Preparing interviews and questionnaires

As explained above, interviews and questionnaires have a central role in the following chapters. Thus, the processes of designing, applying and analysing them deserve a more detailed description. Regarding the design of the interview and questionnaire, their pilots were elaborated from July, 2014 to October, 2014. In January, 2015, after the pilots of the interview were applied and analysed, some changes were implemented. The changes on the questionnaires, on the other hand, were achieved only after the end of the interviews and schools observations in June, 2015. The reason for this was to identify some important information that other tools did not provide properly.

As mentioned, the interview and questionnaire were designed based on certain readings of theories of justice and curriculum. These readings have been foundational in structuring

149

chapters 2, 3, 4, 8 and 9. Thus, interview and questionnaires questions touch upon several issues developed in these chapters including questions in which teachers and students could express their opinions about civic virtues that should be cultivated, how to do this and their perceptions on how it is being done. However, since studies for writing these chapters continued after the empirical research, some theoretical ideas that were finally approached in them were not included in the interviews and questionnaires. For example, no discussion on how to deal with political anger was presented. (Interestingly, considering the back and forth process proposed since the beginning of this thesis writing process, some ideas that came from data collection oriented further search for topics developed in the theoretical chapters. Such a writing attitude, aligned with reflective equilibrium, differs from the usual process of building a thesis in only one way: from the analysis of the theory to the practice.)

Thus, oriented by some theoretical ideas, the pilot of the interview was formed by 12 questions. This pilot already presented something in between a semi-structured and structured interview (this idea is explored next). Its format and most of its questions were preserved in the final version. The pilot of the questionnaire, equally oriented by theoretical ideas, was designed with 30 questions which appealed to Likert scale methodology (this idea is also developed next). However, differently from the interview, the format of the questionnaire and most of its questions were changed from the pilot to the final version.

Once the pilots had been applied, few changes were made in the final version of the interview82 (Appendix 1). They were focused on avoiding respondents‟ misinterpretation of certain questions. Thus, in the end, a hybrid, in between a semi-structured and a structured interview, was designed. This means that, on the one hand, questions were very open, a characteristic of semi-structured interviews; on the other, as structured interviews, questions were thought to avoid an excessive dialogue in between the interviewer and the interviewees (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007). This hybrid strategy reduced the influences of the interviewer‟s (my) previous ideas (which already oriented the questions) over the interviewees. The result was an interview with 15 quite general questions, and the definition of a procedure that only allow the interviewer‟s interventions to clarify some points. Finally,

82 _{In the interviews, few more questions were presented. Being more specific, the definition of “empathy” was}

inserted in a question about this subject. Moreover, a direct question comparing education for competition and for collaboration was presented. Similarly, a direct question comparing how talent and effort are stimulated in schools was also introduced. Finally, a question aiming to measure the impacts of the Brazilian educational system, which admits the existence of private and state-run schools, on school actors‟ civic values was also added.

150

it is important to say that the interview was designed to be applied in the three schools to two head teachers, six teachers and twelve students, being the students interviewed in focus groups of 4 students. (The questions presented in the interviews and questionnaires are attached at the end of the thesis.)

The process of designing the final version of the questionnaire (Appendix 2) was a bit more complex. It is divided in two moments. First, as with the interviews, it was observed from the analysis of the pilot answers that some questions were not clear to the respondents. For example, it was asked in the pilot if teachers and students consider that “empathy” should be cultivated, but the answers showed that this concept is not taken for them in a standardised way. Second, after the interviews and observations process were finished, several important questions arose, and it was apparent that some of these could be answered through the questionnaire. Thus, from January, 2015 to July, 2015, the pilot questionnaire underwent lots of improvements until the final version was produced. Subjective questions (asking teachers and students to present the three main civic virtues that should be taught) were introduced; objective questions were modified and expanded. At the end, the questionnaire was compounded by three open-ended and 37 multiple-choice questions.

Since these questionnaires were aimed to be applied to around 100 teachers and 500 students, the three subjective questions were designed to require simple answers which should be presented in three words. The objective questions, which appealed to Likert scale based methodology83, though applied to a considerable number of people, did not produce results that change it into quantitative research, since no statistical inference about the whole Brazilian schools‟ communities is produced from this.

This questionnaire, thus, helps to endorse some of the views presented in the interviews. In one way, information collected through questionnaires is stronger, since it is associated with a larger number of people. On the other, it is weaker, since a deep reflection associated with given opinions is not presented, rather than what happens in the interviews. Though this questionnaire cannot be identified with quantitative research, the comparison presented

83 _{Two types of questions with different alternatives were presented. In the first group, the alternatives were: the}

claim is true; the claim is partially true; the claim is false; I don‟t know. In the second, they were: I completely agree; I agree; I disagree; I completely disagree; I don‟t know.

151

reminds the comparison of advantages and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative researches (Smith, 1983).