At the beginning of 2012 a writing project was run by a university Journalism and Media Studies Department with a Grade 9 English class at a local high school. The high school is located in an area previously designated as ‗Coloured‘, and the learners are ‗Black‘ or ‗Coloured‘. There are approximately 45 – 50 learners in a class, and the age range of the Grade 9 learners is in the region of
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14- 17 years. Language of instruction for this class was English, although for the majority of the class English was their second language. Part of the project involved learners writing an anonymous secret (modelled on the website ―postsecrets.com‖) and depositing the secret in a locked post box. Learners were informed that their secrets would be displayed publicly in the university departmental foyer, but the anonymous nature of the secrets meant that their identities would be unknown. With the permission of the Journalism and Media Studies Department, I extracted all secrets containing a sexual theme and initially chose nine secrets as exemplars to be discussed within the focus groups I conducted. The secrets served as stimulus materials for the focus groups. As such, their purpose was similar to that of vignettes which are commonly used to stimulate discussion in groups. However, as well as serving as stimulus material for discussion, they were expressions of sexual conflicts or difficulties that high school learners were having, and the focus group members therefore served as expert informants on the sexual difficulties that were expressed in the secrets.
Questions were formulated around these nine secrets, as well as other sexual and gendered behaviours of high school learners. Further questions were asked about learners‘ experiences of school based sexuality education programmes and from where else they learnt about sex and gendered behaviours.
This initial interview schedule was piloted with a group of university first year psychology students, then modified (see Appendix C). All nine secrets were used with the first two groups of participants, then two were discarded as they tended to produce similar themes to the others, and the schedule needed shortening (see Appendix D for revised schedule). After six initial groups were run, a follow up interview schedule was devised, following up on some of the issues that surfaced in the initial groups (Appendix E).
Participants were recruited from the student body at a Further Education and Training (FET) College in the Eastern Cape. College students were chosen as participants for several reasons. Firstly, due to the ethical complexities of interviewing minors, I decided not to interview high school learners, but rather asked people who have recently left school for their reflections on high school sexuality. A college setting is an ideal place to recruit such people. Secondly, I felt that slightly older people would be able to talk about the sexualities of high school learners with greater freedom, insight and reflexivity than learners themselves. Thirdly, I recruited from an FET College rather than a university as university students are a relatively over-researched population, and furthermore are, on average, from a higher socio-economic background than FET college students. It was felt that FET college students would have more similarities with the learners who wrote the secrets, and that the students could function as expert informants on the socio-sexual milieu out of which the secrets came.
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The FET college has two streams – one offering National Certificate (Vocational) qualifications at levels N2 to N3, catering to students who do not have a National Senior Certificate (matric qualification), and the other offering Higher Educational Programmes at levels N4 to N6, which requires a matric or N3 level certificate for entry. Each level takes six months of classes to complete, and an internship is also required to qualify. Students were recruited from the N4 and N5 classes, with the request that they had completed Grade 12 at a school, and be within the age range of 18 – 24 years.
After gaining permission from relevant gatekeepers (discussed in the section below), I recruited participants by going into classes which had a free period immediately afterwards. I would introduce myself and my research and then ask for volunteers to help me understand the sexualities of high school learners. I would ask them to meet with me in the college library in their following free period.
As a way of informing them about what we would be doing, I would tell them two of the secrets that we would be discussing, and that we would have cool drinks and biscuits during the discussion. I positioned the college students as expert informants who had greater knowledge of the sexuality of
‗Black‘ high school learners than I, given my age (I am now in my forties) and the fact that I am
‗White‘. I would stress that I would not be asking them to divulge any personal information. This method of recruitment meant that participants usually had ongoing relationships with one another, as they were usually from the same class. Furthermore, groups of friends tended to volunteer together.
This was generally an asset, as participants were often comfortable with one another, but it did mean that confidentiality may have been more compromised than if participants were strangers. If I did not get sufficient volunteers I would sometimes ask the participants if they could recruit someone from another class who also had a free period.
By being given permission to recruit participants during college lectures, I was using institutional power to gain access to the participants. Furthermore, two lecturers assisted me in recruiting for two of my groups by encouraging the students to volunteer, and one even recruited another male from a different class as I only had one male volunteer from the class from which I was recruiting. However, I believe this use of power was acceptable as participation was not coerced, participants appeared to enjoy the groups, and some stated explicitly that the groups had been helpful to them. For example:
Group 2F
2F2: I wish you could come maybe tomorrow or next time R: Why do you say that?
2F2: It‘s good to share /2F1: we enjoyed /2F2: ja we enjoyed Group FU1
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R: What‘s it been like talking about these things with me?
1MXf3: It‘s like [2F1: relief] /R: relief/ yes …
1M1: Ja I think err in a group like this, you are able to express your feelings. Um you don‘t have that grudge towards yourself /P: mm/. Like you can, after talking about something, that err, that eats you inside you are able to feel free /R: ok/. You‘re no longer stressed
These extracts show how positively some participants felt about the focus groups. Furthermore, it is hoped that the wider benefits of this research will justify any minimal social/institutional pressure that may have been placed on students to participate.
The FET college student body has a sex ratio of approximately three females to one male, and whilst I was able to improve on this ratio somewhat in my participant mix, male voices were still under-represented in my sample. Six initial focus groups were conducted: two had both female and male participants, two had only female participants and two had only male participants. Two follow up groups were then conducted, with all participants except a particularly dominant male being invited to a follow up group. The members of the two mixed gender groups and the first male group were invited to one, and the members of the female and second male groups were invited to the other. Thus both follow up groups were of mixed gender. 19 participants were invited to the first follow up group, and 10 arrived. 17 participants were invited to the second group; 13 of the invited participants arrived, plus one participant who had been invited to the first follow up group, plus an uninvited member, leading to a rather large group of 15 participants. However three participants only arrived 20 minutes after the group started, and one arrived 15 minutes before the end, just after one had left early. Thus there were a maximum of 14 participants present at any one time.
Participant details are explicated in Appendix J. The groups were designated thus:
Initial groups: 1MX = Mixed gender group 1; 2MX = Mixed gender group 2; 1F = Female group 1; 2F
= Female group 2; 1M = Male group 1; 2M = Male group 2
Follow up groups: FU1 = Follow up group 1; FU2 = Follow up group 2
Participants are designated by their group identity, followed by f/m (indicating their gender; only necessary for mixed groups) and a number. For example, participant 1MXf2 was a female participant whose initial group was the first mixed gender group; participant 2M1 was a male participant whose initial group was the second male group.
Total number of participants: female = 24; male = 14; Total = 38 Age range - 19 – 25 years; average age - 21 years
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