Background to the Family

Fig.1 Tahmid – tree of participants

Seven-year-old Tahmid lived in a two-bedroom flat on the fourth floor of a tower block in the London Borough of Hackney with his parents Rashida and Nuruzzaman and two younger siblings, a brother, Yahya, aged four and a sister, Anisa, aged two. This is an inner London Borough within Greater London which is to the north-east of the City of London and adjoined by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Roman Road, famous for its street markets, forms the western edge, and the eastern boundary of the borough is formed by the River Lee. The area also boasts the famous Hackney Marshes that hosts the largest collection of football pitches in Europe, and was the site of part of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The population in this area is ethnically diverse. Tahmid and his siblings are part of the third generation of children born and brought up within the Bangladeshi

Tahmid Year of birth: 1996

Mum Rashida Year of birth: 1978

Dad Nuruzzaman Year of birth: 1969

Grandmother Sharma Year of birth: 1957

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community. Both his parents are second-generation British-Bangladeshi migrants.

Tahmid’s father worked for a neighbouring council in the community safety department and was an ex-policeman, while his mother was at the time of the pilot study working in the local Sure Start programme catering for the families of children under the age of five. Both sets of grandparents lived within ten miles and the maternal grandmother Sharma, in her early seventies, cared for the two younger siblings when parents were at work. Rashida was in her thirties when I conducted the study and was raised in the UK. Her parents migrated to the UK in the seventies and both took up jobs as machinists in the garments industry. Her father worked in a local factory and Sharma worked from home to support the family financially. Both parents were very keen to see their children go into higher education but due to the demands of sustaining a reasonable family income only Rashida, the youngest, managed to pursue her education and became a nursery nurse. The older siblings obtained jobs upon leaving their compulsory secondary education.

Tahmid attended a local primary school until the age of six. As both parents were keen for him to benefit from a combination of national curriculum subjects with Islamic studies, he was transferred to a private Islamic primary school in a neighbouring borough. Yahya attended a nursery on a part-time basis. On school days, Rashida would drop Anisa off at her mother’s and take Yahya and Tahmid to school. Sharma would then pick Yahya up from school, taking Anisa with her. The family visited the paternal grandparents on alternate weekends which gave all three children the opportunity to spend time with the paternal grandparents too.

Sharma valued the time she spent with her grandchildren as said in her interview that they helped to keep the loneliness at bay. All Sharma’s six children are grown

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up, married and busy with their own lives whilst she was at home with her ailing husband, who has since passed away. The children provided a communicative outlet for both grandparents through their constant lively talk, questioning and bickering. Anisa, the youngest, was just learning to talk while Yahya was a very fluent speaker for a four year old. The children loved listening to stories of when they were little and about the lives of Sharma, her husband and children, particularly family stories based in Bangladesh. The family spoke Sylheti as did the other families in this study. Sylheti is a dialect of Bengali which, although it has a written form (Sylheti Nagari ‘popular’ script; Mahon 1997, p87), cannot be written or read by most Sylheti speakers in the UK. Mahon (1997) noted that

‘Sylheti speakers in Britain refer to their language as ‘Sylheti’, usually calling it ‘Bangla’ or ‘Bengali’ since it is the language spoken by almost the entire Bangladeshi, or Bengali community in this country’ (p53).

I will refer to the language spoken by the families as ‘Bengali’ throughout the thesis and the families themselves tend to refer to it as ‘Bangla’ when they refer to their ‘Sylheti’ dialect. Neither maternal grandparent spoke any English except the odd word within their spoken Bengali. Hence, the children spoke Bengali with them, while both parents spoke mainly English with the children.

2.4 Methodology

Learning from my experience as an ethnographic researcher on the study by Kenner et al (2004) involving grandparents and their interaction with their grandchildren, it seemed logical for me to adopt an ethnographic approach in my own research. During my role as a researcher on the project, I felt we had begun to gain some understanding of the personal and interpersonal nature of young children’s learning and the importance of the social contexts in which learning takes place, particularly within the area of intergenerational learning in Bangladeshi families. I thus wanted to design a research study in which I hoped to

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identify and trace the impact of intergenerational interactions on children’s approaches to learning from their encounters with grandparents, parents and teachers and develop further insight into this area of research. I opted for a detailed study of a small number of children over time so that I could construct an understanding of their ways of learning in different contexts.

This type of detailed work using qualitative data with an exploratory intention is a longitudinal form of ethnography. The approach has been adopted by anthropologists and sociologists to study the perspectives, interactions and cultures of people in context. The need to do this was emphasised by Bateson (1979) who stated

‘We come to every situation with stories, patterns and sequences of childhood experiences which are built into us. Our learning happens within the experience of what important others did’ (p13).

By Silverman’s (1997) definition, an ethnographic study design is a hybrid approach in which the fieldworker is present in two capacities; firstly as a fieldworker being

‘careful to connect the facts that s/he observes with the specific features of the backdrop against which these facts occur, which are linked to historical and cultural contingencies’ (p10).

And secondly as a data gatherer who at times feels the need to be involved in activities, which may bring up occasions where the ethnographer has to resolve tensions that arise between the two roles.

The main appeal for me to conduct an ethnographic study as a Bangladeshi researching into my own community, was to enable the voices of the participants to be heard which otherwise may remain silent (James 2001, p255). There lay in this a great strength as these voices could be captured by me through paying close attention to the everyday and familiar events which made up the participant’s

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social world. Although I was a member of the community I still had to make a conscious effort to enter into the group and be accepted. This effort required me to be in control of my emotional reaction to what I observed and make choices of which events to take part in and when to stand back as an observer. Fox (1974) states that

‘the process by which a participant observer gradually makes sense of what he sees, hears and becomes a part of it’ (p230)

and through this process of observation I hoped to achieve an understanding of the phenomena in their cultural whole.

My initial thoughts were to continue to work with four of the children and their families from the study by Kenner et al (2004). My intention of gaining entry to these families was based on the strategies used in my previous experiences as well as the relationships that I had built with them. One family would be part of the pilot while the other three families would become part of the main study. As I had already developed a relationship with some of the children during the previous project, I had to go in with a different hat and start again as, this time, I aimed to work with the maternal grandmothers instead of the paternal grandmothers. I also had to explain to the children I was there for a different purpose and clarify the purpose of my relationship with them. To establish this new beginning I planned to spend time as I did previously with the children in the classroom after gaining permission from the school. This proved more difficult than I had anticipated.

Although I managed to spend time in the classrooms with the children it became evident that most of the families were not able to participate due to personal and family circumstances. The only families that could come on board were the families of Samiha and Anayet. I then had to find two other families who could potentially participate.

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After spending two terms with the children in their classrooms and trying to find two other families it became apparent that I would need to start thinking about which family I would consider for the pilot. After much thought I realised that a family outside of this particular school community would be more beneficial. I would be able to start my data collection as well as trial the methods without being concerned that the family had already been exposed to an intervention and, therefore, might respond differently in comparison to a family who had not previously experienced it. The concern about including participants from a pilot study in the main study arises because only those involved in the pilot, and not the whole group, will have had the experience. I hoped the analysis of the pilot study would help me improve my methods and approach within the main study, which it did.

After many a struggle I identified Tahmid’s family as being the most suitable to participate in the pilot study. Tahmid’s mother Rashida, a friend, offered to participate and took on the responsibility to convince her mother to take part. After a week I made an introductory visit which gave me the opportunity to meet the grandmother and explain the purpose and passion behind my research. I was introduced as a friend and hence I automatically became an insider which helped to put all participants at ease. During the following few visits which took place over a couple of weeks I would take any appropriate opportunity to establish my relationship with Sharma and the children. I ate, watched TV, helped make tea and prepared refreshments and I addressed Sharma as ‘khala’ (maternal aunt).

Although Rashida had agreed to participate along with her mum, I had to gather my data as quickly as I could as Rashida’s father was terminally ill. I did not want to impose too many visits onto the family and take up too much time, but was also

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worried by Sharma’s unpredictable situation and wanted to gather the data as soon as possible. Since I shared the social world of the research participants, there was, according to Hockey (1993), a smaller possibility of me experiencing any ‘culture shock or disorientation’ (p119). Insights and sensitivity to things both said and unsaid and to the cultures operating at the time of the research were potentially available to me as the insider. Schutz (1976) suggested

‘The member of the in-group looks in one single glance through the normal social situations occurring to him and…he catches immediately the ready-made recipe appropriate to its solution…For those who have grown up within the cultural pattern, not only the recipes and their efficiency but also the typical and anonymous attitudes required by them are an unquestioned ‘matter of course’ which gives them both security and assurance’ (p108).

Hockey (1993) (cited in Hubbard et al, 2001), also offered a further advantage for insider research, namely that there is the possibility of enhanced rapport between respondent and insider researcher. He suggested that respondents are more likely to divulge ‘intimate details of their lives to someone considered empathetic’ (p119).

He went on to say this rapport could also potentially create problems i.e.

‘…establishing close rapport may create problems for the research as the researcher may lose his or her distance and objectivity, over-identify with the individual or group under study, and forgo the academic role’

(p120).

This I feared could be a pitfall for me, too. As a researcher wishing to gain access there was always the urge to be sensitive to the needs of the participants but at the same time I needed to be aware that I was playing an academic role.

My feeling of being an insider was going well until I mentioned that I needed to audio and video record the activities proposed. Sharma became withdrawn and uncomfortable, she began to question my role and purpose, and questions were raised as to why I needed to record and what I would do with the recordings. From being a very comfortable insider I was suddenly in the awkward situation of having

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to work out whether I had actually become an outsider. I began to appreciate that I could not be both insider and outsider, even though my own background and heritage were similar to those of the participants. The fact that I was a researcher itself made me different, which my experiences with Sharma helped me to unpick further before I delved into the main study. I address the dilemma in more depth in Chapter 4.

For the pilot study I decided to use the following methods to collect data as I wanted to try my skills at using the tools effectively as well as gain an understanding of the family’s context:

 Questionnaires

 Participant observation through video recording and taking field notes

 Interviews

Initially I carried out a questionnaire with Sharma, the same questionnaire that was used in Kenner et al’s (2004) study on intergenerational learning between grandparents and their grandchildren. The aim of the questionnaire was to find out some preliminary information about the grandmother in relation to the child. It included a section on personal details followed by a section which asked whether the grandmother did any of the nineteen different activities with their grandchild ranging from gardening, going to the park, shopping and helping with homework to visiting others and talking about members of the family and family history. The final section included three open ended questions on what the grandmother and the child learned from each other. It was translated into Bengali (Appendix I).

Semi-structured interviews were audio recorded and video recording of activities between Tahmid, his mother and grandmother were made. These events took place at his family home and the grandmother’s home. The purpose was to see the trends in the relationships between the child, his grandmother and his mother.

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The interviews were also used to explore the issues that could potentially arise when trying to carry out video and audio recordings. The interview schedule (Appendix II and III) constituted a flexible guide and, where appropriate, I tried to explore further questions, building on participants’ answers.

The activity chosen involved putting a puzzle together. The reason for choosing a puzzle lay in the idea that it would involve interaction and negotiation. In this case I was not able to purchase specifically-chosen puzzles due to the speed at which events took place due to the grandfather's terminal ill-health. I therefore used one that I already had at home, a map of Switzerland. It had 30 pieces and the pieces had to be put on a board which had the shapes of the pieces dented in slightly.

The plan was that a different puzzle would be used in each interaction. However due to not having time to purchase other puzzles, the same puzzle was used with both the mother and the grandmother. The video recordings of the following two events were carried out:

1. Mother and son putting the puzzle together at the mother’s house. There were two younger siblings in the house. They played out on the balcony with sand and did not come back until we had to leave for the grandmother’s house.

2. Grandmother and grandson putting the same puzzle together at her house on top of the bed in the grandmother’s small bedroom. The younger siblings watched at the beginning and at times joined in.

When explaining the pilot-study I asked for help from the family in refining the questionnaire, interview and videoing techniques. The participant’s responsibility was twofold:

a) Complete the questionnaire, answer the interview questions and

b) Inform me of any problems they encountered in carrying out the task such as

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items worded in a confusing manner, questions they found offensive, or too little time to complete the activity.

In order to further improve the interview questions and recording, the pilot helped to assess whether each question gave an adequate range of responses, and see if the time taken to complete the interview was sufficient. From this I was able to re-word and re-scale some of the questions that were not clear or appropriate.