Interviews

Interviews are personal conversations which, as Patton (2002, p. 341) suggests, can be used ―to allow [researchers] to enter into other people‘s perspectives‖. Patton further notes that interviews are based on the assumption that the ―perspective of others is meaningful, knowable, and able to be made explicit‖ (ibid.). Interviews may be structured, unstructured or semi-structured (Holstein and Gubrium, 2003). In the case of structured interviews, specific questions and the order in which they are asked are determined prior to the interview process, whereas unstructured interviews explore the topic areas without specific questions or a pre-determined order (Merriam, 2002). A mix of more and less structured questions constitutes the semi-structured interview (ibid.). For this study, I conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with all the participants. Semi-structured interviews enabled me to ask open-ended questions and to probe participants‘ responses (Lankshear & Knobel, 2004).

I held interviews with the Director of NCDC in order to obtain information on the rationale for the introduction of environmental education in the formal education system of Lesotho. I had also planned to interview the Chief Education Officer (CEO), who was responsible for curriculum services prior to and during the LEESP intervention. However, it transpired that the office of the CEO was vacant during the larger part of the LEESP operations. My efforts to make contact with the person who was in that office during the preparation phase of LEESP‘s implementation were not successful as she was busy in the Prime Minister‘s Office, serving as Secretary. I also interviewed four members of the LEESP‘s Steering Committee, and the coordinator of environmental education at the NCDC, to get their views on the general operations of the project, and also to understand possible contestations and controversies experienced during the development of the Reference Note. To deepen my understanding of the social process of conceptualising and disseminating environmental education, I interviewed eight members of the NCDC professional

staff who were directly involved in LEESP activities. Moreover, I held interviews with three ECOL staff members and three members of the LEESP monitoring and research team (MRT) (see Appendix A).

In order to understand how geography teachers made sense of and enacted environmental education in their specific local and school contexts, I interviewed all eleven teachers who participated in the study. In these interviews I also sought to explore the teachers‘ views on knowledge, teaching and learning, with a view to understanding how these views interacted or conflicted with environmental education epistemologies. My initial plan was to conduct these interviews after classroom observations, so that the interview questions could be grounded on specific classroom events rather than on what teachers thought ought to be done. However, the teachers of the model school were reluctant to give me access to their classrooms. In response, I changed my research schedule and started with interviews instead of classroom observations. The interviews served to establish common ground and mutual trust. From the interviews, I was able to generate qualitative data on the teachers‘ understanding of geography in relation to environmental education, and on contextual factors that enable or hamper implementation of environmental education in geography teaching. These provided a focus for classroom observation. Recognising that some of the challenges facing teachers were possibly related to the social interactions that characterised environmental education dissemination workshops, through the interviews I also sought to establish the extent to which their voice was audible during the training workshops.

Cognisant of the fact that in qualitative research interviews are ―collaboratively produced‖ between the interviewer and the interviewee (Silverman, 2006, p.112), I held all the interviews in a place where the respondents would be free to talk without feeling intimidated. For the teachers, the interviews were held in a quiet room (a science laboratory or spare classroom) where there were no disturbances from other teachers or students. In some cases, however, I had to conduct interviews in my car as there was no spare room. With curriculum developers and senior government education officials, the interviews were conducted in their offices, except in two cases

where the respondents could not make time during office hours and asked me to go to their homes instead.

To further relax the interview environment, I encouraged the respondents to talk in the language they were comfortable with, even though the key questions were asked in English. Where the respondents used more Sesotho than English, I would also code switch accordingly, in order to keep the conversation going.

In each case, I explained the purpose of the interview at the beginning and told the respondents the estimated time we would take. On average, each interview took about 40 minutes. I also inquired from the participants whether I could use a tape recorder to capture the conversation. With the consent of the respondents, I audio recorded almost all the interviews and later transcribed them. The audio recording enabled me to maintain close eye contact with the respondents, to listen carefully to what they said and to probe the responses when appropriate, in the manner of responsive interviewing (Rubin & Rubin, 2005). This would have been difficult to achieve had I been obliged to take copious notes. However, three respondents (one curriculum developer and two teachers) were not audio recorded as they were uncomfortable with the idea. I made a summary of the discussions immediately after the interviews. All the tapes were labelled and kept for data transcription and analysis.

Initial data transcription occurred during the interview phase in order to inform subsequent interviews with other respondents. In most cases this was done in the evening, while I could still remember the key issues raised and the non-verbal responses. I had a maximum of three interviews to transcribe after each day spent in the field. The initial transcription involved summarising the key ideas to develop a general picture of the respondents‘ views. Each transcript was labelled with the name of the respondent and the date of interview and kept as a hard copy in an appropriate envelop for further transcription and analysis. This initial transcription gave me an opportunity to reflect on my interviewing style and identify areas of possible improvement while I was still in the field. For example, from the initial transcription of the interviews, I noted that in some cases I was in too much of a hurry to get a response, and interrupted the respondents rather than listened patiently to all that they

(2007) advise, I actively listened to the respondents, giving feedback appropriately, and showing interest even when they strayed from the topic or when I did not agree with what they were saying, without losing the focus of the interview.