How can humankind respond to the enormous challenges we are currently facing? How can educators help develop an understanding of 'one world'; and our roles as global citizens?

"Our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that sounds abstract; sustainable development; and turn it into reality for all the world's people."

Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations

VOX POP

Purpose
To get a snapshot of a range of opinions about an issue, and to see if those opinions change over time.

Preparation

Resources
Clipboard and paper or tape recorder or video camera

Teacher time
Your pupils should ideally be the ones to carry out the research, so you need to think about who they can get access to for this purpose, where, when, what sort of equipment they can use etc. Decide what the focus of the research is going to be i.e. Is it to find out people's opinions about a proposed development? Is it to find out what they think about an issue? Are you using the research as a stimulus to further enquiry or are you going to repeat the interviews after a project has been carried out to see if there are shifts in opinion?

Procedure
Tell the pupils that they are going to be conducting some research into people's opinions on a particular issue / topic. Discuss the topic and decide a key question or set of questions they are going to ask. Decide how you are going to use the imformation. Decide on who you are going to interview, when and where. Discuss how to carry out the interviews, how to engage people in a friendly manner, how they are going to explain what they are using the interview for.

Carry out the interviews (either on paper using clipboards, tape recorders or video cameras).

Discuss the process. How did people respond? Analyse the results. Decide how you are going to use them further (e.g. a report, statistically, a display, a video, do more research, keep for comparison with later interviews – if the latter, decide when you are going to carry out the process again).

Advantages of this methodology

  • Fairly easy to carry out
  • Fun to do
  • Fairly easy to aggregate the results or put into diagram form
  • Gives an idea of peoples' subjective feelings about issues
  • Can be used to compare the feelings of different groups of pupils or people

Disadvantages of this methodology

  • Depends on how seriously the respondents take the process
  • Can be seen as intrusive