The data were collected over a period of two years. The order of the data collection was: semi-structured interviews, observations of English lessons, and further semi-structured interviews.
3.9.1 Semi-Structured Interviews
The use of interviews aided investigation into the factors I was exploring and meant that I could probe more deeply into the issues I was concerned with and with greater depth of understanding. The interviews helped to provide some answers to the first three research questions and were used in order to investigate the complex issue of the understanding of reading and to gain an insight into the student teachers’ beliefs, opinions, feelings, and experiences of reading. The intention was to derive data in an interpretive manner and to read the interviews for what they meant (Mason, 2002). This follows the principle that the interview is a social, interpersonal encounter and not just a data collecting exercise (Cohen et al., 2007). In addition, interviews are a good way of ‘assessing people’s perceptions, meanings, definitions of situations and constructions of reality’ (Punch, 2009: 144). Although the intention was not for this research to be auto/biographical in nature, the content of the study and resulting interview questions inevitably resulted in the participants recalling some of their life histories of reading.
Semi-structured interviews were used as I had a clear set of issues which needed discussing and questions to be answered. However, I also needed to be flexible to enable the participants to develop their ideas, speak more widely on the issues, and elaborate on areas of particular interest. The participants and I were able to engage in a
97
dialogue whereby the initial questions could be modified in light of the students’ responses and any interesting and important areas could be probed further (Smith and Osborn, 2008). The flexibility of semi-structured interviews thus seemed to be
particularly useful as clarification could be requested at the time. The interviews were however more than a conversation. They involved a set of assumptions and
understandings about the situation (Denscombe, 2007) with the participants being the focus and me as the facilitator.
Interviews took place face-to-face in an empty seminar room at the university except when interviewing after an observation of a lesson, when they took place in the classroom once the children had vacated it. The timing of the interviews varied from forty-five minutes to an hour. I had a brief but flexible list of questions for each interview enabling me to have some control over the proceedings whilst still enabling the participants’ freedom to discuss aspects of importance to themselves. Some questions were relevant for all the student teachers but some questions were used in response to particular issues raised in previous interviews. The interview schedule for Abigail is included as an example in Appendix F.
The number of interviews varied for each student due to their academic workload and teaching commitments. Yvette, however, only attended one interview. She declined the invitation of a second interview although did give permission for the responses from the first interview to be used in the study. The reason for her not continuing is unclear but there could have been a number of explanations. The interview timetable is listed is Table 1 below:
98
Interview One Interview Two
Interview Three
Interview Four Abigail Year 2: start of
second school placement Year 2: following second school placement Year 3: prior to final school placement Year 3: following observation of English lesson Rachel Year 2: start of
second school placement Year 3: prior to final school placement Year 3: following observation of English lesson Lucy Year 2: start of
second school placement
Year 3: prior to final school placement Katy Year 2: start of
second school placement
Year 3: prior to final school placement Yvette Year 2: start of
second school placement
Table 2: Interview Timetable
3.9.2 Observation of Student Teachers’ Teaching
As well as interviewing the student teachers, I also completed some observations of the student teachers’ English lessons in order to experience and observe first-hand their approaches to reading in practice. This gave me the opportunity to see for myself what was taking place rather than just relying on the students’ accounts. As Robson (2002) notes, what people do may differ from what they say they do and observation allows this to be checked. I had the opportunity to observe English lessons taught by Abigail and Rachel. Both students had identified that the lessons in question would involve some aspect of the teaching of reading. Rachel was teaching children in a Year 6 class
99
and the focus was analysing war poetry, whilst Abigail was teaching Year 2 pupils how to identify features in a play script.
Consistent with the tenets of interpretivism, the observations were unstructured in nature. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) has primarily been applied to the interpretation of interview data, however Larkin and Griffiths (2009) used
observations in their research on experiences of addiction and recovery, concluding that such methods of data collection were conducive for IPA studies. Immersing myself into the social situation of the classroom, I was able to develop an understanding of the student’s teaching and children’s learning. It entailed talking to the children, watching the teaching and learning, reading the student’s lesson plan and making observation notes. During the observations I looked for evidence of sociocultural beliefs having an effect on the student teachers’ understanding of reading in the classroom, the kinds of literacy practices and classroom discourses present , whether there was evidence of larger systems of power occurring and the relationships between the student teachers’ identity and the teaching and learning of reading.
The intention was not to make judgements on the students but to use the observations as a starting point for discussions in the follow up interview and to look for common constructs and themes. Observation of their teaching followed by an interview provided a shared experience for both myself and the participants (Hamilton and Corbett-
Whittier, 2013). The notes from these lesson observations have been included in Appendix G.
100