Interviews

Interviewing is a very useful way to get at not only the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’ of complex lived experiences (Butler-Kisber 2010). It was valuable for the study to gain a clear picture of the roles of the key figures in the Faculty responsible for overseeing the implementation of these policies, the position each individual adopted with regard to international study visits, what attitudes and beliefs these stemmed from, and what agency they had in terms of directing the trajectories of such policies, or influence in creating new ones. To do this I decided to undertake semi-structured individual interviews with the Associate Dean Teaching & Learning, the Associate Dean

Internationalisation and the Associate Dean Placements (Appendix 1.4), each of whom was involved in Internationalisation and Teaching in Learning at a strategic level in the then Faculty of Health, Education and Society, and therefore had a role to play with regards to international study visits. These interviews aimed to identify any Faculty commonalties and differences in terms of theory and practice of study visits. A general structure and set of questions was used for each interview (Appendices 2.2 & 2.3) so that there was a comparability across the respondents (Wooffitt and Widdicombe 2006) in terms of how the Internationalisation and Teaching and Learning strategies had evolved (Cresswell 2009), their place in the structure of the University, and the Associate Deans’ perceptions on how they were being implemented.

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With each Associate Dean I agreed the most convenient and congenial location for them to be interviewed. Each one opted for the interview to be in their own office, possibly for convenience, but possibly because it was a physical space that reinforced their status and authority. That location may have made me less challenging than I might have been, reflecting Clegg and Stevenson’s (2013) observation that power and positionality shape all stages of the research process. It was a complication of my insider position that because of my status in relation to these senior figures in the Faculty I found myself occasionally feeling subservient, insecure and reluctant to press for further clarification in the way someone coming from outside might have done. However, I do have to acknowledge that my researcher identity gave me permission to probe issues and ask questions that I might have not have done otherwise.

I also conducted individual interviews with Faculty tutors engaged in study visits (Appendices 1.3 & 2.1) to gain their perspectives on their involvement, the organisation of the trips and the benefits for students. Tutors included the

International Co-ordinator in the then School of Education (Appendices 1.5, 2.4 & 2.5) and the tutors leading and supporting the School of Education trips under

consideration – two tutors taking students to The Gambia, one to the Czech Republic, two to Hungary and one to Redbridge. Of these, two tutors had also participated in the School’s visits to Finland, Denmark and/or Chile, so I was able to draw upon these experiences also.

Part of the interview for each tutor was closely structured (Punch 2009) with a sequence of standardised questions (Appendix 2.1) in order to get key information

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about the organisation and pattern of each particular trip. Whilst much of this information might have been gleaned from a detailed questionnaire aimed at

supplementing and extending the data gained from documentary analysis, I wanted each tutor in their interview to relate such information to how they viewed the purpose and value of the trips, how they organised and managed them and how far their objectives included the promotion of aspects of intercultural capability. In achieving this, the second part of the interview guide with more open questions was useful. I was able to determine the way they used reasoning to construct the position they adopted towards the international study visits and the extent to which they were subjected to discourses in the local domain (Harré et al 2009).

International study visits are also found in other parts of the Faculty and using Facet Methodology I interviewed tutors from the other Schools, two from the School of Social Work and one from the School of Nursing. From them I was able to gather data about their often different professional perspectives and practices; these shed light on the approaches of the School of Education, an unexpected and valuable facet of the Study. In addition I conducted two interviews with the International Coordinator in the School of Education to gain his overview of international study visits and his role in them (Appendices 2.4 & 2.5) and to investigate some aspects of the distinct and collective histories (Shim 2012) of the different social fields that had merged to create the Faculty of Health, Education and Society. During the interactions I was able to gather his beliefs about the roles and responsibilities of himself and others in the context of international study visits as well as unearthing some taken-for-granted practices (Harré 2009). I supplemented these findings with documentary analysis of

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the policies, marketing and guidance materials specific to the Faculty, e.g. the Overseas Elective Handbook (Plymouth University 2012).

Using Patton’s (1990) interview guide approach I constructed a set of questions for each category of interviewee, informed by my Review of Literature, my analysis of the University documents and my own experience of being involved in international study visits. Following the methodological approach of radical enquiry advocated by Clough and Nutbrown (2007), I critically analysed my choice of questions, justified their phrasing and considered what I would not ask, and why. I provided an interview guide to each tutor before their interview (see Appendices 2.1, 2.2 & 2.3) so that they were aware of the topics that we would be discussing and could think about them

beforehand (Lankshear and Knobel 2004). Although it is impossible to capture in an interview everything that a person feels, thinks and believes to be consequential to the topic under discussion, being prepared may enable them to give wider, deeper and more considered responses. It may however, give them opportunity to think more carefully about what not to say, aspects which might emerge in a more spontaneous discussion, but, given that these were semi-structured interviews, I felt unable to spring totally unexpected questions upon them.

Each interview lasted between 30 minutes and an hour, audio-recorded in order to capture the speech in situ (Lankshear and Knobel 2004). This enabled me to focus on the interview without having to write notes, to preserve the complexity of the

language use in response to each question and to be more aware of the nature of the interactions that took place. It also meant that I was able to revisit the field text later

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to analyse the discourse and check for understandings. As suggested by Willis (2006), I wrote up some commentary notes as soon as possible after the interview, setting myself to remain critically aware of my own position and of how my insider knowledge might shape my interpretation (Clegg and Stevenson 2013). Throughout I endeavoured to produce an authentic representation of the interview (Atkinson-Lopez 2010). This involved reflection, in order to be “hearing with more than the ears” (Atkinson 2006, cited in MacNaughton et al. 2010:266), and an engagement with complexities, such as the inconsistencies that emerged within and across interviews, in order to construct an accurate representation of views and attitudes.

The interviews with the tutors in the different Schools were revealing but made demands upon me as a researcher. Firstly, I struggled with the relationship dynamics that arose because I am myself a key player in many of the fields I was researching and because of my relationships with the participants. Some were managers, some were fellow tutors and some were also friends. In the fields of the Faculty, the Schools and the international study visits themselves, there is a range of people who dominate and are dominated at different times, so there are varying inequalities of position

(Morberg et al. 2012). I was concerned that opting to control the interview by using a structure of questions might have been interpreted as an assertion of my own power over the people I was interviewing.

Secondly, the tutors I interviewed were aware of my agenda and possibly of my philosophy on international study visits and, as Cresswell (2009) argues, this may well have shaped their responses. My social and professional relationships with them had

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benefits in that there already existed a sense of trust and a respect for each other’s work and ideas, but it also had drawbacks. Such familiarity may have led them to make disclosures of sensitive personal information in an informal way that they might have withheld if I had been a stranger, or vice versa (Cohen et al. 2011). Moreover, as friends and colleagues, they may have felt obliged to agree to the interview in order to help me with my EdD. I have to consider the extent to which I had exploited my relationship with the tutors in recruiting them for this study (Moore 2012), as well as issues of obligation in my relationship with them (Atkinson-Lopez 2010). This meant, as Edwards (2010) notes, I had to maintain an ongoing ethical concern for those whose experiences were being represented (Appendix 1.1).

Thirdly, I had been in the habit of regularly discussing such professional issues with them, so another key issue was the place and relevance of my own stories and narratives in this process (Trahar 2011). Listening to a tutor’s account of an incident often triggered in me a response that supported or contradicted the story. As an interviewer I had to be mindful to remain reflexive and not put myself at the centre of the discussion, nor direct it in a particular way, but this was especially tricky with these colleagues as they were familiar with how my body language and facial expression usually reflect my thoughts and opinions. They would sometimes presume from this that I agreed with, or disagreed with, what they were saying. In identifying this large range of issues that arise when interviewing colleagues, I kept in mind Clegg and Stevenson’s (2013) advice to theorise the nature of the interview in order to be clear about the problematic nature of insider research.

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I considered having a completely unstructured section of the interview. This would have provided the maximum freedom for each to determine their own responses, to lead the discussion and to introduce new themes, helpful because this potentially reduces some of the power differential between the interviewer and the interviewee (Siraj-Blatchford 2010). However, it would have been likely to generate very diverse data, making comparisons across the various study visits much more complex and difficult, and making it harder for me to keep my research questions in focus. My semi- structured approach did allow me to probe tutor responses further when their

responses were not clear, when I wanted them to expand upon a point, and also when they introduced ideas that I wished to explore, though again, as conceded above, I might well have done this more.

I needed throughout to ensure that I was transparent about the aims of the research (Appendix 1.3), in particular to reassure them that I was not planning a critique or evaluation of their practice. It was also vital for me to be rigorous in my reading and interpretation of the field texts generated (Clough and Nutbrown 2007) and to be alert to their positionality (Willis 2006), as well as maintaining a critical stance to the

interview responses (Silverman 2010), seeing them as constructed narratives, with the tutors offering perspectives on their experiences which inevitably contained elements of subjectivity.

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