teaching Scout

I recently sent out a request to secondary school headteachers across Scotland, to ask if they could forward my questionnaire to their teaching staff. I didn’t know what response to expect, though thought it would be fairly low because of the ‘unofficial’ nature of my research (it is only for my dissertaion) and the liklihood that they get requests for things like this all the time and quite simply don’t have time.

I was bowled over by the response, so far I have about 550 responses! I can see that 12 headteachers have completed it so that means at least 12 different schools. Unfortunately  it is completely anonymous and I can’t thank the individual schools personally as I quite simply don’t know who they are. So the best Universal Thankyou I can do is here on my blog! 

I really am encouraged by this response of a profession that I am soon to enter into and hope that when it is my turn I’ll be able to do the same.

Although I can’t say any specific results here because of ‘ethical procedures’, I have had a really positive response to the concept of sharing practice and some interesting and positive results from different groups of teacher. (I looked at years in service and position). The whole endeavor has shown me many useful insights not only to what teachers feel – and many gave me plenty of insightful comments – but as to my own work. I retrospect some of the questions were slightly flawed and I have learned a lesson in perhaps ‘biting off more than I can chew’ – now around 500 teachers have been able to judge me on a questionnaire that although is fine isn’t the best in the world – a scary concept indeed! Though, I suppose this blog is potentially even ‘riskier’. I guess that it goes back to the concept of’ ‘failing forward’ that I keep talking about, and it is still in my mind the way that I want to go.