Once the nurse-participants were identified and plans were made to meet, the focus switched from planning to operationalizing activities. Here, I look at how the interview conversations were framed and information was gathered.
The political situation locally was one of increasing caution in terms of comments made about employing organisations. Despite public statements about transparency, I was hearing informally of individuals being censored by organisations for their criticism and this fear of retribution was reinforced in several interviews. This understanding combined with concerns about the
‘busyness’ of service areas led me to offer a choice of venue for the interviews.
Two did opt for their place of work, but both were senior staff who had their own offices and could thus guarantee privacy.
Before proceeding with the interview I checked that prior information
(Appendix 2.2) had been understood and reminded the nurse-participants that they could stop the interview at any time with no detriment. I asked for permission to record interviews, explaining that pseudonyms would be used for anonymity and all agreed. I described how their accounts would be kept on a password protected computer and in a locked filing cabinet, in a secure location, and reassured them that nothing they said would be verbally shared with any colleagues. They were made aware that the overall findings would be collated and printed in a thesis report and that they might be individually quoted. All agreed to these conditions and signed consent forms.
In addition, as a nurse and an educator, who was known to be the module co-ordinator, I had to recognise my own position of power and the impact I would have on responses. The nurse-participants’ image of me as a lead lecturer and my own protectiveness of the nurse-participants, as ex-students, could have prevented open and equal dialogue from taking place, therefore I had to find ways to establish a research distance, yet put nurse-participants at their ease. I emphasised my eagerness to learn from them in an attempt to reduce power differentials during the interview and to convince them of the genuineness of my interest, the first few minutes of the interview were used to build a good
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rapport (Brinkman and Kvale,2015). The concern for me was that the nurse-participants might not feel able to criticise the existing module because I was involved with it, although they did in fact do so.
All the interviews lasted over an hour and the semi-structured framework allowed for an open discussion rather than an interrogative questioning.
Interviews grew into conversations (Rubin and Rubin, 2005). I took field notes during the interviews to record key points and to note corresponding non-verbal behaviours, for example signs of anxiety such as blushing or physical discomfort that I noticed when nurse-participants criticised their supervisors. I believe the slight distance provided by taking nurse-participants out of their work environment did help them relax.
The questions were designed to align with the research questions and this structure is identified in Table 7. The semi-structured interview schedule is reproduced in Appendix 2.4, but the separate parts are briefly outlined here.
Part One included background information. This was about their nursing experience, current role and why they had decided to take the WBL module, allowing them to set the scene (Brinkman and Kvale, 2015). Part Two involved an exploration of the project experience. I asked them to tell their story in terms of where the idea for the project originated and how the work
progressed. Their experiences of supervisory relationships, social factors and wider networking were all uncovered by a more open questioning about these factors. I had altered some of the terminology around barriers after the pilot to embrace positive as well as negative experiences to help them connect with their memories of events and particular issues that had affected them.
The last part of the interview focused on the effects the WBL project had on learning and I asked how they thought their ‘thinking’ had been affected by this learning process. The word ‘thinking’ was introduced after the pilot and supervisory discussions, because the open question on learning drew out a response about content, not thought processes. The schedule then went on to ask whether they felt they had changed as nurses and what they had learned.
This part of the interview crystallised how the WBL experience had contributed to their professional development.
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Closing the interview I welcomed any suggestions for curriculum changes or types of support. Brinkman and Kvale (2015) suggest a debriefing is always important at the end of the interview because it allows interviewees time to reflect on how they felt about the process which may have stirred up painful or disturbing memories. Once the recorder was switched off this ‘breathing space’
was provided. The nurse-participants commented that they had gained some insight into their experiences through the reflection and nobody required any support after the interviews, despite expressing a range of emotions during the interviews.
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Table 7- Research Aims, Questions to Interview Questions
Research Questions Interview Questions
First Aim: To compare and contrast the rhetoric and the reality of work-based learning and to examine the varied influences on learning activity, in the light of Habermas’s concepts of the Life-world, Systems and Colonisation
R.Q.1) What values, beliefs and expectations did students hold about nursing and how do these relate to the concept of a ‘life-world’ in terms of work-based learning in the UKNHS?
1) I would like to begin with a little background in terms of your nursing history and your current role. Please tell me about yourself.
2) What was it about WBL that attracted you?
3) Why did you want to do this particular project?
R.Q.2) How did the learning around the project process and the overall educational experience appear to be affected by the wider socio-political aspects of healthcare, and could these factors be viewed as ‘colonising’ the nurses’ existing ‘life-world’?
4) Please tell me about the project itself 5) Please can you list some of the factors that you think influenced the
development and progress of the work?
Second Research Aim: To explore how the concept of communicative reason illuminates existing educational experience and can offer suggestions for
reconstructing work-based learning in a way that empowers nurses to work more successfully and collaboratively.
R.Q.3) What evidence was there of communicative reasoning in the nurses’ descriptions of learning and how could this communicative reasoning be supported and enhanced?
6) How did the work on your project shape or reshape your thinking?
7) What do you think you learnt from the process?
8) Do you think you have changed as a person through this work and if so in what way?
9) Are there any suggestions you would make to future students to help them through this learning process?
10) Is there anything else you would like to add?
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Each interview was a learning experience in terms of refining interview technique. As the research work progressed it became evident that research technique is a craft. In their attempt to redefine rigour Anderson and Herr (2010) argue that for practitioners carrying out research in their own
environments validity can be viewed as relating to outcomes and processes.
The outcomes relate to whether research questions were answered and process issues relate to how the data was gathered. I found that the more adept I became at picking up leads and encouraging further discussion, the better the outcome in terms of the detail that emerged and therefore these two quality measures are undoubtedly connected.
This section has clarified how the nurse-participants were interviewed and how interview technique was refined to encourage detailed disclosure. These
lengthy in-depth discussions produced a rich seam of data and the next section describes how this was mined for meaning.