Interactive group activity: a socially mediated tool for opening an interpretive space in classroom research

Showing What We Can Do: Assessment of Primary School Dance

“…It is an opportunity for children to learn about themselves by seeing how others think and solve problems. Participatory strategies such as the use of mind mapping (Whyte, Fraser, Aitken, and Price 2013) encourage children to make connections between 'learning in dance' and 'learning through dance'.…”

From teacher-in-role to researcher-in-role: possibilities for repositioning children through role-based strategies in classroom research

“…A broad survey of research methods handbooks, including some of the most established international texts (Conrad and Serlin 2006;Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2005), recent handbooks (Hartas 2010;Scott and Usher 2011) and those tagged as exploring 'innovative' or 'complementary' methods (such as Green, Camilli, and Elmore 2006), finds no mention of researcher role-taking. A search of online research methods handbooks and journals also finds no mention of the strategy, other than in a prior publication by the author's research team (Whyte et al 2012). Though the word 'role' occurs frequently within the research methods literature, the term inevitably denotes roletaking in the sociological rather than dramatic sense.…”

“…1 I will not comment here on the overall design or findings of the project as these have been reported elsewhere (TLRI 2012). Also available is a book of case studies from the project (Fraser, Aitken, and Whyte 2013), while details of another drama-based strategy -the IGA or 'Interactive Group Activity' -have been given in another research article (Whyte et al 2012). The current paper will focus on how the researcher-in-role strategy was developed and used.…”

“…This work has already begun. In our own project, aspects of researcherin-role were introduced in classrooms where children were less familiar with drama with some success (see Whyte et al 2012). The investigation of researcher-in-role in other contexts than drama is an important next step.…”