On Monday, our group attended a talk by Nabeela Kajee, a medical doctor reading for a DPhil Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, about inclusive leadership, encouraging us to consider the unique perspective of each team member when making leadership decisions.
On Tuesday, we had a meeting with a stakeholder, Tom Boulter, director of secondary education at the River Learning Trust, who informed us that the trust already has much quantitative data on stakeholders’ relationships with the Trust; we thus discussed the possibility of telephone interviews with students’ parents and careers to gather qualitative data, and concluded that this seems unlikely given the time constraints of the summer holidays, resolving instead to research existing routes via which the Trust reaches students carers, such as surveys and forums. In addition, Tom Boulter provided us with the materials used to train members of staff within the trust about maintaining relationships with disadvantaged families. Rob Pavey, headteacher of the Cheney school with whom we met last week, put us in contact with a member of the school’s data and administrative team, who has agreed to provide us anonymised data on school attendance, Pupil Premium and admissions demographics from 2023-2026.
On Wednesday, we had a group meeting with our Graduate Impact Advisor to recap Tuesday’s meeting with Tom Boulter and divide the workload of conducting the literature review and compiling our methodology. Our team building evening at Franco Manca on Thursday was a much-needed opportunity to connect with other members of the cohort in a more relaxed environment.
This week concluded with a workshop on data management and statistics, which will prove useful for analysing our survey data.
Next week, we will attend a workshop of research poster design and begin writing up the first draft of our research report. There will also be an opportunity to connect with the rest of the cohort during a team building evening at the Oxford SDG Lab’s art club.
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Amy, this is a comprehensive overview of your team's progress and it is clear that your project is moving forward in a well-organised and methodical way - even with the slight frustration of trying to broker access to parents and carers. Your summary of the stakeholder meetings demonstrates that your team is responding thoughtfully to new information and adapting your research design where necessary, which is an important aspect of applied research.
I particularly liked your description of how the discussion with Tom Boulter prompted your team to reconsider the feasibility of your plans. Recognising practical constraints and adapting your methodology accordingly is a hallmark of good research rather than a compromise.
One area I'd encourage you to develop in future reflections is making your own learning more visible. At the moment, the reflection explains very clearly what happened, but I'd be interested to hear more about how these experiences have shaped your own thinking. For example, what did you learn about working with stakeholders? Did anything from your meetings challenge your initial assumptions about the project? Has your understanding of educational disadvantage or data collection changed as a result of these conversations?
I was also pleased to see you recognise the value of the data management and statistics workshop. As your project moves into analysis, it will be interesting to reflect on how those ideas influence the way your team presents and interprets its findings.