i returned the four SIM cards to starhub today - i remain very grateful to them for their sponsorship of the accounts, without which hardly anything would have gotten off the ground.
i scanned in the usable route sketches from the pilot study, in preparation for a more narrative-style approach to the data. i'm supposed to try the new approach on the pilot data first, then if my supervisors approve, i'll roll it out to the main data.
i've had an insight that the pre- and post-tests actually are the key to answering a question that came up during my confirmation seminar which saw me temporarily stumped - namely, how does the study bridge the naïve geography of the adolescent mind and the geography of the formal curriculum? well, anyway now that i've realised it, i've made the link more explicit in the thesis.
because i feel more and more sure that the pre- and post-tests have their place, i'm toying with the idea of reducing the narratives to sub-units of the existing 'discussion' chapters, rather than replacing them altogether. true, this approach seems terribly kiasu and bao-ka-liao, but then i think it's very similar to one of john's original suggestions anyway (which i did not implement because i could not have a clear understanding of how to weave a narrative from the data - i have a better idea now, and will try to work on it tonight).
:-)