Focused coding: Participant interviews

The 44 initial participant interview transcript codes were grouped into patterns of similarity and meaning, from which seven categories were constructed. Figure 4-2, as follows, tabulates these participant interview transcript categories and the codes that constructed them. The seven categories represented the first level of interpretation and deeper reading of the initial line-by-line codes, and showed the variety of participant concerns regarding a variety of issues, both testing- and teaching-related. Following the Figure, two categories from the participant interviews, with their codes and patterning, are detailed, to provide an example of the patterning and processes involved in this stage of the coding of the interview transcripts.

Figure 4-2. Interview transcripts: Codes and categories.

The seven categories constructed from the focused coding of the participant interview transcripts showed the broad groupings of participants’ opinions and accounts of testing at their school site. Participants expressed various criticisms and critiques of standardised literacy tests and testing, regarding test documents, processes, requirements, relevance, appropriateness, uses, usefulness, value and validity. Participants also discussed issues not specific to standardised literacy testing, such as common teaching expectations and behaviours, presented opinions of their effects upon their students’

progress (during testing and in a broader sense), and communicated judgements of their students according to student catchment and student academic and behavioural abilities.

4.3.1.1 Interview category 3: Judgements of students.

Category 3, ‘Judgements of students’, was constructed from ‘Refers to students within context of school catchment – judging students according to perceived lower abilities, behaviours and work ethic’ (code 8), ‘Refers to student skills, abilities, learning levels/standards’ (code 9), ‘Suggests extraneous community problems as potentially influential upon students’ (code 16), ‘Identifies student skill/ability as influential on their attitudes to/performance in testing sessions’ (code 28), ‘Portrays the tests as difficult for students (educationally)’ (code 35), ‘Suggests a variety of influential factors on student literacy standards or performance in standardised literacy testing’ (code 38), and ‘Identifies and refers to student difficulties in undertaking specific tasks (not just testing)’ (code 42).

These seven codes are patterned through the participants’ comments about students’ capacity to succeed in the test situation. One grouping within this broad category pattern highlights participants’ interpretations of student academic and behavioural abilities, as affecting student ease in undertaking test and non-test tasks. Examples of this category pattern include: ‘To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter how you present test-like activities, to a particular

group of kids, they’re not going to want to do it’ (TT, Int. 3, p. 2); ‘they were

such a difficult class that um it was almost impossible to say, well, ‘yes, these results actually mean something’, because they really weren’t concentrating, and some of them were giving one another a hard time, and some of them

interestingly – I reckon she didn’t put any time into her score, because 7FS1’s

not dumb. Into her performance’ (P, Int. 1, p. 3).

The second grouping within this category pattern is that of extra-school effects: the indicated judgement of students’ abilities according to school catchment, and community influences upon students performance. Examples of this category pattern include: ‘we’re dealing with a client-base here where

work ethic isn’t high, in a lot of the kids’ (TT, Int. 1, p. 1); ‘there are issues to

do with extraneous problems that might be happening in the community, which

can affect the reactions of individuals on any particular day’ (TT, Int. 1, p. 2);

‘a lot of that depends on the background of the individuals you are dealing

with, in that if I was working in another school, with a different group of

clients’ (TT, Int. 2, p. 3); and ‘comparing us with [State all-girls secondary

school] is like comparing a cheese stick and a carrot, I mean, they’re not the

same thing at all’ (T2, Int. 1, p. 12).

Within this broad category grouping is evident participants’ implied judgement that the school catchment was in a number of ways less

academically and behaviourally capable as the student groups at other schools in the general area. This further suggested that students’ test results would reflect the students’ comparative lower abilities, and as such, administering the tests to these students necessitated awareness of the effects of student

behaviour and ability on test sessions and results. The participants’ references to the academic difficulty of test tasks for this student group, and to the student group’s ‘skills, abilities, learning levels/standards’ (code 9), indicate the importance of this pattern.

4.3.1.2 Interview category 4: Issues in test administration.

Category 4, ‘Issues in test administration’, was constructed from ‘Identifies differences in teachers’ methods of test administration’ (code 1), ‘Presents tests as isolated activities, no preparation’ (code 2), ‘Presents self as unconcerned about testing or the tests’ administration’ (code 6), ‘Presents tests as valuable but not prepared for’ (code 12), ‘Presents standardised literacy tests as administered (by schools) in a confusing or disorganised way’ (code 23), ‘Identifies difficulty in providing help so as not to answer questions for

students’ (code 30), and ‘Justifies not following test administration rules’ (code 43).

These seven codes were grouped together through their shared pattern of similarity in the participants’ identification of often-problematic elements in test administration, with varying implied causes and consequences. The first of these pertains to participants’ presentation of the test planning and preparation stage at the school site. This pattern communicates the participants’

consideration that, regardless of the value or importance of the testing, the tests are not sufficiently planned or prepared for before they reach the classroom administration stage. Examples of this category pattern include: ‘no grade nines Monday, it won’t be Monday. It will have to be Tuesday, I suspect

Tuesday first thing is the best time to do one, Wednesday first thing will have to be another, and then there’s Thursday. It’s possible, by the way the timetable is

have to apologise, because it’s a lot to do in a one-week space, with the

numeracy as well’ (T2, Int. 1, p. 2).

The second category pattern pertains to participants’ expressions of their classroom test administration. Within this second pattern, participants confirmed that teachers administer the tests differently, and are not altogether concerned with this component of the testing. Examples of this category pattern include: ‘every teacher does it differently. So that what I do might be

completely different to what the person in the room next door is doing’ (TT,

Int. 1, p. 1); ‘you have to choose how you administer the test’ (TT, Int. 2, p. 2);

‘I read through them first, then I read through them to the kids. And then we

picked out the bits, and then we – I did those bits again’ (T1, Int. 1, p. 9); and

‘if you just did what it says, the kids would have been quite confused, I think.

So I don’t follow every single thing to the letter’ (T2, Int. 1, p. 1).

Within this second category pattern, participants articulate the difficulty they experience in balancing providing help to students within their role as teacher and test administrator without invalidating students’ test responses, and go so far as to provide reasons and justifications for administering tests in a way that they identify is noncompliant with expectations. Examples of this category pattern include: ‘So, it’s just necessary, it’s expedient, to provide more than the basic instructions that are provided in the test itself. And if you didn’t do that, then you would just be setting yourself up for disaster. In doing

that, you try very hard not to influence the result that the individual gets’ (TT,

Int. 3, p. 5); ‘you gotta give everybody the opportunity, and if that means reinterpreting the wording of the question, then I don’t see that as

unreasonable’ (TT, Int. 3, p. 6); and ‘Trying to make sure that they can do the

best they can on the test, yes’ (T2, Int. 1, p. 3).