Semi-structured interview

The interview was chosen as a means to build upon questionnaire responses. The first interview was conducted prior to the observation in the pilot. However, it was after the pilot study that I realised it would be more beneficial to interview after observing the teacher. This would enable me to ask questions about the observed lesson, allowing me to probe, illuminate and clarify classroom events. I had formulated a lengthy interview to

assist in building rapport and to put the teachers at their ease. I felt this would be more conducive to eliciting open and honest opinions and other information which might be volunteered. The effects of the asymmetrical relationship, between the interviewer and the interviewee, can be reduced if the interview is conducted in true interpretive spirit, as a two-way conversation (Woods, 1986) rather than as a researcher-dominated activity. This also facilitates in building between the perspectives and agendas of the interviewer (and hence of the assumptions around which the research process is constructed), and those of the interviewees. The need to both respect and reflect on participant understandings is not a new issue for social science research (Henwood and Pidgeon, 1992; Lincoln and Guba, 1985). The principle that guided the interviews was to avoid direct questioning in favour of the indirect items. For example, instead of asking directly, ‘Do you like teaching

grammar?’ asking ‘Have you fond memories of grammar teaching?’ I also attempted to make the questions sound as natural as possible (Nias, 1991) to allow others to describe it from their point of view (Denzin, 1978). I began by stating the purpose of the research, chatting with brief informal conversation (Kvale, 1996) until I felt that the teacher was ready to begin the interview. It affords the researcher the opportunity to explore tacit and unobservable aspects of participants’ lives (Glesne and Peshkin, 1992).

An interview is recognised as a socially situated event (Harrison et al., 2001). Interviews were applied to gain ‘intersubjective depth’ (Miller and Glassner, 1997, p. 106). Rogoff (1990, p. 71) describes intersubjectivity as a ‘shared understanding based on a common focus of attention and some shared presuppositions that form the ground for communication.’ I sought to access teachers’ individual understanding as it had been ‘appropriated’ during participation in practice, and to understand the process by which individuals transform their understanding of and responsibility for activities through their own participation (Rogoff, 1994 p. 209). The meanings have been derived first in

part of the process of negotiating meaning. The significance of the term ‘interchange’ is that the goal of collaboration is not only to develop a shared perspective between people but also to access resources to inform individual learning. Teachers’ learning has occurred both collaboratively and individually, as an individual operates on others’ ideas to advance their own thinking. It is important to address how the researcher is positioned by the teachers, and vice versa (Harrison, et al., 2001).

Questionnaires might not go far enough in revealing the complexities in teachers’ understandings. The interviews were self-designed and semi-structured and the questions were designed to unfold as an informal dialogue. That said, the interviews are aimed to elicit displays of perspectives (Silverman, 1993, p. 107) rather than true or false reports on reality. The process of being interviewed has also impacted on the teachers’ perspectives, particularly when the questions required teachersto make explicit what had previously been held tacitly. I tried to avoid this by emphasising the exploratory nature of the

research. The data provided to me represents what teachers presented as their perspectives and the interview in the pilot study demonstrates how individual each teacher’s perception on the classroom is. This was exemplified in how similar the questionnaire responses were, compared to the interview responses, which showed marked differences.Interviews were employed as a method to illuminate and clarify the significant data elements as revealed through the initial questionnaires.

Semi-structured interviews afforded the opportunity to build deeper understandings which had been elicited through the initial questionnaire responses. This method also avoided the potential rigidity that a more structured interview might have imposed. The questionnaire was structured and so, as typically quantitative, it gave a broad overview in terms of information. When answering my own questionnaire (see Appendix 20), I referred to the list of preconceptions and realised that each interview in the project provides an opportunity to obtain the perspectives of each teacher, built upon their life experiences and

reflecting the contexts in which their experience evolved. This yet again facilitated the meeting of perspectives between the agendas of the interviewer (and hence of the assumptions around which the research process is constructed) and those of the

interviewees. The analyses should aim to reflect and focus on those points at which the perspectives of interviewers and interviewees interact (Griffin, 2007, p. 261).

The reflexive and dialogical interview is a central component of this project (Holstein and Gubrium, 1997; Denzin, 1995, 1997). Interview meanings are contextual, improvised and performative (Dillard, 1982, p. 32). An interview is an active text, a site where meaning is created and performed and the interview text creates the world, giving the world its situated meaningfulness. Every interview text selectively and

unsystematically reconstructs that world and tells and performs a story according to its own version of narrative logic. The interview serves to allow the teachers to comment perhaps on their own experience of the increasing depth and clarity of the data generated via the questionnaire. Participant validation has been deemed problematic (Silverman, 1993) because it implies an ‘epistemological privilege’ for the participant, requiring a researcher to judge whether a disputed interpretation is ‘indeed an inaccurate record of the interview … or … a post-hoc rationalization, or the interviewee’s current ideas about what they are meant to say in the interview’ (Mason, 1996, p. 152). That said, the interviewees volunteered themselves, which meant that teachers should not have felt obliged to

participate. However because the teachers self-selected, they were interested in grammar. By avoiding force-choiced responses, it also helped in representing these

experiences in teachers’ own language (Kvale, 1996). Additionally, this form of

interviewing aims to solicit the active involvement of teachers in communicating the sense- making processes through which they interpret their own experiences. By using open- ended questions, data is generated which may be more elaborate and qualitatively richer than that generated through closed questions (Anderson and Burns, 1989). The reflexive

approach to interviewing appeared to be more responsive to the specific contributions the interviewee made, meaning that the researcher is more likely to fall upon unexpected discoveries (Cohen et al., 2000). Holstein and Gubrium (1997) also suggest that interviewees may be more likely to be active in the research because it may be more interesting for them.