Today I attended, for the second time, the Whybeck Parents Forum. My initial aim was to been seen, so that the parents would get to know me and hopefully agree to be interviewed.
The forum is lively and energetic, with parents given an opportunity to have a say in the 'running' of the school. The forum, is more than this however, it provides a social setting for the mothers (predominately women who attend). It struck me today, as I attended (sometimes I can be a little dense) that what I was in fact doing was an observation in an ethnographic sense. My aim now is to continue to attend and see how the group develop--there is rich source material in this parents forum.
This reminds me of the remarks made by Charmaz (2006) who discusses the need for 'rich data' commenting that a "researcher can rarely make persuasive, much less definitive, statements from limited data" (p. 18) -- she also quotes Dey (1999: p. 119) who refers to a "smash and grab data collection strategy."
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