Rationale for semi-structured interviews
In this study, interviews were chosen as they are able to provide depth to a particular issue. Fontana and Frey (2003) contend that interviews are “one of the most common
79 and powerful ways in which we try to understand our fellow human beings” (p. 62).
Scott and Usher (1999) argue that interviews allow “access to past events, allowing access to situations at which the researcher is not able to be present, facilitating cross-
checking against other data collected from different sources” (pp. 112-113). In this study, interviews allowed rich data to be gathered in order to understand learners’ self- concept and engagement in the AW class.
Interviews were chosen as they also provide opportunities for learners to formulate and verbalise their views. Cohen and colleagues (2007) argue that “interviews enable participants to discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, and to express how they regard the situation from their own point of view” (2003). Bogdan and
Biklen (2007) maintain that “good interviews produce rich data filled with words that
reveal the respondents’ perspectives” (p. 104). This is particularly relevant to the study
as each learner’s self-concept, engagement and learning experience in academic writing in L2 is unique and distinct from other students. Ivanic (1998) maintains that:
[the] degree of sincerity with which an identity is presented and the complex considerations leading to a particular self-representation cannot be usually traced in the linguistic characteristics of the text, and can only be accessed through in- depth interviews with the writers. (p. 216)
In the context of this study, interviews afforded the opportunity for capturing unique perspectives of self-concept in academic writing, engagement and the relationship between the two constructs which are influenced by each individual’s distinct social history.
Interviews can be grouped based on the degree of formality, ranging from structured, through semi-structured to unstructured on a continuum (Nunan, 1992). In this study, semi-structured interviews were incorporated as an instrument in Phase Two. This type of interview was chosen for Phase Two of the study because “semi-structured interviews have a set of key questions that are followed in a more open-ended manner” (Mutch, 2005, p. 126). Semi-structured interviews therefore allowed for flexibility while also providing “comparable data across subjects” (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, p. 104). These interviews allowed the researcher to gain a more in-depth understanding of the topic of self-concept and the influence it has on learners’ engagement.
80 A semi-structured interview which elicits open-ended responses ensures flexibility and
lets “the analyses emerge” (Bogdan & Bilken, 2007, p. 79). Such analysis allows for
issues, which the researcher did not anticipate, to emerge and evolve as part of the data collection and data analysis process. A structured interview with a set of prescribed questions would limit the scope and the wealth of information from participants. On the other hand, a semi-structured interview promises depth, as it can help clarify subtleties raised during the interview and the questionnaire. In this study, the accommodating nature of the semi-structured interview added not only depth to the quantitative results of the study, but also provided an opportunity for the researcher to explore and better understand the students through their own voices (Scott & Usher, 1999).
There were two semi-structured interviews with each participant in Phase Two. The first
interview obtained general impressions of learners’ writing self-concept and academic writing in particular. The second interview further probed and gained deeper insights into how self-concept was manifested in their engagement in the AW class through critical incidents or current learning experiences. This exploratory follow-up allowed the complexity and distinctness of self-concept and engagement to be further understood by the researcher through a selected profile of students, identified from the first phase. Finally, as this study also recognises that self-concept is socially constructed, the semi-structured interviews contextualized the findings and added insights to the distinct learning experiences reported.
Semi-structured interview development and design
Prior to conducting the interviews, an interview guide was developed (see Appendix H). The topics for the interview were constructed based on themes emerging from the
questionnaire data. In trying to elicit learners’ self-concept and how it is manifested in their actions, questions were developed based on themes that would further explain who these learners were and the experiences that had shaped their self-concept in academic writing and their respective writer identities. Accordingly, the first interview obtained
general impressions of learners’ writing self-concept and academic writing in general. The second interview further probed and gained deeper insights as to how self-concept is manifested in their engagement in the AW class through critical incidents or current learning experiences.
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Semi-structured interview pilot
The pilot for the semi-structured interviews was carried out with eight Malaysian students in a New Zealand university to ensure (a) that the interview guide was adequate and (b) for administrative purposes to ensure the interview procedure would be realistic and workable. Some activities planned as part of the interview process, such as ranking and listing, were evaluated in the pilot. The pilot also identified logistical problems which might occur during the interviews.
One issue that arose during the pilot was that the students found terminology such as
‘self-concept’ and ‘engagement’ rather abstract. As a result of this, it was felt that having a handout with definitions and example statements for students to refer to would help their understanding of this terminology. The researcher first asked the students about their understanding of the concept, before showing them the definitions provided by literature. This was done to gauge students’ comprehension of the main concepts in
the questionnaire. In the case of ‘self-concept in academic writing’, the terminology
became accessible once the students comprehended the general term ‘self-concept’. The
key components of ‘self-concept’ (knowledge about themselves, how they feel, value and evaluate themselves) in various contexts were made concrete through statements which depicted possible self-concepts, for example:
Physical: I am good at athletics. Moral: I am a good person.
Personal: I am kind and helpful. Family: I am a responsible daughter.
A later pilot revealed that students were better able to understand what ‘self-concept’ is after these statements were provided to depict how they felt and evaluated their abilities in the respective domains. Following this, some of the students managed to grasp the notion of self-concept in academic writing autonomously. Nonetheless, statements such as I am a good writer, I make a lot of mistakes when writing in English and I think academic writing is important for my future, as well as a definition from literature, were also provided as reference and confirmation.
To make the concept of ‘engagement’ more accessible, visual representations were included. Incorporating visual methods in social and educational research have been revealed to greatly enhance the richness of data (Banks, 2001; Moss, Deppeler, Astley,
82 & Pattison, 2007; Spencer, 2011). Therefore, several pictures which depicted variations
of ‘engagement’ were shown, and the students were invited to arrange the pictures
based on a continuum from ‘most engaged’ to ‘least engaged’ (see Appendix I). By doing this, the researcher was able to gauge what students felt about and interpreted as
‘engagement’ or ‘disengagement’. The visuals also justified the need to conduct the
interviews, as engagement is not only subjective, but can also be manifested in many forms and actions. Ranking of activities was also included in the interview. Students were asked to rank which activities in the classroom engaged them, from most to least,
enabling ‘engagement’ to be understood in the context of the AW class. To gauge
students’ self-concept in academic writing, they were required to complete sentences such as:
I am a _______ L1/L2 writer I am a ______ academic writer in English
Several adjectives such as confident, organised, creative and careful were provided as options, and students were encouraged to provide their own answers. Students were also encouraged to provide multiple responses to the statements (e.g. careful and confident). A final issue that arose during the pilot was trying to get students to explain the association or relationship between their self-concept in academic writing and their engagement in the AW class. Probing proved to be challenging at times, as students found it quite difficult to provide an answer without a concrete reference to a situation or a scenario. Thus, a three-level exploration of the relationship between self-concept in academic writing and engagement was necessary to help explore these constructs with the students (see Figure 4.2).
In Level 1, the aim was to investigate whether students perceived a relationship existed between self-concept and engagement in academic writing. Students were also encouraged to provide reasons as to how they came to their chosen answers. Following on from the response in Level 1, students’ perception regarding the nature of the relationship was investigated in Level 2. Students were also encouraged to provide reasons as to why they believed that the relationship is strong or weak (or other answers which they have provided). Finally, in Level 3, how students perceived self-concept and engagement as interacting or influencing one another in the relationship is investigated further. Students are encouraged to provide examples from their learning experience in the AW class to clarify their responses.
83
Figure 4.2. Flow chart for the exploration of the relationship between self-concept in academic writing and engagement in the pilot and study. The dotted lines depict a possible relationship, despite interviewees’ negative response.
Furthermore, to investigate the nature of the relationship (e.g. direction and magnitude), visual approaches such as Venn diagrams (see Appendix J) proved to be helpful in
gauging students’ perception of the relationship between self-concept and engagement.
The visual materials not only functioned as prompts to students’ own illustrations and representation of the relationship, but also as a means for in-depth discussion.
The pilot was crucial to the study as it helped elucidate potential issues that may have been overlooked by the researcher during the actual interviews. In short, the pilot helped provide validity and reliability for the semi-structured interviews as an instrument (Van Teijlingen, Rennie, Hundley, & Graham, 2001). Thus, the pilot affirmed that the interview would help the researcher gain a better understanding of student behaviour in the classroom. The next section discusses participants and procedures for the actual study.
Lev
el 1
Is there a relationship between self-concept in academic writing and engagement?
No Yes
Level 2
Why? Why?
What is the nature of the relationship?
Strong Weak Other answers
Why? Why? Why?
Lev
el 3
84
Phase Two Semi-structured interview participants
Thirteen students expressed interest in participating in the interviews by leaving their email and contact details in the final section of the questionnaire. Although the initial plan was to select the interview participants from the results of the questionnaire according to the different types of self-concept levels reported (e.g. very high, high, medium to low), only eight students were able to participate in the interviews. The other five students had to withdraw from participating due to scheduling conflicts and their own respective study commitments. Consequently, the remaining eight students represented only the medium (n=5) and high self-concept (n=3) range on the continuum, as indicated by the questionnaire.
Semi-structured interview procedure
The researcher began to contact the possible participants for the interview phase via email in July 2009. The Information Sheet was emailed to the students and a schedule was finalised by the end of July. The interviews were conducted from 3rd August 2009 to 13th August 2009 in a neutral and non-threatening location such as discussion rooms in the library and tutorial rooms in the centre. The interviews were conducted in English and Bahasa Melayu, the native language of the research subjects and the researcher.
Prior to the interviews, the students were once again briefed verbally about the study, in addition to the earlier written information. The students were informed about their rights as participants and once they agreed, were invited to sign the Consent Form (see Appendix L). The participants were also informed that once the transcription had been completed, it would be sent via email or post for them to check and clarify. Once students agreed that the transcription accurately recorded what had been discussed in the interview, they were asked to sign the Authority for the Release of Transcripts form (see Appendix M) and return it to the researcher. The interviews took a maximum of one hour per student and were digitally audio-recorded. Each student was interviewed twice to increase the depth and richness of the data. The gap between the first and second interviews in each case was no more than one week.
Directive prompts allow for probing of events that depict engagement. Invitations to
85 which altered their viewpoints (e.g. You mentioned a class that you felt was uninteresting. Let’s say that you were the teacher for that class, what would you do differently to make sure the students participate or become more engaged?). The interview process was flexible (Janesick, 2000) in that more questions were added, refined and readjusted in the subsequent interviews due to emergent findings. The
researcher’s role shifted from detachment to empathy since the focus was on building
trust and rapport. Michael (1994 as cited in Bogdan and Biklen, 2007) offers the notion of quasi-friend to encourage participation and rapport with child participants. Thus,
during the interviews, the researcher assumed the role of ‘another student writer’ to help establish rapport and reduce the researcher-participant power issues. Additionally, the two interviews helped to build rapport and trust between the two parties.
Semi-structured interview analysis
Data analysis in qualitative research involves the process of “systematically searching
and arranging interview transcripts, field notes and other materials that the researcher
accumulates to enable you to come up with findings” (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, p. 159). The analysis of data from the semi-structured interviews involved several (not necessarily distinct) steps, namely transcription, coding, analysis and interpretation. The analysis of data from this qualitative phase was supported by the use of NVivo 8 software.
Transcription
The semi-structured interview data was digitally recorded and later transcribed using the denaturalised convention (MacLean, Mechthild, & Alma, 2004). This is a verbatim depiction of speech, perceived to be an antidote to the naturalised transition often used alongside conversation analysis. The emphasis on informational content is particularly relevant to the study, as it is concerned with the substance of the interview, that is “the
meanings and perceptions created and shared during a conversation” (Oliver, Serovich, & Mason, 2005, p. 4).
During the study, it became necessary to check the translations of transcriptions to avoid potential inaccuracies and errors. The participants were contacted about this via
86 maintained as the language expert signed a confidentiality agreement (see Appendix N). Field notes were also taken during the semi-structured interviews, and these were typed using a word processor. The transcribed and field notes data were then transferred into the NVivo 8 software for further analyses.
Coding
Upon completing the transcription, the researcher proceeded with coding. The importance of coding has been highlighted by researchers as “the heart and soul of whole-text analysis” (G. Ryan & Bernard, 2003, p. 274). Bogdan and Biklen (2007) suggest several steps in developing a coding system. These include: (i) searching for regularities and patterns as well as for topics in the data, (ii) writing down words and phrases to represent these topics and patterns, and (iii) developing a list of coding categories. The identified words and patterns become the initial coding categories for the descriptive data.
The next stage in the process is the data reduction stage. This process is “dynamic and
fluid” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 101). It required the researcher to read the whole transcription repeatedly for code refinement. Coding categories have to be limited to ensure that there are no overlaps or redundancies, so major and sub-codes were established. Through NVivo 8, the systematic analysis of interview data was carried out by grouping coding strips (coded parts) into nodes in the project database, with each node representing a category. As suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1998), and Bogdan and Biklen (2007), the analysis requires several rigorous steps.
For coding, the steps were subjected to several rounds, and meaning units were used that “preserve the psychological integrity of the idea being expressed” and “neither fragment the idea into meaningless truncated segments nor confuse it with other ideas
that express different themes” (Ratner, 2002, p. 169). The researcher thus coded coherent, related statements as one meaning unit. In cases where participants combined two themes in one sentence, the researcher coded the sentence twice and each theme was placed in two categories. Table 4.1 presents an overview of the steps involved in coding through NVivo 8 software.
87 Table 4.1
Overview of Coding Steps using NVivo 8
Step Procedure Product Step 1 Relevant parts of each interview were
highlighted and are given a code name based on the theme they expressed
Free nodes (coding strips unconnected to one another) Step 2 Free nodes are compared, revised or deleted
Free nodes are clustered based on thematic affinities into a higher code level
Tree nodes (coding strips that have category / subcategory relationship)
Step 3 All free nodes and tree nodes are compared across participants
Emergent themes are categorised
Casebook / Matrix Query
Analysis and interpretation
Data interpretation of the qualitative phase was carried out inductively. Literature indicates that this approach emphasises how meaning is to emerge from the data (Barbour, 2008; Bogdan & Biklen, 2003; N. Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). In fact, the
strategy of inductive analysis “is to allow the important analysis dimensions to emerge
from patterns found in the case under study without presupposing in advance what the dimensions will be” (Patton, 2002, p. 56). With regard to this study, findings emerged from the frequent and significant themes from the raw data, without the restraints of preconceived categories. The rich qualitative data was from the participant’s own words/ language of how they understood their experiences of learning in the AW class. At the same time, the researcher acknowledges her position was subjective, due to her experience as an educator of ESL learners and her background knowledge on the Malaysian educational context. Thus, the analysis would be influenced by the
researchers’ experience.
In this phase, the analysis also required the researcher to draw connections between the results and theoretical issues. The different perspectives that students held about their