‘Training the Trainers’ Competence building of educators into a new research method and the co-creation of educational solutions

This week long meeting enabled the academic team to co-creating and designing the courses for the students (IO1). The output from this week were the plans for the online course, a training package and the course handbook (IO2). These were designed to benefit students, academics and external stakeholders. The time spent together on IO1 ensured the team were competent and confident in delivering the co-creative programme to the students and also ensured the programme matched the needs of each particular student group.  

The academic staff at the partner institutions met for a week to complete important training and planning together. The team first received training in the Indirect Approach. The partners explored the theoretical foundation of the method and its appropriateness for research with young people who live in challenging contexts.  A range of interview examples were showed to illustrate "happenstances"; parts of interviews when the informant tells us about the theme without the interviewer asking for it. Each academic then conducted an Indirect Interview with local school students and the school students provided feedback on their experience of the interviews. These audio and film recordings and feedback were reviewed to inform planning for the student course.

After this first-hand experience the academic team developed the method further and planned the other areas of skills and knowledge the students would need to undertake the project. The academic team co-created their pedagogical approach and the structure for the co-creative programme they would work in with students. 

During this time the academic team also co-created the first theoretical framework from the project, called the Equality Literacy Framework. This was grounded in the team’s interdisciplinary professional experience and theoretical expertise.

USN hosted this one week programme as the originators and most experienced users of the Indirect Approach. The aim for IO1 was to also disseminate the methodology to other teachers, so that they again could train their students the next years of the project, creating on-going sustainability. In order to achieve this the team started to design and develop the handbook and exemplar teaching materials. Some of the interviews were edited and made into small films, for teaching materials for the students. You can see them here (on the right side) and on the  online session 4.