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Focus group prep!

In a 27th September we did a workshop and each group was asked to read about one form of carrying out research. I was asked to read about focus groups. This completely appealed to me as I though it a more relaxed way of getting genuine response form the participants. I also thought this way would allow the students to discuss a question and bounce of each others ideas.

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https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_luxM8D4=/– mira board from the workshop and link.

My focus group was help on Teams so that enabled me to transcribe the conversation. Luckily I did a test before the focus group and found that the PC I was using did have the option to transcribe. I call IT help desk at UAL and after a lot of head scratching and testing we tried a different computer. This gave me transcribe, a massive relief as it meant that I could have to source with my interview on. It also allowed me to feel confident on the day as i knew what i was doing as i had tested out everything.

I also found a helpful video online of how to conduct a focus group online. I had wanted to conduct it in a small classroom where it felt more intimate, people could have a chat before hand and feel relaxed. Online can sometimes be more intense due to every one seeing you and listening, it more formal. However due to the students working on the Major projects I had to conduct it after submission. I had finished my teaching in London and because I do not live in London so it wasn’t possible to come into the university. Thus the focus group we held online.

In this video it discussed the fact the a key feature of a focus group is the interaction with the participants and this allows for a deeper insight into a topic.

One of the key things is that you are not in the same physical space, so you cant control where they can be over heard, have outside distractions, which raises issues on the confidentiality of the participant. So your environment is less ‘focused’ as there are external factors.

I will countered this by asking if everyone was OK to speak and if they were in a physical location which allowed them to speak freely and without distraction. I will also asked if they can turn the videos so that I could see if there was any external interruption and it also allowed me to read the room, I could see if someone want to add comment by their body language and also if they went to speak and then fell silent.

Also it mentioned about technical difficulties. This was an issue as one students connection was really bad so they logged off and logged on again on a different device but that mean they couldn’t turn their camera on. Unfortunately that was the one student who english was strong and was the quietist on the group. I gave her the opportunity to expand but I think she had prepared her answers so found it difficult to expand and express herself further in that environment. So I was unable to as to use non verbal cues as Katie Rakow, a PHD student highlights on the podcast.

Natasha Lackovic a lecturer for Lancaster university went on concur the fact that a camera on really helps with the interaction of participants.

Katie Rakow also mentioned the importance of keeping the camera on so that the participants could see that what they were saying was valued and I was listening and engaged in what they were saying. This showed active listening with non verbal cues, which validates what the person is saying and encourages them to continue. This is something you do when interviewing in TV all the time as you don’t want your voice on the interview so you have to communication nonverbally.

Why focus groups interviews in eduction and psychological research?’

I really like the 5 concepts-

synergism- more data is gained through the groups interactions together.

snowballing- that what one person says promotes further responses from others

Stimulation- when the group becomes more engaged and excited about what they are discussing.

security-when people can relate to each other an enables they to be open and honest about their thoughts.

spontaneity- because they don’t have to comment on every question, the answers they give can be more spontaneous and honest as it comes from the discussion without being premeditated.

These 5 things I really felt worked with my participants as they had all done the same extracurricular workshops but they had different experiences. I noticed that they often started with ‘ I agree with XXX’ or ‘XXX made a good point, and would either reconfirm that point or give an alternative point of view, thus creating a discussion.

Me as the moderator- aspects to consider as Wells (1974) is quoted in saying in the paper are the following-listening, thinking, probing, exploring, framing hunches and ideas.(p4)

Probes are good as you can get someone to add further comment or clarification, to expand on a thought. tis is done with follow up questions. again active listening is key, to make sure you pick up. eg Can you give further examples of this?

Analysing interviews

The way in which the interview is analysed will depend on the methodology chosen. If a researcher is looking for qualitative information, they may read the transcript over and over again, to try and understand the meaning. This will help them identity the common themes across the interviews.

However, if the researcher is looking for quantitative information they may count the number of times a certain word was said in order to make conclusions about, for example, the popularity of something.

QUOTES-

The goal is to conduct and interactive discussion that can elicit greater, more in-depth understanding of perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and experiences from multiple points of view and to document the content from which those understandings were derived. (P4)

Focus groups have the potential to bring the investigator closer to the research topic and through direct, intensive encounters with key individuals……..aim at understanding more about what the stakeholders think and feel.

Strother (1984) provides evidence that focus group interviews yield more accurate information about what participants actually think than do other research methods.

Leveraging belonging in response to global loneliness

In this article it quotes ‘The related construct of “belonging”, especially in its social dimensions, is also concerned with the individual’s relationships with others. A desire for belonging is a yearning for connection and a need for interpersonal relationships (Allen, 2020a; Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Allen & Furlong (2021) 

This correlates with my finding and the thoughts around belonging with my students. I was attracted to this article as it discusses loneliness and many of my students have worked as a team remotely due to the pandemic. I know that previous cohorts have suffered from loneliness whilst doing this course as they were in lockdown, in another county far from home and concerned how events were unfolding with little connection to others.

This overlaps with Lindsay talk about belonging when she talks about not being about to escape loneliness or anger. Its seems as if the loneliness and belonging are interlinked as ‘Indeed, these connections are so close that it seems imperative that the two terms be removed from their siloes and integrated into research and practice’. Allen & Furlong (2021) 

This is also brought up in my focus group when one of the students says

‘sometimes when you’re at home, and you’re trying to figure stuff out. It’s a lot harder and you do feel. I mean, in a sense, literally more isolated, but also, like figuratively, you know, being at home trying to figure stuff out versus being on campus’.

I wish I’d picked up more on that conversation and investigated it more. It doesn’t just relate to the pandemic but alienation from a group or feeling like you are on the outside.

This is definitely something to consider.

Another

Findings and thoughts

That the students wanted ownership of their course, the peer to peer came up often, passing on skills to reconfirm knowledge, to facilitate their own extracurricular workshops and be involved.

Student 3

Maybe if I’m vision mixer, next time and it would be better for me to teach teacher person who’s taking the role in this time, because I it will recall my memory too. And it can also that helps to communicate with each other and improve the like the atmosphere in your group.

To have smaller groups to facilitate Q&A and learning.

Mixing up of groups regularly so all students get to meet each other help with confidence to volunteer and speak up.  

Students 1

I’ve enjoyed the most out of all the studio sessions.

Belonging- Love & Belonging in the Educational Realm Lindsay Jordon.

Lindsay’s talk is insightful into belonging, she talks a lot about the structure of education and how they are they to ‘protect’ but who are they protecting and who are they shutting out? There is still so much equability she says at one point ‘The culture we want to build might not be a place where everyone feels at home… the journey between gender and race equality rumbles on’.

‘We are always chasing a sense of belonging, but we can’t escape loneliness or anger’ she quotes when discussing ‘where the wild things are’, and how it represents how we all feel. Where and what is home? What makes us feel secure?  

Quotes from the video that I found relevant

Belonging is intersectional….. perhaps it’s individual. We belong to groups perhaps by our race, our gender, our academic discipline, academia in general as opposed to other groups but this doesn’t mean we can speak as one, or speak for each other, and there is a radically individuality in the nature of human experience.

It makes very little sense to speak of ‘THE student experience’, experience is something an individual goes through.

University and university structures, fears, threats, rational irrational, relevant or vestigial.

What threats come into play in our conceptions of belonging in education. Who and what are academica standard and rules protecting and who and what are they shutting out?

This really echo’s some of my findings as many of the themes the students discussed regarding their experience of belonging where in the extracurricular workshop and NOT in their usual sessions. Confidence to fail, as the work want marked…

Student 1- I do agree with what she’s saying because it was also the fact that there we weren’t being graded so there was no pressure to feel like ‘oh I have to do a really good job’. I think, I think I did a good job but I enjoyed it more and I learned more and I was able to like the sense of camaraderie, I like, really enjoyed with the people I was with ’cause I was not as worried about my individual performance.

Student 2.- Yeah you’re not under pressure, you’re more free to enjoy learning what you’re doing. Rather than a little space in your mind thinking ‘man am I doing this right’? Because they’re watching me or something like that.

Student 1- I took on the biggest rules on those two workshops precisely because I felt no pressure to, I felt less pressured to do it right. So, if I made mistakes, I thought it was OK. Like he said, it was the right environment for me to try taking on more responsibility.

There needs to be more space for failing and making mistakes. We learn from our mistakes, but there need to be space to make them. for student to know that its important, otherwise there is a constant pressure to perform. Do you go to uni for you to learnt and try new thing and ways, or to work within the structure of the uni and pass?

Positionality Intervention Blog

Introduction

I strongly believe that learning should be engaging, exciting and interactive. bell hooks said that “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.” How we perceive and work with those around us is heavily influenced by our positionality. By understanding how our own positionality affects our outlook and biases we can substantially improve how we work and interact with each other. Through my PgCert journey I have come to realise that positionality can have a big impact on both myself and my students. This impact is not only felt in the classroom but will also be felt in my student’s longer-term careers. In the factual television world, we create content that documents real people and the events that shape them. If my students are aware of their lived experiences and potential biases, they will be in a better position to create content that is not slanted by that bias.

As a lecturer in factual television, I have always believed that one of my primary objectives is to enable students to tell balanced, transparent and unbiased stories. Although I have always ensured a wide range of opinions were represented on programmes, up until now I have never considered my own positionality and how this affected the films I made and how I teach and interact with my students now. If we want the next generation of programme makers to challenge stereotypes and biases, they can only do this successfully if they understand their own. Freire reenforces this concept by saying “[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them.”

I teach a diverse group of students. This year we have students from China, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, Norway, Spain, Italy, Hungry, USA and the UK. This diversity is something we celebrate but it can also have a big impact on the people they choose to work with and their interactions with other students. As the course only runs for 14 months the students must quickly build relationships and learn to work together. When I was marking the student’s critical analysis of their first assignments, I noticed phrases such as “conflict due to cultural differences”, “lack of confidence due to language barrier”, “feelings of not being heard by male members of the group”,’’ feeling excluded in their group as they did not speak the dominate language’’. Based on this analysis I saw the need to facilitate an intervention so that students could all acknowledge their differences and biases.

The Intervention

My lesson plan to introduce positionality to the cohort is as follows

I start by asking my students to write down three facts about themselves – one of which must be false. The cohort then chooses which they think is false. This exercise is a good icebreaker as it is fun and a good way to begin to feel comfortable with each other. It is also a simple way to highlight how we all make assumptions about people based on what they look like, how they speak or their race.

Next, I give the students 5 mins to use the image below and think about which of these listed lenses they see the world though, and they believe makes up their positionality.

The students then break into small breakout groups and to share their own positionality and discuss the following questions

  • Who are you?
  • How are you perceived by others?
  • What are the implications of that perception?

Students first share thoughts within their groups, then as a whole cohort we share our thoughts and insights. I also give my own positionality and include thoughts on myself.

I plan to use this session to prepare the students for writing a code of conduct for the course. The code will lay out the moral and ethical expectations from students and tutors on the course. We all agree to adhere to these rules. It is written by the students to address issues such as how to go about conflict resolution, how we deal with one student insulting another in class, freedom of speech, mutual respect etc.

In Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy model, he discusses how the teacher and pupil are entwined in the learning process. He compares this to the banking concept of education, where the students ‘‘turn into ‘containers’ to be ‘filled’” by the teacher. The critical pedagogy model is important to use in this intervention session and the writing of the code as it is paramount that the students and tutors voices are jointly heard.

This will be a good time for me to signpost many resources for the students to call upon during their time at UAL. The Shades of Noir resources, like Intersectional Film which offers further insight into intersectionality and UAL’s Religion, Belief and Faith identities UAL website.

My Process

From the beginning of my PgCert to now I have been on a very personal journey. Prior to the PgCert my teaching was more aligned to Freire’s ‘banking concept’ and I acknowledge that I was bringing my own biases into the classroom. Moving forwards, I will try to create a space where ‘“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy” (hooks) and where I am “no longer the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.” (Friere).

This intervention is not a one-off workshop but an ongoing work journey for me and my students. To show inclusivity, I will cover intersectionality and I will be mindful in the material I choose, making it as diverse as possible. In our news programme module, we already discuss inclusion and bias, so this will be a good time to look at positionality, making sure we hear everyone’s voice and show the diversity of options and people in the UK.

My MA students have previously produced programmes that covered themes such as race, sexuality, gender, body image, mental health and disability. I felt ill-equipped to support the students as these topics were not something I was knowledgeable about and therefore felt I was inadequate in discussing them. This module has given me the confidence to approach the subject of inclusion in my classes, with the ongoing support of excellent resources like Shades of Noir.

This work has made me really consider who my students are and that there is a need to highlight any material or content that might be distressing to individuals by using a trigger warning. We do not all come to the class with the same lived experiences, and people do not always want to share experiences or highlight them. As tutors, it is up to us to be sensitive when showing material that could cause distress.

Conclusion

On the MA TV, we do have diversity in the teaching staff. Students are taught by visiting practitioners and associate lecturers such as Biyi Bandele, a Nigerian filmmaker and Sam Naz, a British Asian TV presenter. However, there is still not enough inclusion in the factual TV industry in general. There is still not enough people from minority groups making the programmes and featuring in them. The representation of minority groups on TV is often stereotypical and this needs to change. The industry is still heavily white male but after a shift to consciously include women profiles, white females are now joining the conversation.

However, as Josephine Kwali states in the film Unconscious Bias ‘’institutions have managed to make some changes to benefit white middle class women, even if their bias around gender was unconscious, they have consciously taken steps and taken action, this hasn’t been of much use to black and minority women or for working class women, but they have done things consciously’’.  This highlights that the conscious shift can happen but has still not happened for many minorities and that we need to be continually challenging the norm.

This has been a very rich experience for me and one I had previously never spent much time thinking about. When people said at the start how transformative this unit was, I couldn’t comprehend what was about to happen. I have looked at myself and seen that I have been part of the problem. By seeing myself as white privileged and recognising my white fragility, I can now begin to transform. As Angie Illman said ‘’I know that this unit is a unit which is lived, not taught’’. I’ve still got a lot of work to do but I am now invested in this change. I do feel that my eyes have been opened to the world around me. As Margret Mead says, ‘it only takes a few thoughtful citizans to change the world’.

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Bibliography

Hooks, B. (2014) Teaching to Transgress. Taylor & Francis.

Freire P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Myra Ramos ed. New York: Continuum.

Richards, A. and Finnigan, T. (2015) Embedding equality and diversity in the curriculum: An art and Design practitioner’s guide . York: Higher Education Academy.

Gabriel, Deborah & Tate, Shirley Ann (2017)  Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of women of colour surviving and thriving in British academia. Trentham Books/IOE Press

Delgado. R & Stefancic. J Critical Race Theory An Introduction

Diangelo, R (2018) White Fragility, Penguin

Crenshaw. Kimberle (1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review

Tapper. Aaron Hahn (2013) A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment. Researchgate

Kwhali , Josephine Witness:unconscious bias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6XDUGPoaFw

Shirley Anne Tate-Whiteliness and institutional racism :Hiding behind unconscious bias- YouTube.

UAL Anti-Racism Action Plan, 2021

Living the Inclusive Practice Unit

UAL’s Religion, Belief and Faith identities UAL website.

Intersectional Film
Terms of Reference Journals

eight white identities

Positionality Statement

*Note the lines written in italic are where I’ve updated my posiionality statement.

Positionality Statement

For the last two years I have been an Associate lecturer teaching on MA TV at UAL. This was my first job teaching at university standard. I initially taught the Television studio, but now my role has developed to include all aspects of factual programme making.

I’m a white British female in my late 40’s. I am able bodied, I am financially stable, I am educated to degree level, I am privileged. Being white I have never known racism or been singled out due to the colour of my skin. I have never known bias due to my sexuality, my religious beliefs or social class.

I was brought up as Roman Catholic but no longer practise or align myself to being a Catholic, however I believe myself to be spiritual. I’m from Bristol but do not have a local accent. My parents came from a middle-class background but growing up money was always very tight. My clothes came from charity shops, and we lived on a very strict budget. My gay uncles have always played a massive part in my life, so homophobia has always been something I feel very strongly about. It feels like a personal attack on my uncles.

In my 20’s I moved to London. I lived there for over 10 years before moving back to Bristol. I now live in a small village in the Cotswolds. I’ve worked in the television industry and as a freelance film maker for the last 20 years.

During my TV industry career has been lucky to work in a variety of different roles.

At times during my career, I experienced sexism, by male peers ‘subtly testing my knowledge’ to check if I knew my stuff. I was also subject to male “banter” that often made me feel uneasy, but I did not feel I was able to challenge so laughed along with the jokes.  However, this not my norm, these were one of events, but its does give me a small microcosm of how something that I am, that I’m proud to be and cannot change, can be used again me.

In the early stages of my career, I was aware that, as a female, I was in the minority in a very male dominated world.  At ITN (Ch4, C5, ITN News) I was only one of three women editors.

Whilst working as a freelancer on a documentary I became pregnant with my first child. This cut my career short as they terminated my contact.  It was felt I that I could no longer fulfil the role I was hired to do. At the time I didn’t challenge this decision as I didn’t want to rock the boat. After that, I could only get freelance work that was office based and could no longer work on location.

I took a career break to raise my two child and became a stay-at-home mum. Unsociable work hours in the freelance industry, a partner working full time in a demanding job and high childcare costs all contributed to this decision. Once my children were in full-time education, I started to rebuild my career, working with charities and the BFI on filming projects with young adults. This was work I could fit around my family and childcare commitments.

Throughout my career, every organisation I have worked at has been liberal, predominately white, middle-class and has had male senior management. This course has made me consider how I got my breaks within a very male dominated environment.

I have always been very determined and created my own opportunities, though networking and ‘putting myself out there’ but I think this confidence and can-do attitude came for a world where I was white and privileged, so doors opened easily.