The study integrates a variety of data collection methods in order to obtain a rich and detailed picture about how children interact creatively in music. The use of multiple sources of evidence was mainly intended to check through triangulation (see below 7.10.1 and 7.10.3) the convergence of possible interpretations as they emerged in the course of the study, supporting the credibility of possible conclusions (Yin, 2009).
7.7.1 Participant observation
7.7.1.1 Direct Observation and Participant Observation
My role as teacher researcher implied looking at children in the normal flow of a session. My action ranged from a full involvement and participation in leading the activity to a more unobtrusive observation, for example when children were absorbed in autonomously collaborating on a task (though, even there, sometimes I deemed it necessary to intervene in the process). In other cases I could just observe from the outside how children responded to my colleague's guidance. In the teaching process, where action and observation are strictly intertwined, it was important to maintain a sort of double attitude of closeness and distance. As van Manen (1990) describes it:
close observation involves an attitude of assuming a relation that is as close as possible while retaining a hermeneutic alertness to situations that allows us to constantly step back and reflect on the meaning of those situations. [...] The method of close observation requires that one be a participant and an observer at the same time. (p.69)
7.7.1.2 Video-recordings of processes and outcomes
In this study the main bulk of collected data is the videos of the sessions, as there are no interviews or focus groups providing further data beyond what happened in the
classroom. Thus the videos play a central role here. Recording the sessions provided the opportunity to repeatedly watch a sequence, to examine it in detail, and to grasp events, fragments of talk or behaviours that might have gone unnoticed during the class. I excluded using an assistant-operated camera in order to avoid further distractions for children, but I chose to use two HD cameras placed on stands in two different places in the room, in order to cover (almost) the whole area and to capture most of the action. This way I had the possibility, in the analysis phase, to check whether an episode or detail was better visible through one or the other camera. During the sessions I also became increasingly aware of where the children and we teachers were standing or sitting in relation to the cameras, which were fixed on the stand, and could arrange the spatial position of the working groups in order to have good recordings (and without
disrupting the normal flow of the activity). Occasionally I took one camera in my hand to record the Gestaltungen at the end of a group work phase, so that I could have a high quality detail of the performing group and, through the other camera, the wider picture of the whole group in the room.
From a methodological standpoint, the video was a second observer, a further eye, in some respects more reliable than I could be, in other respects not. I see the camera and myself as together, combining to generate the data. Video-recordings were integrated and triangulated with other data sources, such as my memos and systematic reflections. In the analysis process the videos were in the first instance a help to remember. But even the videos missed things, because the cameras were fixed and in some cases a very particular visual angle would have been necessary to record some micro-events, or the action in the classroom was quite fluid and physical, with children moving, singing, and playing all over the room. Despite the use of a participant observer and two cameras, then, I could not claim that I was an 'all-seeing' eye, and the data I have is inevitably a partial view of an unattainable 'whole'.
As for children's relationship with the cameras, two considerations must be made. Firstly, though at times they initially 'played to the cameras', in the course of the data collection they progressively got used to them and ultimately did not notice their presence any longer. Further, children are nowadays more and more used to being video-recorded, especially by parents, so this did not seem to be much of an issue here and ultimately did not prevent them from behaving naturally. Secondly, video-recording was integrated into the pedagogical process when, at the end of a small group work phase, I often took one camera in my hand to record their performance (I did this to obtain the best possible recording of the end result). The presence of the camera, as a further observer along with the other children attentively watching and listening, reinforced this 'staging' process, by which we deliberately created an ideal space divided into an audience area and a performance area.
A relevant technical problem in relation to small group work was that I was able to collect good videos but the audios in the recordings were often indecipherable, due to the presence in the room of two to four groups of children talking and working next to each other with percussion instruments. This was also a problem for the children themselves, too, and in some cases they were complaining about the high levels of noise in the room which did not facilitate their communication within the groups (this is one of the most significant practical issues which teachers face when managing group work in music –
see Odam, 2000). I considered that for the research purposes advanced solutions such as the use of directional microphones or a single microphone for each small group would have been technically impracticable or simply too laborious and time consuming both at the stage of data collection and data analysis. Unfortunately, this meant that the gathered data, especially with regard to small group work, was at times partial and incomplete.
7.7.2 Documentation
Further data was collected in form of:
visual data, such as graphical scores, children's drawings, other visual or written materials used in the classroom
music pieces (audio files) used in the classroom as initial stimuli for some activities
musical transcriptions: in some cases I used a variety of notations (graphical, non conventional, and conventional) to jot down broad structural features of created music or to analyse in depth exact sequences of rhythms or pitches as well as whole pieces
teacher's reflective journal, planning ideas, and hand-outs, which went along with researcher's memos, aiming to record the researcher's thoughts on the process.
Memos had a variety of foci – observational, theoretical, methodological, or analytical – and represented a bridge to data analysis (Bazeley, 2013). They were written during or immediately after the data collection, as first-hand comments on what had been observed and experienced. In this case they had the value of field notes and were part of the collected data, as my own reactions and reflections as a researcher. Memos were also an essential part of the phase of analysis, where ideas or meaningful patterns slowly emerged from the data, and fed into the findings.
7.7.3 Methods for eliciting children's meanings
In order to strengthen the trustworthiness of the findings it was important to gather children's insights on their experiences, so that their voices, too, and not just that of the researcher could be heard (Mauthner, 1997). Van Manen (1990), describing close observation, points to a variety of ways for eliciting meanings from children: "to gain access to the experience of young children, it may be important to play with them, talk with them, puppeteer, paint, draw, follow them into their play spaces and into the things they do while you remain attentively aware of the way it is for children" (p.68). Beyond
participant observation, a number of strategies to gain children's perspectives about their own collaborative and creative experience were adopted:
in the first place, there was on the part of us teachers an ongoing engagement with children at a verbal level, attempting to stimulate their reflections and verbal responses within the unfolding activity itself – what Kanellopoulos (1999, p.178) terms the "emergent interview format". Single words, comments, longer
statements, or any kind of non-structured, half-elicited and half spontaneous responses provided important pieces of information about how children were experiencing the activity and how they looked at it in their perspective. Our goal was to "create a culture of giving and receiving feedbacks" (as my colleague Valentina phrased it)
particular attention was also given to children's nonverbal responses and expressions – as their meanings were often conveyed through the body, not through words
some ritual activities gave individual children the chance of expressing their thoughts and feelings about particular issues. At the end of the sessions we frequently asked children what they had particularly liked about it. Also, we once had a "flower / microphone game", in which each child could talk about their overall creative experience, "remembering the things we did", i.e. mentioning what activities had most struck them over the year, and a "final interview" in the
second-last session about how to creatively collaborate in music.
In the course of the study, I realised that the issue of eliciting children's views about their lived experience had to be solved both at the research-methodological and the
pedagogical level. Thus, the research focus on meaning affects the researcher as well as the teacher. This resembles what Kanellopoulos (1999) remarked about his own way of using talk as the methodological means to gather 8-year-old children's views: "What started off as a research technique for eliciting the children's conception of their own music making was transformed into an aspect of the children's practices themselves" (p.178). Likewise, in this study as a teacher I accepted the pedagogical challenge and opportunity for these children to focus on their own experience, to become interested in and aware of what they feel, think, and do, and to express it and share it in the group. Thus, talking, discussing, reflecting on their own music making became an essential and valuable part of the learning process of those children. Such a focus on the learners' meaning-making had, in my view, a high pedagogical significance: in my experience as a music educator and teacher educator this represents a sort of paradigm shift, from the focus on the mere musical product to the awareness of the learners' lived experience. In
this sense, this piece of research has the potential to be 'educational' in the full sense of the term, because it enriched children's experience. It was not on them, treating them as 'respondents', but it was for them, empowering them as conscious musical beings.