Research Tools Evaluation

Having chosen to do my inquiry about teaching abroad I did a questionnaire for different professionals in the industry I know that have taught abroad, just to find out if many other people experienced differences like I have when they moved abroad. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HP2FYZ5. I didn’t find the survey overly helpful as whilst it did help me collect data and surveymonkey was brilliant for condensing all my responses and making my data very clear, I found I didn’t collect as many details as I was hoping to.

I did a pilot interview on a colleague who is currently teaching out here in the UAE and whilst I found I gained a lot more information from this source than from my survey I did feel like there was still more to give.

I then conducted a short pilot focus group and my colleague that did the pilot interview along with other dance teachers I know out here agreed to participate. I found that a lot more information was gathered, even in the short amount of time that I had them talking. My colleague that had done the interview opened up a lot more when with other people. I found that when they were talking altogether it helped remind them of situations that they had also experienced that they may not have remembered on their own.

It was not possible to do a pilot observation as it would require me to go to the UK and observe a teacher there and then observe the same teacher in the UAE to do a fair comparison. Whilst this would actually be a very effective and informative piece of research as I would be a third party observer being able to take an unbiased view the logistics of it are unreasonable.

For that reason I have found that a focus group is the most effective way of drawing out the most amount of information from the people I am questioning. I only have a small handful of people that I have access to that I can ask to answer my questions so the more information gathered from each individual the more it will help me.