National Action Research Network on Researching and Evaluating Personal
Development Planning and e-Portfolio Practice
Year 2.2 Research Progress
Name: Carina Buckley
Organisation: University of Portsmouth
E-mail address: [email protected]
Contact telephone number : 023 9284 5899
1. Your current research focus/question, and how this has evolved
What is the role of PDP in identity development and confidence building in Foundation
degree students, specifically adult women?
2. The context/background for your research
3. Progress with research: your current implementation plan (including dates and
deadlines)
My work is progressing slowly but surely, and I feel it is coming together well now.
I have started analysing my questionnaire data and bringing it together in light of the
social identity theory I have been reading. It is my intention to have the results written up
by January 2010.
At this point I would like to conduct a small number of short telephone interviews with
students, to ask them more detail about their experiences of moving into higher
education.
I am also trying to obtain data on retention and achievement in the faculty, to provide
more of a context for these results, but as I must be reliant on the commitments of other
people for this, it is not certain I will be able to include this, or when.
Overall, I am aiming to have the final report finished by April next year.
4. Your chosen methodology/ies (data collection and methods of analysis)
I have mainly relied on a short questionnaire. Although they have been entered into the
database quantitatively, they are essentially qualitative results, expressing agreement or
disagreement with various statements. I visited six classes of Foundation degree
students and offered students the opportunity to complete, and waited while they did so.
In this way returns are quite high, with at least 60% of all possible students completing
the questionnaire.
In a small number of cases I have followed up the questionnaire with a short interview, in
order to expand upon some of the responses and gain deeper insight. I have been able
to identity several specific themes across interviews, which will allow for some
comparison.
I will look at the questionnaire results and the emergent themes in the context of social
identity research.
5. Key references.
Appleby Y and Bathmaker AM 2006 The new skills agenda: increased lifelong learning
or new sites of inequality? British Educational Research Journal 32: 703-717
Clegg, S. 2004 Critical readings: Progress files and the production of the autonomous
learner. Teaching in Higher Education 9: 287-298.
Friedkin NE 2001 Norm formation in social influence networks. Social Networks 23: 167189
Hogg MA, Terry DJ and White KM 1995 A tale of two theories: a critical comparison of
identity theory with social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly 58: 255-269
Johnson S and Robson C 1999 Threatened identities: the experiences of women in
transition to programmes of professional higher education. Journal of Community and
Applied Social Psychology 9: 273-288
Stets JE and Burke PJ 2000 Identity theory and social identity theory. Social Psychology
Quarterly 63: 224-237