We spent the start of Week 2 gathering the theoretical background of the impact of thematic ECAs. This meant a lot of independent reading, and plenty of source evaluation. It was with the consideration of proposed sociological and psychological mechanisms that we drafted our interview and survey questions – based around cognitive, behavioural, and emotional engagement. Framing the benefits in this way also builds upon the previous cohorts research that linked ECAs with soft skills development.
I had to leave Oxford halfway through the week to conduct and accompany our college choir tour in Paris. The irony of having to miss researching ECAs because of my role in facilitating a musical ECA is not lost on me. Over eight days, we played in four major churches. It was a real privilege to be able to play in some amazing venues. A highlight was conducting a full Catholic mass at Saint Eustache, only to forget that the mass would be in French. To this day, I will never know whether I performed every musical item in the right order.
Over my week away, I had delegated myself to do some careful readings of cultural capital, and its influence on ECA selection – with the goal of drafting a portion of the literature review. Given my varied working hours, the logistical challenge of reaching out and interviewing teachers would be left to my team physically in Oxford.
While envisioned myself carefully balancing my research with tour, unexpected additional rehearsal times led me to have less time than I would have liked to research. In anticipation of any possible disturbances, I did try to pull more weight in the previous week by doing plenty of readings before I left. Yet, I was still frustrated at this situation. I was especially mindful of the fact that as this is a group project, everyone is implicitly expected to contribute a decent effort towards our aims. Perhaps, there was some guilt at not being able to help out more with the data collection, or a feeling of not doing enough. Ultimately, I tried to frame the situation by focusing on making the hours that I did have productive, rather than arbitrarily counting the hours.
Since I have come back, I have unfortunately contracted a horrible flu which has caused me to miss Friday’s workshop, and a tour of Blackbird Leys. Honestly, I was very upset about this given how long I haven’t seen the rest of the cohort. As I am writing this, I am slowly improving and hope to make the most out of the three weeks ahead.