I did the first data collection point at the National Gallery, at the start of a research trip I was taking Stage 1 on. We sat down on benches in the gallery and had the discussion on research. This took about 20 mins of the 2 hour session. I then started to take the students on a tour of the gallery which I had designed for them, telling a story about Black representation in medieval Europe, through various Nativity paintings at the gallery, and the cultural impact of images in popular culture in general.
After I’d shown the students the first painting, and we’d done some group visual analysis of the painting, a student came up to me saying: ‘Can I talk to you about what we did at the beginning? I think that was more useful for you than it was for us… It’s just we were told to say anything we weren’t happy with on the course so I just wanted to let you know’. At the time I was taken aback – their tone was quite rude and I was disappointed to hear this feedback right at the beginning of a quite demanding 1 hour tour that I was about to embark on with them. There was a lack of generosity from the student. I said that I would think about what they said. Here I am doing that!
On further reflection, I realised that this potentially also revealed something about how the student saw this research project – that it was something for ‘me’ personally, that wouldn’t impact them in any way. This is surprising to me, seeing as I’d explained that this was for my PGCert to improve my teaching. I think there is a sense that it should have positively impacted them there and then, regardless of how much was being done for them in the wider context of the class. This is an interesting idea to me – the idea that research is something that shouldn’t take up space in the class, or that there is not a more symbiotic relationship between teacher and student, where on rare occassions it is ok for the teacher to be the one learning from the students (as perhaps it was in that first 20 mins). This is the opposite of the non-hierarchical idea that I strive towards in my pedagogical practice, but it requires buy in from both sides.
Though this interaction had a big impact on me as it felt confrontational and made me feel sad, I later checked it against the implicit feedback I got from other students in the class. Firstly, my overall first impression after the data collection discussion was that it had went really well. This is because I was so pleased that this was the first time when every single member of the group had spoken. In the past, in group discussions, I had found that a few students dominated the conversation and large numbers remained silent. In this class I heard everyone’s voice, so everyone’s opinion was represented in some way. This was partly because of the method I used, where each student wrote or drew a response, and then one by one each student said whether they agreed, disagreed or would add anything to what was said. While the data collected at this point is relatively homogenous – no one said anything that people found very outlandish or contentious – I can say this homogeneity is reflective of a homogenous consensus of what research is in the group, even though they have diverse backgrounds.
I’m happy to be able to include that initial emotional encounter in my analysis, as it prompted me to go deeper into my analysis of the group dynamics.