Research Process

Six Alternative Education (AE) providers in the Central North Island of New Zealand were invited, in writing, to put forward students who may be suitable to participate in the current study. These centres were recommended by the local Ministry of Education office. All of the potential participants had been marginalized and disengaged from mainstream education because that is the criteria for them enrolling in AE. I invited the providers to suggest Māori students that they considered to have positively engaged in the AE learning environment. This criterion of positive re-engagement is the phenomenon identified within the research framework. As it turned out three of the students had recently (within the previous six weeks) been reinstated to mainstream education and they reflect part of the 3% of AE students that return to mainstream. The other three students were currently in AE classrooms but were considered potential candidates for return to mainstream within the 44

next three months. These particular students were considered as the appropriate participants to reflect on their experiences of the phenomenon of re-engagement into a positive learning environment. I offered to be part of the selection process in terms of assisting the centres to identify suitable participants. Three centres took this up and, as I had previously worked in the AE system, it was appropriate for me to be part of the process.

Five different centres provided six students to participate, three females and three males, aged between 14 and 15 years. One Centre provided two students, a male and a female. Initially I envisaged interviewing just males, because males are disproportionately represented compared to females in the AE system (Ministry of Education 2011). Also initially, I did not envisage interviewing students who had returned to mainstream, but when the opportunity came to interview such students I was very keen to include them and, as it turned out, the only reinstated students available were three girls. It needs to be noted that one potential candidate was ruled out by me, through collaboration with the AE provider and the student, because the student did not want to be identified as Māori. Making participants feel at ease and enabling them the opportunity to tell their story was a priority for me. This was achieved by making personal contact with the students and providers prior to the interviews. The participants were encouraged to tell their stories in an open and honest way that focused on their strengths. I also made a significant effort to show my genuine interest in the students’ stories and in particular their future goals and aspirations.

In preparation for the interviews, a pilot interview was carried out with the research supervisors in order to refine the questions being asked. In addition, prior to commencing the interviews I had a detailed discussion with my cultural advisor about non-Māori doing research about Māori student experiences. The discussion included the importance of student, family (Whanau), and local iwi being informed and having an opportunity to contribute to the research discussion. The cultural advisor felt that in relation to non-Māori researchers connecting with the students, pre-contact initiatives being undertaken by me would be helpful.

The students chose the location to be interviewed; four students choose a private 45

room at the AE centres and two students chose to be interviewed at their homes. Within two hours of all of the interviews I wrote notes from memory (without listening to the audio recording) to make sure that any additional details, such as body language and general atmosphere, were acknowledged. It is of interest that the first two interviews only lasted approximately 20 minutes each and it appeared that the students struggled with recalling information in chronological order from early childhood to the present day. To remedy this I changed the interview schedule, reversed the chronological order so that the students started describing their experience at their present school setting, and then reflected back on their experiences. In addition, it became apparent after the two initial interviews that “going in cold” without any pre-contact with the student did not enhance access to the rich data I was seeking. My initial thinking, from a quantitative stance, was that pre-contact could contaminate the data and act as a confounding variable. Following this experience, I became more confident in the use of qualitative methods that allowed more personal contact and interaction to enhance the rich data acquisition. For example, I attended the prize-giving ceremonies at the AE schools and had contact with the students, their families, and their teachers prior to the interviews. This pre-contact resulted in a more open exchange between the students and me for the last four interviews.

The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed by me. The transcription process was an important part of the analysing stage because it allowed me to become very familiar with the data. The coding process initially involved the reading of the interview transcripts and coding for elements of engagement that were identified in the codebook (table 1).These were initially color-coded in the individual interview transcripts. I then grouped together each of the individual, six codes of student excerpts from the student interview transcripts. At this stage, I then looked for any codes that had emerged out of the student interviews (inductive) that I had not coded for in the codebook. The analysis then involved looking for patterns of codes that represented themes of the phenomenon of academic engagement. A number of sub-themes were identified and the analytical process was concluded with the presentation of overarching themes that I felt the data had demonstrated were very significant in why these particular students had re-engaged in an academic learning environment.