What went well
The main development this week was meeting with the Cheney School headteacher, which gave us far more clarity on the school itself and — critically — on the data landscape we're working with. We now know we can access pupil premium data and the stakeholder survey, which gives us something concrete to anchor to rather than relying purely on interview accounts. This matters because it partially offsets the access constraints I flagged last week: even if direct relational accounts remain hard to get, we now have at least two structured datasets that speak to disadvantage and stakeholder perception, which we can triangulate against whatever interview material we do secure.
What could have gone differently
Rob was fairly direct that there's limited scope for our research to actually help the school in a practical sense. That's a disappointing thing to sit with, partly because it cuts against the framing we've been building — that this is applied, school-facing research rather than a purely academic exercise. It's worth being honest that this doesn't necessarily undermine the research validity of what we're doing, but it does raise a question about impact and about how we frame the "so what" of the project when we write it up, and possibly about how much buy-in we can expect from the school in later stages (access to more data, willingness to facilitate further contact, etc.).
Reflection and sense-making
Sitting with this week's meeting, the tension I keep coming back to is between data availability and data relevance. Pupil premium and stakeholder survey data are real and accessible, but they're proxies — they tell us about outcomes and stated perceptions, not about the relational mechanisms (trust-building moments, communication patterns, the "how" of trust) that we want to actually explain. There's a risk of the project reshaping itself around what's measurable rather than what's central, simply because the measurable data is what's on offer. Rob's comment about limited scope for impact is worth reading alongside this: it may be less that the research can't help the school, and more that the kind of help it can offer (analytical insight into relational dynamics) doesn't map neatly onto what a headteacher considers useful or actionable in the short term.
Adjustment and development for next week
Behavioural adjustment: when a school contact raises a limitation (data access, scope for impact) in a meeting, I'll ask a direct follow-up question in the room about what would make the research more useful to them, rather than treating the comment as a closed statement to reflect on afterwards — this gives us a chance to recover some of that "so what" framing collaboratively rather than guessing at it later.
Action for next week: I'll draft a short note mapping the pupil premium and stakeholder survey data onto our question sub-questions specifically, so we can see exactly where the proxy data supports (or fails to support) the relational trust argument — and flag any remaining gaps before they become a problem at write-up stage.
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Radha, this is a very strong reflection. Your distinction between data availability and data relevance identifies one of the central methodological challenges facing the project. The fact that a dataset is accessible and structured does not necessarily mean that it can answer the question you consider most important.
Your proposed mapping exercise is an excellent response. As you complete it, distinguish carefully between what each source directly measures, what it might reasonably indicate and what it cannot establish. Pupil premium data may illuminate socioeconomic patterning, while stakeholder survey responses may capture reported perceptions, but neither can necessarily reveal the relational processes through which trust is developed or undermined. Triangulation can connect complementary evidence, but it cannot make proxy data a substitute for the relational accounts you need.
I also strongly support your proposed behavioural adjustment. Asking in the meeting what would make the research useful is preferable to interpreting Rob’s comment afterwards. Take his assessment seriously, but also consider whether teachers, parents and other stakeholders might understand usefulness differently. While the school leaders may sees limited practical value at the present moment, we should remain mindful that the request for the research came from Tom who has overarching responsibility for leadership across the trust.
This is precisely what good reflective research practice should look like: identifying a tension, examining its implications and converting that reflection into a concrete change in both behaviour and analysis.