A further amendment I made was with changing the order of ranking in ‘Part 2’ through the question: ‘Which of the aims are most important in the national curriculum?’ I did this to allow for greater simplicity and ease with choices in ranking.
I perceived that the question: ‘What does the term British history mean to you?’ from ‘Part 2: ‘National curriculum for primary school history aims at Key Stage 2’ would offer responses of broad interest to the study. The responses that I gained from the semi-structured questionnaire pilot were indeed very broad and this caused to provide me with more thought on the importance and meanings of words such as ‘British’ and ‘Britishness’ interpreted and established by the trainee-teachers in their responses. I had it in mind that I would apply to my future use of semi-structured interviews an exploration of the differing responses to and interpretations of key
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words and phrases derived from the semi-structured questionnaire responses of the trainee-teachers. I explored key words associated to the study through questions in ‘Part 3’ of the revised semi-structured questionnaire i.e. ‘What do the terms ‘migrant’ and ‘migration’ mean to you? I perceived that it was a question that could possibly generate dictionary definitions from the trainee-teachers in their responses. So, I added a follow up question: ‘Who do you consider to be ‘migrants’ to Britain either now or in the past? This question was placed near the end of the revised semi- structured questionnaire in ‘Part 3’ so that trainee-teachers would be able develop their responses further through my semi-structured interview questions. I was particularly interested in knowing from the trainee-teachers whether they believed any of the topics that they had discussed in their semi-structured questionnaire responses could or should be viewed as stories representative of MEGroMMaS.
The piloted semi-structured questionnaire also included a ranking list in ‘Part 3’ concerning the question: ‘What should children at Key Stage 2 learn and know about history?’ During my revisions, the ranking list was removed. This was because on viewing responses from the pilot semi-structured questionnaire, it was quite clear that the majority of trainee-teachers found the ranking task to be difficult, especially with such a broad range of statements to choose from: nine in total. Instead, for the revised semi-structured questionnaire, I provided the same nine choices but in the form of a bullet pointed list and with this, I provided the trainee-teachers with boxes to tick for indicating what they believed to be the ‘most important statement’ and ‘least important statement’ with space provided underneath for them to write further about their choices.
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I wanted to be more specific in eliciting from trainee-teachers their thoughts about whether teaching and learning about MEGroMMaS should or should not be an important or at least more explicit part of the Key Stage 2 history curriculum. I also wanted to know from them whether they actually felt prepared to teach about MEGroMMaS. Thus, for ‘Part 3’ of the revised semi-structured questionnaire, I included a series of statements through ‘Likert rating scales’ that asked the trainee- teachers to identify their thoughts, feelings and priorities towards MEGroMMaS as an aspect of study in the Key Stage 2 classroom (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011, p.386).
In terms of the layout, the pilot semi-structured questionnaire offered large spaces for written responses. On reflection, I saw that they could have been viewed as intimidating spaces to fill; making the semi-structured questionnaire seem longer than it actually was. In my revisions of the semi-structured questionnaire, the majority of writing spaces that I formatted were equalised to a similar and smaller size, with an aim to provide a less intimidating perception of the scale and size of the semi-structured questionnaire.
4.16. Revised semi-structured questionnaire and trainee-teacher sample