168 Chapter 4 At the start of the project, it was obvious to the DCU insider team that the experiences and insights of the outsider team would be of utmost interest to the project. Their experiences in their contexts of high diversity and complexity were necessary for the curriculum renewal and the future citizenship formation of DCU students for a modern, fragmented society. In the evaluation of this study, it will be reflected on whether this was sufficiently achieved or not. In this reflection, the voice of the outsider team will be heard. Moreover, in the TAR project for DCU, we did not speak of a project team, but of a conversational community (Cijvat et al., 2023), as explained in relation to the research design. This gave specific meaning to the participation of all project members as equals. 4.3 DATA COLLECTION In TAR conversations in the insider team, in the outsider team and between the two teams (the conversational community), attention was paid to exploration, planning, data collection and data analysis. Not only were the conversations themselves a source of empirical data, they simultaneously formed a platform for deciding how to bring data to the table for joint interpretation. In this section, a brief overview will be provided of the different types of data collection methods used in the TAR project for DCU’s teacher training. First, attention will be paid to the meetings of the conversational community as a source of (quantitative) data. Second, a list of initiatives by the conversational community to collect both qualitative and quantitative data will be presented. 1. Conversations as a data source The conversational community meetings of DCU’s insider team and the primary education outsider team resulted in detailed minutes that were sent to all of the participants. Any comments on the text of those minutes could be expressed immediately by mail, if a participant wished so. At each meeting after the initial meeting, one of the first points on the agenda was the joint approbation of the minutes. At the end of the first (long) cycle of meetings, all 10 participants signed the growing document containing the minutes of the meetings. Specific parts of the meetings in which ideas and concepts central to the research were discussed were taped and them transcribed. These transcriptions were inserted into the minutes using noticeably smaller text.
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