Governor monitoring reports – it's ethnographic research!
I'm now in the second year of my doctoral research journey and I am knee deep in reading of all kinds but currently looking at ways of keeping a research journal and recording notes from research. You might wonder what that has to do with governor monitoring reports – well bear with me! It occurred to me that what we do when we visit our schools, in our link governor roles or with a specific remit from the board, is a piece of research – ethnographic research perhaps? Ethnographic research can be described as “a descriptive, analytical and explanatory study of the culture … values, beliefs and practices of one or more groups” (1). It is about observing people in their every- day settings – so we listen, we observe (to learn not to make judgements and this is an essential distinction) and we talk to the participants about their interpretations of the events. We might be sitting in on a pupil progress meeting as I did recently to understand the rigour of the process. I was a