Lessons from Pilot 2

In a previous post, I wrote about what I learned from running a pilot study for my EdD, before the main study starts in September 2022. In a nutshell: it went terribly, and that was the best outcome I could’ve hoped for. You can read about this in a post I wrote about the first pilot.

Summary of changes made (written before the pilot)

• More students sitting the questionnaire, so I can choose a wider range of motivation types for the focus group pilot.
• More prompts between questions to illicit more discussion between pupils, so it doesn’t play out like a group interview.

Finally, I also added the use of a diamond-nine task, ranking factors that affect their motivation. This uses some more self-determination theory-esque language, allowing students to think about the theory behind their motivation without knowing that.

How it went (written after the pilot)

Some of the students selected did not attend (due to illness, injury, and I think one just forgot). This turned out not to be an issue since I’d invited so many more students than last time, so six pupils still participated in this pilot.

SRQ-A

Some students commented that a few statements were repetitive, but this is deliberate since they’re meant to be similar. This meant that I was able to find the motivation types for each pupil. Interestingly (but perhaps unsurprisingly), none of the students were measured to be intrinsically motivated to study, and the views on the use of target grades were generally negative.

Focus group

This went SO much better than last time! As mentioned, I introduced the use of prompts to encourage students to have a conversation with each other before answering the question.

Students had discussions based on their independent conversations and I made notes on the general discussion I could hear, including some key words that were used. Towards the end, I also made a note of which prompt was being discussed and the timestamp on the audio recording, and part of me thinks I should’ve started this earlier, but most of the notes had lines to the appropriate prompt drawn.

Analysis

My next task is analysis of the data, both from the questionnaire and the focus group. In a nutshell, no students felt intrinsically motivated (nor were any amotivated). The perspective on target grades was also generally negative.

More detailed analysis to come!