Pre-interview sheets and interviews

The time for the study allowed in depth interviews to take place that explored teachers’ perceptions and reflections of their own learning. Interviews, like focus groups, used conversation as access to a person’s knowledge and are “hermeneutics” – they give an interpretation of a person’s meaning (Kvale, 1996). Interviews offered a ‘window’ into how teachers view their own learning and development. Schutz (1967) offers a caveat in that interviews may only portray part of “the story” as our understanding of a person’s perspective would only be completely accurate if we were that person – otherwise all we are doing is seeing our own version of their perspective. My interpretation of a

participant’s perspective is part of the reflexivity of my role as a researcher (discussed in section 3.6.3).

Interviews and questionnaires were chosen to elicit teachers’ views on learning because, although they were open-ended techniques, they had something different to offer. They were also able to be based around the research questions; exploring perceptions of learning and finding out about learning activities. Interviews allowed detailed and

emotive stories to be told that wrapped up teacher learning definitions in a narrative. The interviews offered depth of understanding where the questionnaires offered breadth. Semi-structuring key questions in the questionnaire still elicited detailed responses but applied to a much wider sample. The data from the interviews could then be compared to that of the questionnaires to sample the perspectives of teacher learning within the case study.

73 To prevent the interview from being too onerous on the individuals involved, I designed, with some input from other doctoral colleagues, a “pre interview task”. The pre-

interview task (Appendix B) provided a starting point for the interview and enabled data to be collected on the participant’s background before the interview commenced.

Interviews are more fruitful when regarded by the participant as a social, interpersonal encounter rather than a data collection exercise (Cohen et al, 2003). The pre-interview task, therefore, enabled me to both “ease” the participant into the interview and engage with the participant with common ground.

The participants shared the pre-interview task with me before the interview. The task then formed the earlier part of the interview schedule. The interview schedule (Appendix D) demonstrates how the interview questions developed as the interview progresses and shows the link to each research question.

The schedule shows how the questions form the semi structure of the interview (Cohen et al, 2003) as well as the links to my research questions. The most challenging

questions, those regarding the perceptions of the terms ‘learning and development’, are in the latter part of the interview. At this stage in the interview I hoped that the

participants were talking at ease so were able to discuss the more challenging concepts.

The semi-structured nature of the interview enabled the data to be comparable across participants but there was a risk of losing an opportunity to see how the participants themselves structure their own ideas (Bogden & Biklen, 1992). The interview was not fully structured as this form of rigidity would disallow rich and specific answers (Cohen et al. 2003). Additionally, the interview questions were deliberately ‘open’ to elicit as much information from the participant as possible. Some responses needed intervention,

74 e.g. “could you explain X further?”, “what do you mean by Y?”. As the researcher, I directed the conversation to cover the points I wanted discussing but balanced it with a need to collect good quality data. I needed to keep the participant focused and avoid ‘…undisciplined and haphazard poking around…’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p.251).

To aid accurate data collection, the interviews were audio recorded with participants’ permission. This was less obtrusive when compared to video recording (Cohen et al. 2003) but did not capture the participant’s non-verbal actions (Seidman, 1991). I made notes, where appropriate, to counter this concern.

The interviews took place over a three month period during the winter term of 2013. Each interview was conducted in a location chosen by the participant, after school hours and lasted 60-70 minutes. The choice of venue was to empower the participant in

viewing that they were in control of the interview process. Five participants chose their own classroom; one their office. Each participant completed the pre-interview task and each interview was conducted adhering loosely to an interview schedule (see Appendix D). Each pre-interview task was read prior to the interview and formed the basis of the first questions e.g. “I noticed you studied at X… tell me about that experience.”

The audio recordings allowed for playback and checking. Each interview was

transcribed fully by myself for analysis, with inflections, accents and emphasis removed. The transcription of data is a crucial step for analysis but has potential for data loss and distortion (Cohen et al., 2003). Full transcription was time-consuming but necessary and helped to avoid the transcript becoming an ‘opaque screen’ between the researcher and the original interview (Kvale, 1996, p.167). In terms of internal validity transcriptions were passed to participants to read and validate as a true and accurate record. One

75 participant out of the six chose to remove a section that they considered personal and could cause distress to a member of their family. The other five participants agreed the accuracy of the transcripts and did not feel necessary to add or elaborate any answers.

To preserve participants’ anonymity two steps were taken:

1. Any specific places that could identify the participant were anonymised e.g. University X, School Y;

2. Use of pseudonyms.

The participants had the opportunity to choose their own pseudonym. None did so and were happy for me to assign pseudonyms. Further ethical considerations are considered in section 3.6.