March Reflection

This month, I managed to follow my blog, through:
- Distributing the questionnaires to teachers, collecting the data and publishing on my blog - I completed my questionnaire on Survey Monkey and had a mentor distribute them on the schools twitter, where I gathered opinions from teachers across the UK.
- Continue to look at additional secondary data from more reputable sources (such as the BBC) - I looked at both blogs and a podcast from BBC Radio 4, which were both instrumental to my dissertation in creating more of a balanced and fair argument


Next month, I need to:
- Finish any research that needs to be completed
- Start my dissertation
- Begin my presentation

'Decolonising' the Curriculum

This week, I decided to focus on the BBC Radio 4 debate on 'decolonising the curriculum', in order to get perspectives on why the curriculum should be changed to be more inclusive or be kept the same.

Notes: 'Decolonising the Curriculum'

By listening to this debate, I was able to gain different perspectives, of which I was able to use in my dissertation to evaluate whether the topic of ethnic diversity is an issue when looking at the English Literature curriculum taught in England.

A link to the clip is provided here: 'Moral Mazes' - BBC Radio 4

Primary Data

When considering on how to get a fair and unbiased judgement within my EPQ, I decided to conduct primary research in the form of a questionnaire, which was sent out to teachers in order to gather different opinions on the diversity of the current curriculum. I used Survey Monkey in order to do this, which was sent, through social media, to teachers around the UK.

Within my questionnaire, I used a mixture of both open and closed questions, in order to allow the survey to be quick and practical for teachers taking it, but also to allow me to gather comments and opinions on the national curriculum. The questionnaire that I sent included these ten questions:
'Can you name up to ten novels/plays/poems you taught in the last year?'
'Can you name up to ten other novels/plays/poems you taught in the last five years?'
'Can you name another ten novels/plays/poems you taught in the last 10+ years?'
'What are your opinions of the diversity of the current curriculum? (in relation to ethnicity and nationality, focusing on the writers and the stories themselves)'
'On a scale of 1 to 10, how more diverse do you feel the curriculum was when you began teaching in comparison to the curriculum now?'
'Has this changed throughout your career?'
'If so, do you feel that this has made the curriculum better or worse for students?'
'Thinking of the diversity of texts you teach, are there any changes you would like to see in the future?'
'Do you have any further comments about the diversity of the English Literature curriculum?'

When reviewing the answers to these questions, I noticed some limitations, one of which is shown in the first three questions. I left these questions open to see the diversity of the different texts stated, however got many short answers such as 'no' or 'yes'. If I was to do this primary research again, I would word the questions in a way that would allow me to only get examples of texts that have been taught in the past year(s).

However, there were many strengths within my questionnaire, such as the sample being the target population of teachers, (over 1-10+ years), allowing me to gain insight into a different view of my topic, along with multiple comments from teachers on how they believe the curriculum should change in order to make it more diverse and inclusive.

However, in many responses, such as the one pictured below, teachers tended to leave helpful opinions on if/how the curriculum should be changed, along with background information of the differences between when they taught in the past compared to present day.

In my next post, I plan to post the results to my primary data in order to analyse them and come to conclusions based around these.

'Learning from my Mistakes' blog

This week, I decided to focus upon a blog of a teacher who believes that the canon should be focused on what is intellectual and engaging, over whether it is representative of the ethic minority groups, as these students who are under-represented can simply look for people similar to them on the Internet.

Research: 'Learning from my Mistakes'

This allowed me to not only see views on the current curriculum from a different perspective, but also allowed me to evaluate my thoughts in my dissertation and debate against the teacher on why my views are different to the ones that he put forward, allowing me to have another answer to my topic question and look at the topic from a different opinion, rather than having my judgement clouded by finding articles that only agree with my point of view.

You can find the blog I am referring to here: 'Learning from my Mistakes' blog

February Reflection

This month, I have managed to stick with my revised timeline, through:
- Publishing my plan for primary research - I managed to publish my plan for my primary research from January onto my blog
- Looking at more views on the curriculum by using other sources - I used sources such as YouTube videos and blogs to add some variation into my EPQ and used people's experiences to reinforce and go against my point to get a more balanced argument within my dissertation

Next month, I need to distribute my questionnaire to teachers across the UK and publish the data on my blog, as well as looking at further secondary data from other sources.