Design of the Study-‐ Methodology
4. Methodology
5.2 Ethnographic Interviews
The other methodological tool that was employed was interviews (Appendix B, sample of interview questions) with 4 students, 4 parents, 1 grandparent, 5 teachers (Appendix D participants) and the head-‐teacher. An ethnographic interview according to Silverman et al. (2001:369) has two distinguishing features: time and quality. The former refers to the duration and frequency of contact that promotes the establishment of respectful, with rapport, on-‐going relationships. The latter aspect is affected by the former and refers to the quality of the relationship, which distinguishes an ethnographic interview from other types of interview. It could be argued that this close (to a degree) relationship might reflect bias and emotional involvement. However, it could be counter-‐ argued that only through rapport and trust you can gain genuine responses that mirror the participants’ values and ideas. Regarding the aspect of emotion, as Warren (1988: 47) stresses,
‘emotions are evoked in the fieldwork like any interaction of life. But transference or identification is evoked mainly through talking with others, in conversations or interviews’.
Though rapport is consider as a facilitator and embedded element of ethnographic interviews, it requires awareness of the ‘self’ and ‘other’, constant reflection on this basis and acknowledgement of existing power relations.
The data and experience gained from the observation are supplemented and often orientate the interview data. Thus, the interviews are informed by the participant observation data (data inform data) and this is a distinctive characteristic of the grounded theory related process that I follow for the data analysis (see later discussion §8).
As regards the specific approach or typology of interview that was employed, as with other methods, interviews have been categorised in relation to the structure or the type of questions. Interviews can be structured, semi-‐structured and unstructured/‘open-‐structured’ (Hayes, 2000:122). The former category includes interviews, which have an a priori, rigid and not flexible construction. They are similar to questionnaires, but differentiated by the presence of the researcher; in questionnaires the questions are very specific and standardised (sometimes even pre-‐coded) and there is no flexibility from the interviewer or the interviewee. Usually the questions are ‘closed’; they can be answered by a yes or no, or the answer can be easily coded and categorised. On the other hand, semi-‐structured interviews stand somewhere in the middle; they have a prior structure but it is more flexible. They include both closed and open-‐ended questions, which permit the interviewee to answer more freely. The last category, open-‐structured interviews take the form of conversation; the interviewer might have a structure or agenda of topics that intends to discuss. However, this structure is not rigid; it involves a range of topics that might arise through the discussion. They usually start with a ‘primer question, which encourages the respondent to start talking’ (ibid: 123) and continue in a reflexive and flexible way, according to the responses of the interviewee and the issues s/he wants to discuss.
The type of interview that is employed for this study could be identified with the semi-‐structured interviews. After having built rapport, the interviewee is informed of my intention to discuss a range of issues regarding my research. Sometimes this discussion includes the main topics of the interview, so as to make the participant feel more comfortable with the process. This process and
rapport is what ethnographic interviewing consists of because as Stenhouse stressed:
‘Part of my job is to give people the feeling not merely that they have my ear, my mind, and my thoughts concentrated on them but that they want to give an account of themselves …to see the interview as an opportunity of telling someone how they see the world’ (1984: 222).
For the children-‐participants in some cases the researcher needs to resort to more structured interviews (e.g. specific questions besides the main topics) or different interview techniques, depending on their age or the degree of rapport. As Kellett and Ding (2004: 168) note21 ‘what makes the situation more acute with children is the unequal power relation between adult researcher and child’. However, my presence and participation throughout the project optimised the relationship to the student-‐participants and they were excited to participate in the project. The aspect of participation ‘enables them to set the agenda, have greater control and participate on their own terms’. The interviews were conducted in their own terms regarding the language they preferred to use, the time and space. Reassuring the students that there was no right or wrong answer and that the interview is private, confidential and anonymous minimised the student-‐teacher effect. Lastly, the use of the digital audio recorder was an element that relaxed the student-‐participants as I let them play/explore it before the interview. The structure of the interview followed a similar pattern to the one with the adult-‐interviewees but the vocabulary employed and the linguistic structures were simplified to accommodate the students’ needs.
In summary, semi-‐structured ethnographic interviews were employed to gain insight into the participants’ perspectives. The topics of the interview were related both to the research questions, the background theory and the observations. As Stenhouse (1987: 217) stresses, ‘interview is often dependent upon observation’. The agenda of the interview was also related to the student survey that played a supplementary role to the data.