Parent interviews

I experienced difficulties in getting parents for interviews as the interviews were conducted during school hours when some of the parents were at work, although many of them were unemployed. According to my interview schedule, parents’ interviews should have been conducted from the 29th of March 2004 at Zama Primary School, but no parents turned up for that day. I tried to conduct the interviews in the evening, but to my disappointment no parents came despite oral and written requests that were sent with children.

Linked to conditions under which township people live, parents’ failure to come to the evening interviews could be attributed to various reasons. Some of them were only coming back from work in the evening, while others were working night shifts. They had transport problems and perhaps insufficient money to catch taxis and were aware of the

prevailing high crime rate in the area, especially at night. However, I managed to conduct my first interviews with parents on the 4th of May 2004 at Zama Primary School, and on the following day I proceeded to Sizwe Primary School. I interviewed twenty- four (24) parents on the two days, the 4th and 5th of May 2004; 15 from Zama Primary School and 9 from Sizwe Primary School during school hours

In October 2005 I conducted a second round of interviews with parents of Zama Primary School only as the second school (Sizwe) had withdrawn from the study. The interviews aimed at comparing the parents’ initial (2004) responses with the responses they gave in 2005 in order to find out if there were any similarities or mismatches between them. In other words, I wanted to test the reliability of the parents’ responses and to follow up on other issues that I picked up when I was sorting out my first set of data. To my disappointment, out of the 16 parents who were interviewed in 2004 at Zama Primary School, only seven (7) parents made it to the second round of interviews. Two (2) of the seven (7) parents participated in the 2004 interviews. Nevertheless, I continued with the interviews as I hoped to get fresh responses that I could compare with other responses that were gathered earlier. Of the 7 parents five parents had children in the control class while two had children in the experimental group. In all, I interviewed 32 parents from both schools over the two years; 25 in 2004 and 7 in 2005.

Before I started with the interviews, I was aware of the influence of age, gender and ethnicity on data collection, especially in interviews. As Measor (1988:74) claims, people may find it “easier”, “more acceptable” and “more proper” to talk to a woman. I suppose that being a woman became an advantage because most of the interviewees were women. So it was easy for them to relate to me as a woman. An added advantage was that I spoke the interviewees’ language (isiXhosa). The ability to talk the interviewees’ language created a very relaxed atmosphere of trust and cooperation. I felt accepted by the parents as they needed to know more about me (i.e. my home, my clan name, my education, etc.) and about the project.

The interviews were semi-structured and open-ended to allow time for comments and to probe for further information. I used the same question guidelines in both schools, and I interviewed the parents according to groups in which their children were placed in school. That is, parents whose children were in the experimental class were interviewed as a group separately from parents who had children in the control group. I used this strategy in order to avoid duplication of responses, and to treat each group as a unique group. I used focus group interviews as I thought that parents would stimulate each other to talk about certain issues and would be more relaxed than when I interviewed them as individuals. Another advantage of focus groups is that it provided participants with an opportunity to learn from each other, and to resolve important dilemmas they were confronted with (Bless & Higson, 2000:110). I gave parents numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) in order to keep them anonymous, while at the same time maintaining the order of responses to facilitate data analysis. In all, I interviewed six focus groups of parents in two years; four from Zama Primary School (two in 2004 and two in 2005), and two from Sizwe Primary School in 2004.

The interviews took about 65 minutes for small groups to 90 minutes for big groups. A full description of information that the parent interviews elicited is given in the next chapter.

5.7.3 Assessment

In order to assess the learners’ performance in science using the two media of instruction, we carried out an external assessment in addition to the other forms of assessments that were done by the teachers in their daily teaching. In other words, the assessment aimed at establishing how learners performed in science when using learner-support materials written in English (for the control group) and in isiXhosa (for the experimental group). The initial plan was to assess the learners at the end of the last (fourth) module in the first year of the study (i.e. assess them on the science work they completed in 2003). But due to unforeseen problems and commitments at both schools, the assessments could not be carried out as planned. The learners were assessed once in 2003, twice in 2004 and twice in 2005.

The assessment was organized by the science specialist who used to facilitate the teachers’ workshops. The two groups at both schools wrote the same test; and I translated the question paper into isiXhosa for the experimental groups. The control groups wrote in English. Teachers were only told about the work covered in the question paper, and were not given the questions beforehand. The tests were administered by the researcher and two colleagues from UWC in the presence of teachers. The results of the tests are reflected in Chapter 6.