Identifying emergent themes

Qualitative projects generate large quantities of data, which necessitates a significant amount of reflection and decision making on the part of the researcher about the importance and weight of emergent themes and what to report. Even this small-scale ideographic project raised many questions about what was noteworthy in the data.

[4.4_{] I am not, of course, implying}

that linguistic analysis with non- native speakers is invalid: such studies abound, are fascinating, and commonly inform my day-to-day teaching. However, a linguistic analysis was not the most beneficial approach for the nature, setting and purpose of this particular enquiry.

Below, and in more depth in 6.3, I lay out how I arrived at my “repertoire of interpretation” (Alvesson &

Skoldberg, 2000:273) – in other words, the themes

which were sufficiently significant [4.5] to include in

my construction of the lifeworlds of my participants. Arriving at a repertoire of interpretation is a delicate process: it needs to be sufficiently close to the

phenomenon not to diverge from the central thrust of the project, but, if it is too restricted, it can result in a

narrow and unrepresentative description of the nature of the phenomenon. In addition, whilst drawing up my own repertoire of interpretation I needed to be aware of

my own “cognitive bias” (ibid., p273), driven by my own emotional relationship with the setting and the participants (see 1.7), since such a bias may take over the interpretation if it goes unchecked. For example, if I am concerned with the emotional well-being of my participants, then I will be more sensitive to mentions of this in the data.

In order to attend to this problem, I took an abductive approach to identifying key themes. In practice, this meant that I had an idea of what might emerge in the interviews, but maintained an open mind. It may seem that working deductively and inductively concurrently is contradictory, from an epistemological perspective: was I looking for or looking at evidence? However, Alvesson & Skoldberg (2000:274) argue that there is “no conflict between these two strategies, the widely read and the ‘blank’ one” […] as long as there is a balance of emphasis”, and a blended abductive approach worked well for me in identifying key themes in my data.

In one respect, I worked through my interview data deductively with the expectation of encountering familiar themes from the literature. Although there are voices in the literature who warn that such an approach risks “forcing the data” (Birks & Mills, 2010), thus creating “interviewer bias” (Dowling & Brown, 2009:79), my prior engagement with the literature and familiarity with the context meant my knowledge of these students’ likely experiences was not a tabula rasa. Indeed, Smith et al. (2009) and Sim et al. (2012) argue that researchers should draw on their own professional and experiential knowledge to help identify possible themes within a phenomenological project, and Thomas & James

[4.5_{] Weighty questions arise in}

relation to “significance”. For instance, is a theme to be considered significant if it is raised by 75% of respondents? 50%? Are statistical criteria even worthwhile in qualitative research? It may be the case that a participant wishes to use an interview to present a particular picture of her/himself (Birch & Miller, 2000), and therefore elects to flag up the same theme on a number of occasions; conversely, a single participant may make only passing reference to a theme which is of crucial importance in understanding a phenomenon fully. I was very heedful of this, and rationalise my thinking in 4.3.1.

(2006) believe that a priori assumptions are what make qualitative research possible

[4.6_{], since researchers would have few ideas of what}

to explore without an awareness of a problem. I could not ignore my subjective knowledge of the nature of my participants’ experiences, informed by both my own prior professional experience (see 1.4), and by my reading of the substantive literature (see 2.2). Perhaps,

then, it might be more accurate to say that, rather than looking for themes, I was “prepared to be unsurprised by” the appearance of certain themes. These themes, which I have called a priori themes, are listed in Table 10, below:

A priori themes:

• Feeling lonely • Being an outsider

• Gaining new socio-cultural perspectives • Adjusting to new cultures of learning • Struggling with curricular content • Worrying about proficiency in English • Having unrealistic expectations

• Accessing support networks

Table 10: A priori themes

In another respect, however, I was not just looking for these a priori themes: the reconnaissance study (see 3.9.1) had shown me that adopting this kind of positivist approach was not fully effective in uncovering personal accounts of the lives of my participants. Therefore, I also worked inductively with the data: as well as being sensitive to the possible existence of the a priori themes in my participants’ experiences, I was also open to encountering new, unexpected themes. In being open to the “surprise potential” (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000:277) of the data, I hoped to avoid simply making my

analysis a confirmation of “perpetuating and normative” (Hedges, 2010) hypotheses about Chinese post-graduate students, in which I found only what I expected to find. Like Colley (2010), I was pleased to find surprises in what participants said, as this made me feel that I was being open to the data. The themes that were new and unexpected, which Rossman & Rallis (2003:283) refer to as “indigenous themes”, are summarised in Table 11, below:

[4.6_{] This may well be even more}

the case with an EdD project: whatever we, as researching practitioners, try to do to eliminate assumptions, there will always be some level of verification going on, given that we are inextricably close to both our professional and our

Indigenous themes:

• Establishing relationships with tutors • Taking a pre-sessional programme • Appreciating life in the UK

• Struggling with face and emotional wellbeing • Transitioning to post-graduate study

• Encountering tension with students from Hong Kong and Taiwan

Table 11: Indigenous themes

Next, I clarify how these themes were categorised (in 4.2.3) and later prioritised (in 4.3.1).