Interviews - parents

Prior to the start of the interview, I handed parents the Project Information Sheet (Appendix 5) and gave a brief overview of the study, and then invited parents to ask any questions. This is a routine but important step in qualitative research (Rubin and Rubin 1995). Next, when parents signalled they were happy to go ahead I asked them to fill out a Personal Contact Details form (Appendix 6), and to sign the Consent Form (for adults and young people) - Agreement to Participate in a Research Interview (Appendix 7). Here I checked with parents that they understood what they were signing up to, that they gave permission for the interview to be digitally recorded and transcribed, and for the data to be used for presentations and publications. Also, at this point I was not sure whether I wanted to make use of parts of the audio recording for presentations. My intention at the time was to include audio to press home certain points when presenting my research to researchers and/or educators. Therefore, the last part of the Consent Form included a section for parents to indicate whether they wanted to opt out of releasing sections of their audio for this purpose¹⁹). Once all forms had been completed, I invited parents to ask any further questions, and to confirm they were happy to go ahead

19Despite many parents agreeing to release their audio recordings for presentation purposes, in the interests of anonymity I decided not to use audio recordings. Instead I reverted to the interview transcripts, which all parents had agreed to make available.

with the interview. When the parents indicated they were happy to move on to the next stage, I set about the task of interviewing.

During the interview process I wanted to keep the narrative simple and to the point, to help guide parents to talk about events and situations (Elliott 2012), which primarily focused on social background, education, training and work. I understood that parents needed the time and space to express their thoughts, and therefore tried my best not to interrupt the interview process. The interview schedule was useful as it helped to keep the interview on track and provided direction while introducing a modicum of uniformity across each interview. However as Rubin and Rubin (1995) point out each new interview

“can be wonderfully unpredictable” (p.7); when this happened I decided to go with the flow rather than interrupt parents to ask questions.

The interview was split into two sections. The first part of the interview focused on question no.1, see Parent Interview Schedule 1 (Appendix 3) that aims to explore parent life stories related to their: social background; experiences of initial education and school outcomes; education and training since leaving school; and work i.e. periods of employment and unemployment, and voluntary work. On completion of the first part of the interview I offered parents the opportunity to take a break. At this point, some took up my offer while others signalled they were happy to continue.

The second part of the interview focused on question no. 2, see Parent Interview Schedule 2 (Appendix 4) which aims to explore participants’ lives as parents: primarily their goals, values, styles and practices towards schooling their children. Initially I was keen to explore parents’ views in terms of where they thought responsibility for schooling children rested: with them, the school, or a combination of both (Reay 1998). Following on from this question, I asked questions about the home-school relationship: how important parents felt it was to be involved; the ways in which they were involved with the school, and to ascertain whether they perceived relationships with school to be positive or negative. Next, I focused on life at home, for example: home routines, parental help with homework, and activities outside of the home. Also, I wanted to know what forms of support parents relied upon, as I was interested to know whether they drew upon the knowledge and skills gained through ACL to help their children, or whether they relied upon other forms of support. This would help to identify the commonalities and differences in the way that parents schooled their children. Towards the end of the

interview I asked parents about their hopes and aspirations for children, academic or otherwise. This I felt would give me an insight into thoughts about their child’s future.

Finally, I asked parents to undertake a quick pie chart exercise. The main purpose of the exercise was to make parents aware of the fact that children only spend 14 percent of their time at school in a calendar year, as opposed to 53 percent at home and in the community, and 33 percent of the time spent sleeping (Bransford et al. 1999). The motivation to ask this question stemmed from two sources. Firstly, on reading about this statistic, I was shocked to learn that children only spent 14 percent of their time at school, so wanted to communicate this to parents. Secondly, just prior to starting the fieldwork phase, I attended a seminar entitled, ‘Engaging with Low Income Learners’, along with 60 education professionals. During one of the presentations the audience was asked the question, what percentage time do children spend at school? No more than half a dozen professionals put their hand up to answer and, even then, some of the answers given were way off course. This led me to question, if the professionals were unaware of this statistic then how would parents know? Further, in policy terms, this experience made me wonder whether information like this should be communicated across the wider population in Wales. It certainly warranted further consideration.

To return to the study, each interview lasted from just over one hour to anything up to three hours, although most interviews were completed in around one and a half hours.

At the end of the interview I asked parents if they would like a copy of the transcript. Most declined, however a few parents indicated they would like a copy. On transcribing the interviews, where possible, I personally delivered a copy of the transcript to the parent (sometimes this happened when I arranged the child interviews). At this stage, I was keen to give parents a say in the production of the data, and to offer parents an opportunity to change parts of their transcription, if they so wished. Initially, I had mixed feelings about offering parents this option, mainly because I feared parents may want to retract some of the information given. However, after asking myself the question: if I were to participate in an interview that focused on my life, would I want the opportunity to change or withdraw my data? After pondering the question, the answer was a resounding yes. Despite the risk that I might not be able to use some of the data, at this point my need to be fair to participants was stronger than the need to use the data. In the event, thankfully, I received no requests from participants to change the data or indeed, to withdraw from the study.

Bearing in mind the research framework, after interviewing several learners (here the levels of learning ranged from level 1 up to level 5/6), I then switched attention to how I might recruit other parents to the study. To maintain an even spread of participants I kept to the plan to target parents with different levels of education, as well as targeting parents that had been involved in few episodes of ACL since leaving school. Although recruiting ACL learners to the study was by no means easy, I found it even more difficult to recruit parents with low level qualifications, or no qualifications to their name. This did not surprise me as I knew from professional experience how difficult it is to encourage adults back into learning. However, after making enquiries with colleagues and ACL contacts in the field, a few parents did eventually agree to take part in the study (see details below).

Robyn 2hrs 18mins 23182 Lizzie/George 33 mins 5536

Sharon 1hr 35mins 16467 Leah 32 mins 4655

*Interview length is rounded up or down to the nearest minute.

** I conducted a 10 minute (1826 words) follow up interview at home with Frances. This is included in the total minutes and words recorded for Frances.

Table 4.2 Interview transcript information

After each interview, I logged my reflections: this helped me to think about how the interview had gone, and whether I needed to adjust anything for the next interview.

Indeed, after the first three interviews a theme around bullying emerged, and in response to this information I included a question about bullying in the interview schedule. Also, reflection at this point helped me to think about my qualities as a researcher; although it was not until much later in the interview cycle did I begin to critically, as well as objectively, question my role as a researcher in the interview²⁰. Indeed, some months after completing the transcriptions, and well into the analysis stage, I appreciated the powerful role researchers play in the interview process. Even to the point of questioning why I laughed at certain points; being horrified at the number of times I interrupted people; and on a few occasions, posing long-winded, sometimes complicated questions.

In addition, it was fascinating to see how, on one occasion, I stood up for policy, taking for granted the notion that as long as policy was in place, what could possibly go wrong?

For example, one of the participants, Polly, talked about how a lack of institutional support led to her dropping out of one course (see Appendix 15). In this exchange, I questioned why her support needs were not met since I had naturally assumed that, as Polly is disabled, she would automatically be entitled to support, subject to her putting in a request. However, in practice Polly’s needs were not met due to a lack of communication and staff training on the ACL provider’s part. This issue made me realise why some people might not want to participate in learning. Indeed, Fuller et al. (2004) identified similar barriers related to disabled students’ experiences at university. Not only must students have the confidence to summon up the courage to ask for support but also there is the question of whether students have the confidence to challenge the institution when support is not forthcoming.

After each interview, I transcribed, and part analysed the interviews. Each transcription took at least three to four days to transcribe, sometimes longer. However, I found the process of transcription useful, since the act of transcribing introduced me to the parents, their lives, and their children. In fact, some of the data generated at interview resonated deeply with my life. Like me, I could see how some individuals had transformed their lives, while others had encountered life obstacles that sadly they were still grappling to overcome. At certain points, I could see my life through theirs; it almost felt like being transported back in time during some interviews. This is what Grenfell and James (1998) describe as self socio-analysis, whereby the researcher objectifies their relationship of

20It was only during the latter stages of transcription that I began to objectively question my role in the interview process. At the beginning, my attention was focused on completing and transcribing the interviews.

self, and the research object, in terms of the work of others like Bourdieu. For example, in one of the interviews, a participant described feelings of disappointment when her employer refused to fund and support her learning, even though the course was directly related to her job. Here I could see how the concept of social and cultural ‘habitus’ had shaped my life too since I had experienced discrimination as a part-time worker in the mid-1990s, where allocating funds to train part-time staff was denied in favour of training full-time staff. Not long after leaving the job, the Council of the European Union (1997) issued a directive giving part-time workers equal employment rights and entitlements, which, I felt, was a step in the right direction.

As the parent interviews progressed I realised the importance and necessity of including children and young people’s voices in the study. Initially, I felt out of my depth at the beginning of the interview phase since it was the first time I had ever interviewed adults, let alone children and young people. Even though I had no problem speaking to strangers, the very thought of interviewing people seemed a terrifying prospect: this new challenge made me feel out of my comfort zone. However, after completing the parent interviews I began to feel more confident, which accounted for my change of heart at this point. However, interviewing pre-school children felt like a step too far. In the event, I decided not to interview pre-schoolers, and instead switched my attention to interviewing children in the current school system²¹.