Data recording and analysis

With few exceptions, interviews were electronically recorded and then transcribed. Given the nature of ethnography and the importance of informal conversations in ge nerating findings, I often wrote extracts of conversations where the dialogue was not verbatim but my best rendering of what was discussed, recorded as soon after the discussion as possible. I personally transcribed each interview in full, as I felt that selective transcription could have led to the omission of potentially important insights. Other than interview and focus group transcriptions, I had extensive ‘fieldnotes’ to analyse. These notes were selective, given the impossibility of capturing everything at hand.

Schatzman and Strauss advocate an approach that ‘packages’ notes into three categories: Observational, Theoretical and Methodological (1973:101). While my own notes lacked such clear distinctions, I attended to each of these aspects within my note taking.

One means to cultivate researcher reflexivity, without allowing self-conscious reflections to dominate the research, is to keep a research diary. This diary is distinct from academic writing in that it does not attempt to present the research in a linear fashion. Instead, a diary can capture something of ‘the real inner drama’ of research ‘with its intuitive base, its halting time -line, and its extensive recycling of concepts and perspectives’ (Marshall and Rossman 1995:15). The purpose of a diary is not primarily about communicating the research to others, but rather to facilitate the research process through recording observations, emotional responses, thoughts and questions as they arise, stimulating reflections which can be later used by the researcher.

During my fieldwork I developed a companion method to diarising – recording ‘voice notes’ (Mazanderani, 2017). I recorded these notes immediately after leaving the field, but before sitting at my desk at home. The recordings were a useful means to decompress the day, as well as to express specific responses I had to conversations or interviews shortly after they had taken place. These commentaries reflected the immediacy of interactions, giving embodiment to a method generally dominated by text. Given that the research output is textual, the process of writing textualises experiences in the field and can create an uncomfortable distance between what is felt in the ‘field’ and what is expressed at the ‘desk’. Recording voice notes provided me with additional forms of self-expression that ‘speak back’ and confront the researcher in ways that ‘demand self- reappraisal’ (Hodder, 1998 in Dunne et al., 2005:88).

St. Pierre (2009:228) notes how, except for providing brief summaries of the technicalities of coding and describing the miraculous ‘emergence of themes,’ researchers rarely tackle the difficult task of describing data analysis. This is especially so in ethnography, whereby data analysis is an iterative process which formally takes shape in the development of analytic codes and the identification of key themes, but is ‘informally embodied in the ideas and hunches with which the ethnographer enters their field’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007:59). While there are few agreed -on canons for analysing qualitative data, the analysis of ethnographic material is typically led by an inductive approach whereby the ‘patterns, themes, and categories of analysis emerge out of the data rather than being imposed on them prior to data collection and analysis’ (Patton, 1980:306).

Once I had transcribed my data, I engaged in ‘initial coding’ which involved meticulously reading through printed copies of my fieldnotes, transcripts and LO curriculum content. As I reduced and developed my initial codes, I created a corresponding ‘theoretical memo’, which reflected more sophisticated themes, patterns and connections that I had begun to identify (Crang, 2005). The designation of codes was an iterative process of moving back and forth between developing initial codes and comparing them with the transcripts, in order to ensure that the codes were closely connected to the data (Merriam, 2009). From here, I assembled my different codes into thematic zones and reviewed these themes in relation to one another and the overall story the analysis told. I drew upon a method of physical sorting which involved creating multiple copies of my data and organising my material into different thematic folders. This process enabled me to engage with my material in a tactile manner, appreciating the considerable overlap that occurs when the same set of data attaches itself to multiple themes. I interpreted the data in light of my on-going literature review, drawing upon my theoretical memos in order to formulate my main arguments. This was a messy process, a mess I came to embrace as necessary rather than to be avoided. Part of this mess was due to the recognition that ethnographic acts of representation are always ‘incomplete scripts’ (Nayak, 2006:413). My foray into poststructural theories has disrupted any original desire I had for a seamless narrative. This meant that I really had to grapple with the contradictions within my data and understand these contradictions to be the points worth probing.

The conceptual and empirical dimensions of my research continually interacted through an iterative process, with theory enabling the interpretation, but not the determination, of my findings. As Alcoff notes, this procedure is most successful if engaged in collectively with others, by which ‘aspects of our location less obvious to us might be revealed’ (2009:129). The others with whom I engaged have been namely my supervisors and research assistants as well as friends and colleagues who have particular familiarity with either my fieldsite or my theoretical influences. In discussing my developing analysis with others, I have come to appreciate how reflexivity has to be both ‘collective and contested’ given the limits of individual visions and experiences (Ramazanoglu and Holland, 2002:119).