unravel its complexity
its actuality as opposed to its intentions.
The task remained to isolate the course’s regular and important features,
to relate them to underlying factors in both staff intentions and
established practices and to examine the relationship between procedures
established and students’
responses .
The first stage designed to
generate common incidents
recurring trends
and issues frequently raised
in
discussion”
(Parlett and Hamilton
p.16)
took place in the Research Group.
This is presented in the microfiche
and enabled the
process described by Grace (1979)
to make some form of empathetic ’entry'
into the social
world of another through close acquaintance with the
context and texture of their discourse.
This
directed attention
to
the
areas
of concern for the
second
stage
enabling the observation to be more directed
systematic and selective.
It led directly to the choice of the school group as the focus for further
research ,- identifying
it
as
the
critical learning milieu referred to by
Parlett and Hamilton.
Through the analysis of the Research Group it
became apparent that the school groups
fl
embody core assumptions about how
knowledge and pedagogy should be organized
If
(Parlett and Hamilton
p.13) .
Equally they were affected by factors both internal and external to the
institution which would require a focus in the subsequent stages.
A further decision taken here was to work across three groups rather than
one
to ensure that the data was generated from different situations within
the innovation. The school group within the Institute was taken as a basic
focus since it was considered that in that arena what Parlett and Hamilton
refer to as the ’higher order’ aspects of the college environment would
3
і
lγ∣
S
ʃ
f
‘I Z
I] r