Letters were sent to head teachers as the first point of contact at the schools. Once agreement for participation in the research had been approved, other contacts were then established. In Durey Academy, Honegger Grammar School and Tailleferre School, the responsibility was passed down to members of the Senior Leadership Team (assistant vice principal, deputy head and assistant head, respectively) and in the remaining schools the responsibility was passed down to
96 the head of music or head of performing arts. These contacts had a direct effect on how easy or difficult it was to carry out the various data collection tasks and how the research progressed, based on how accessible the contacts were and how busy they were in their day-to-day teaching or other responsibilities.
Face-to-face meetings were held with the contact prior to the research starting, and contacts were provided with an overview of the study, copies of the pupil and parent questionnaires, and consent letters. These meetings allowed me to explain the research in more depth and answer any queries the contacts had, as well as arranging dates for observations, collecting questionnaires as well as confirming CRB clearance. In two instances, it was agreed to add further questions to the questionnaires that the schools considered would help with their own development and review process. As these additions were in keeping with the content of the questionnaires and did not impact on the research being carried out, it was agreed to include them. Durey Academy added a question to the pupil questionnaire regarding how useful pupils found homework. For the parental questionnaire, questions were added regarding holiday club provision and adult learning. Honegger Grammar School asked for questions to be included in the pupil questionnaires relating to the number of lunchtime and afterschool activities that pupils participated in as well as the number of residential and overseas trips pupils had been involved in. Additions were not made to the parental questionnaires. As these additional questions did not relate directly to the research, the results will not be reported..
Following the initial meetings with the head teachers or senior leadership
members at each school, none of them decided to use the consent forms that had been prepared and as the research was not in any way intrusive they were happy to act in loco parentis for all forms of data collection and reporting.
97 Figure 2.1 illustrates the various methods of data collection used in the research.
Figure 2.1 Data collection methods
Typically, the research began with a period of non-participant observation in the music departments. Lessons from Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 were all observed and the amount of time this took was dependent on when the lessons fell on the timetable. In some schools, the timetable was quite dense, with a whole day’s teaching covering a number of year groups. In others, the timetable was more
Step One
Familiarisation of school site
Observations
Information gathering
Step Two
Pupil questionnaires completed
Parental questionnaires issued
Peripatetic questionnaires issued
Step Three
Pupil-generated data collected – visual and aural
Focus groups of pupils KS3, KS4, KS5
Step Four
Interviews with head teacher/SLT, head of
music/head of performing arts
98 sparse and observations were therefore carried out over a number of days as outlined in Table 2.2 in section 2.7.1. As all of the participating schools had more than one member of staff in the music department it was also important to observe lessons taught by the different teachers. This was also true of the different
classrooms as activities varied depending on the room layout and resources available. In some schools, rooms and teachers rotated giving a fuller experience to pupils whereas in others teachers were allocated specific teaching rooms which limited the opportunities available to pupils. It was important to observe as much as possible during my initial period in each school, but I also found that my
experience as a teacher meant that I was able to gain a sense of each department and its place within the school in a relatively short amount of time. Non-contact periods were used to hold informal conversations with staff as well as to collect data such as photographs of the music department, schemes of work and departmental handbooks.
During the observation period, arrangements were made for the pupil
questionnaires to be completed. These generally happened in either form or tutor time, but never in music lessons. The responsibility for this varied from school to school. In Durey Academy, Honegger Grammar School and Tailleferre School this was organised by the main senior leadership contact. In Milhaud School and Poulenc Independent School this was organised by the head of music. In Auric School, it was organised by the head teacher’s P.A. At the end of the observation period, the questionnaires were then collected and data transferred to the SPSS statistics package.
From the questionnaire data, three sub-groups from each year at Key Stage 3 were created - those pupils who currently had instrumental lessons (either in or out of school), those pupils who used to have instrumental lessons (again, either in or
99 out of school), or those pupils who did not have instrumental lessons. The lists of sub-groups were passed back to the head of music or performing arts to short-list a maximum of 6 pupils in each group. 9 groups (3 in Year 7, 3 in Year 8 and 3 in Year 9) then took part in the next stage of the research. They also arranged for the pupils to attend the focus groups, informing the teaching staff of who would be missing lessons and when.
Year 7 pupils were seen on Day 1 where they were given digital cameras and voice recorders, as well as verbal and written instructions on how to operate the equipment and what they were being asked to do. Where schools had a morning registration period (before lessons) this was completed in this time. In schools with no morning registration, this was done at break time. The pupils were asked to make recordings and take photographs of ‘musical happenings’ and asked to use their imagination and look for opportunities outside of the music department. They were then instructed to return the equipment at the end of the school day, where they were given the time and location of the focus group for the following day. The procedure was the same for Year 8 and Year 9 and worked on a rolling schedule, so that on Day 2 the Year 8 groups were given the equipment and instructions and on Day 3 the process was repeated for the Year 9 groups. Recordings and photographs were uploaded to a netbook to show the pupils and formed the first part of the focus group interviews. The pupils talked about where they had taken the photos and made the recordings which prompted further general discussion regarding the music department and its’ associated activities. The second half of the focus groups followed an interview schedule. Year 7 focus groups took place on Day 2, Year 8 on Day 3 and Year 9 on Day 4, and pupils came out of normal lessons for approximately 30 minutes.
100 Focus groups with GCSE, BTEC, AS/A2 level and International Baccalaureate students also took place during this period. Some teachers were happy to release students from their music lessons, whereas others did not want them to miss lesson time and so arranged for students to be interviewed at break or lunch times. The attendance at the focus groups varied, and it was not possible to locate missing students due to staffing constraints. The interviews often took place when the music staff were teaching and so they were not able to leave their classes, and although sending pupils to locate their peers was a possibility, this would have also wasted the available time to talk to the pupils.
The focus group interviews mainly took place in practice rooms within the music department. If these rooms were being used for instrumental lessons or as part of class music activities, the music department office was usually the next location. In some cases, the interviews were able to be held in the music classrooms if no lessons were being taught. The length of each focus group was dependent on how many pupils attended and how communicative they were. Where there were only two or three pupils (for example, in some Key Stage 3 groups where not all participants attended or in some smaller 6th form groups) or where pupils had little to say, the interviews could last less than 10 minutes. In larger or more talkative groups, they could last up to 40 minutes. All interviews were recorded with a digital voice recorder so that they could be transcribed and analysed at a later date.
Questionnaires for peripatetic teachers were left with the music departments to distribute, where applicable, and collected by the music department staff. Parental questionnaires were issued during the course of my time in school as the data from these was not required for subsequent research phases, unlike the pupil
101 questionnaires. As it was often quite difficult to secure parental responses I
allowed the maximum time possible to collect them.
Some schools sent the questionnaire via electronic newsletters and others sent them home with the pupils. Durey Academy took their parental questionnaires to a parents’ evening and also to sports day where some were completed by staff orally with parents with low literacy levels.
The final stage of the research was to conduct interviews with the head of music (or equivalent) and head teacher (or senior leadership representative in the case of Durey Academy and Honegger Grammar School). The two head teachers at these schools had passed on the responsibility to the assistant vice principal and deputy head respectively very early on in the research process. As a result of this, and the fact that meetings with the other head teachers had to be scheduled
weeks in advance, interviews were conducted with members of the senior
leadership team instead. These interviews were the last to be held as it was then possible to include further questions based on observations, questionnaire data and focus groups, or to seek clarification if necessary. Examples of this included the responsibilities of any administrative support, whether peripatetic instrumental staff were privately employed or employed through the LA music service and exact numbers taking music at post-14 and post-16 levels.
In Durey Academy, Milhaud School, Auric School and Poulenc Independent School, the procedure followed that outlined above. There were two exceptions. Honegger Grammar School was unhappy about pupils in Key Stage 3 missing lessons to take part in the focus groups. These had to be completed in break and lunchtimes, but it was often found that the pupils taking part in the research were also involved in other activities during these times, often music, drama or sport. I visited the school at morning registration on several occasions to schedule focus
102 groups directly with the pupils involved. As this could sometimes be a number of days later, pupils often forgot to attend the focus groups and so this process had to be repeated. This lead to the focus groups being completed over a number of weeks and months, rather than days, and it was found that often pupils had forgotten a lot of information about their recordings and photographs.
Arrangements with Tailleferre School meant that the research period started very close to the start of Year 11 study leave, where this group of pupils would no longer be in school to participate. In this instance, all pupils in Year 11 completed their questionnaires and the BTEC music students completed their focus groups before the period of observation had taken place. The rest of the procedure followed as with other schools.