| Data collection method: |
Methodology: Our approach followed from our interest in and perspective on governing and shaped our focus on the work of governing, and the making of meaning by governing actors, including inspectors. This attention to particular governing activities and-in relation to inspection- the resources that inspectors seek to mobilise in doing governing work led us to be attentive to the history and cultural formation of inspection and their effects on the work of inspection (mediating, translating, brokering) through the mobilization of national cultural capital, as well as access to strategies that might protect or enhance the power of inspectorates. Finally we strongly associated governing (in our understanding of it) with knowledge, and this underpinned out focus on expertise and actionable knowledge, positioning the inspectorate as offering solutions to the management of risk, as attempting to manage the tension between saturation of information and evidence-based policy-making and as implicated in, but also struggling with the possibly perverse effects of audit and performance management.
These theoretical resources shaped the enquiry and helped to determine our choice of methods. The research is thus underpinned by a focus on discourse, in that we understand inspection activity to be constructed and presented-in texts, speeches, interviews and other public forms-discursively. These texts carry definitions of problems, reference particular forms of evidence, and produce ‘knowledge’ of particular kinds to guide the implementation of policy solutions. We therefore studied texts (including interview data) as persuasive, but also as referencing particular contexts and connections, and so we tried to make visible the relations between text, discursive practices and wider governing practices, especially where these connected to power relations between policy actors located in different policy spaces. Discourse analysis takes many forms, but we agreed that our overriding concern was with questions of meaning and we agreed to prioritise the centrality of the construction and apprehension of meaning in the governing work of inspection by the actors themselves. We were also united in taking a problem driven approach to the research: our problem was-why inspect? In exploring inspection through this lens, we focus on practices of governing and inspection as representing regimes of practices, in order to critically explain their transformation, attempted stabilisation, and maintenance. We sought to identify ‘discursive events’ that had certain shared qualities (for example their object, style, politics) and could thus be said to constitute a ‘discursive formation’ that revealed itself through analysis of meanings, genres, styles, rhetorical resources and the contexts of production and reception.
we agreed the research questions set out below to guide our investigations, and these remained the key questions around which our enquiry was organized. The questions moved through a sequence of enquiry that shifted the focus-from the transnational and national context of inspection, into the national and then the institutional. Phase 1 of the enquiry sought to identify the significance of inspection in the governing of education in the European education policy space. We asked these questions at the points of interaction between the transnational and the national: is there an emergent European Inspection policy and how is it constructed? How do global/European ideas of inspection practice and processes for compulsory schooling enter the three national policy-making spaces? To what extent and through what conduits do European ideas of ‘best practice’ seek to shape or influence national inspection practices? What use is made of inspection at the transnational level in the systems in our study? How is the future of Inspection envisaged in European and national policy? This work occupied around nine months from the start of the project in spring 2010-to early 2011. We then moved to Phase 2 and a focus on inspection in the national education policy space, asking such questions as: what are the key characteristics of the three national systems of inspection, and to what extent are regimes of inspection diverging or converging? What forms of knowledge do they prioritise, and what is the relationship between judgement and evidence in these processes? How do they relate to local’ policymaking spaces, including the inspection of local government services? This work was planned to last from early 2011 until early 2012, but in fact we continued to research this area until the formal funded end of the project in March 2013 , as there were very significant changes in the work of national inspectorates during this period (for example the creation of Education Scotland, the New Inspection Model, and the new Ofsted Framework). The final phase of the enquiry, which was funded between early 2012 and spring 2013, shifted the lens to the processes of local inspection and their effects on school policy. We asked how such processes were negotiated and what their key characteristics were, in each of the three school systems. We explored the place of evidence and judgement in the operation of inspection. Finally we tried to find out how teachers and headteachers experienced Inspection processes, to investigate their involvement in the construction of the inspection ‘event’ and to explore how these processes shaped their work. The data in this collection consist of extracts from narrative interviews with a total of 60 respondents in England. These interviews were carried out in phase 3 of the project which was designed to map inspection processes at the local level, and were part of four case studies carried out in contrasting local areas in England. We selected local cases by analysis of published inspection data (50 inspection reports were analysed) in order to achieve a sample offering contrasting inspection outcomes and contexts in secondary school inspection, including a range of school types). The first stage of the enquiry involved analysis of documentation prepared for inspection, self-evaluation forms and post-inspection documentation. This material shaped the development of the semi-structured interview questionnaire which was used in interviews with those we identified as 'brokers' at the local level (area inspectors, school improvement partners, contract inspector trainers) and school level actors (inspectors, teachers).
The sampling procedure reflected the design of this phase of the study: i.e. it was framed by the case studies in each geographical area, as we were looking for informants in specific schools, with relations with particular local authorities and personnel. However it was also opportunistic to some extent, as key informants put us in touch with others who were willing to talk to us. Confidentiality was agreed and was essential to gaining access, and some interviewees-especially teachers-did not allow us to record our interviews.
The narrative interviews followed, as far as possible, an agreed structure that dealt with the following specific topics in the same order across the different interviewees (i.e. contract inspectors, HMI, teachers): these themes were selected drawing on our earlier analysis of inspection reports and our focus on inspection processes and the meanings ascribed to them by participants. They included career history, recent changes in work practices, their effects, work relations and problems, the balance of knowledge and judgement in the work of inspection, and relations with head teachers and teachers.
Data analysis was followed from these themes: data were grouped under headings reflecting the key themes: notably work and career; knowledge, authority and judgement, social relations and processes. We did not use detailed coding as we wanted to keep the narrative form of the interviews, and retain individual's and group (for example contract inspectors) perspectives on the meaning of the inspection event, and their brokering or mediating role within it. |
