Semi-Structured Interviews

Considering the research objectives, the researcher prepared a semi-structured interview guide for the fieldwork (see: Appendix-A). The proposed interview guide was open- ended and led to additional questions. It allowed the researcher to engage the interviewees with further discussion after asking the opening questions (Bryman, 2016).

4.7.1 Interviews with Male Teachers and Head Teachers

The interview process started with the teachers and head teachers. From each school, along with the head teacher, two senior teachers who had been teaching secondary classes for more than ten years were also requested for interview. There were total 30 (10 head teachers and 20 teachers) interviewees from the ten selected secondary schools for boys. The head teachers were interviewed individually in their school offices. Two senior teachers from each school were interviewed together in a separate, quiet room at the school. All the interviews with the teachers and heads were negotiated and conducted during school time and were tape recorded. The duration of the interviews with the male teachers and head teachers lasted between 60 to 90 minutes.

4.7.2 Interviews with Female Teachers and Head Teachers

The female teachers and headmistresses were reluctant to participate in an individual interview alone in a school room due to cultural sensitivities. All the headmistresses were interviewed in their offices and always in the presence of other staff - at least two other female teachers on each occasion. Thus, the interviews with the headmistresses and female teachers were undertaken in a group at each school. From the chosen eight girls’ schools, 29 females (8 headmistresses and 21 teachers) participated in the interviews, which were held during school time. The duration of the interviews lasted, on average, about 90 minutes.

4.7.3 Interviews with Parents of School Dropouts

Fourteen fathers of the secondary school dropped out children were interviewed to understand their perspective of the problem; I could not recruit any mothers of dropped out pupils because of cultural sensitivities. The interviews with the fathers of school dropouts were held at different places. The fathers were not very expressive in their thoughts and perspectives on the issue of dropping out; they offered short answers to the research questions and would not elaborate more on their views. None of them had completed secondary education and they

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all belonged to a low socioeconomic class of society. They were doing labour works at local level or were engaged with their own small-scale agriculture businesses. Some of them were not able to read and write; I had to read aloud the participants’ information sheet and consent form to them in their own language. The duration of the interview with them was about 30 to 40 minutes on average.

4.7.4 Interviews with Community Members of School Councils

It is a prescribed responsibility of the community members of the local school councils to help prevent pupil dropout. To explore the perspectives of the local people on the issue of dropping out, six school councils (three from boys’ schools and three from girls’ schools) were included in the study. From the selected school councils, 12 community members (two from each school council) were interviewed individually. The interviews with them lasted for 40 to 60 minutes. They all possessed average socioeconomic status and lived locally.

The head teachers acted as facilitators to enable access to the community members of the school councils. Due to social and cultural constraints, it was not possible for the male researcher to approach female members of the girls’ school councils on his own. Therefore, the researcher asked the headmistresses who participated in the study to invite female council members to their schools for an interview in a public setting, with others present. However, none of the female community council members was willing to be interviewed. Thus, out of the eight girls’ secondary schools included in the sample, three schools that had male school council members were included in the study. Some girls’ secondary schools had all male council members because of the lack of female participation in school affairs at local level. 4.7.5 Interviews with Dropped Out Children

Until the 1990s, the perspectives of children and young people were largely missing in qualitative research because of the dominance of experimental methods in developmental psychology and the long-held assumption that children are not able to or entitled to have their own perspectives (Alderson & Morrow, 2004; Greig et al., 2013; Hendrick, 2000; Malcolm Hill, 2005; Masson, 2004; Mishna et al., 2004). Either the children were not considered competent to express their views or they were dependent on their parents’ or teachers’ consent to participate in a research study. The researchers rarely asked the children themselves to participate in a study (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998; Masson, 2004; Tisdall, Davis, & Gallagher, 2009; Woodhead & Faulkner, 2008).

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Recently, the paradigm has shifted towards involving children in research and valuing them as capable participants who can give their perspectives on issues that affect them (Alderson & Morrow, 2004; Christensen & James, 2008; Mishna et al., 2004; Prout & James, 2014). Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 also gives children the right to express their opinions on the issues and decisions that may affect them (Taylor, 2000); hearing the “voices of young people themselves about their educational experiences is overdue” (Crozier & Tracy, 2000, p. 174). More recent research with children and young people recognises the social construct of childhood and that children can be considered both dependent and autonomous (in different contexts/settings); the ‘new’ sociology of childhood considers children as active citizens with important contributions to make. For example, Greig et al. (2013) contend:

All our attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about children and adolescents are – like our attitudes – socially constructed. That is, those realities we accept as established knowledge about children and young people, how they think, feel and behave, are not actually objective realities; rather they are a construction of the machinery of human meaning making.

(Greig et al., 2013, p. 51) The existing literature on research with children presents two extremes: children are “just the same or entirely different from adults” (Punch, 2002, p. 322). Punch (2002) further argues that the perception about the status of children directs data collection methods. The concept of childhood, as sociological theories endorse, is socially constructed. It is constituted by specific cultural and structural components of a society rather than its biological composition (Prout & James, 2014). However, child development models are socially and culturally specific (Woodhead, 2009) and cultures across the world have their own meaning of childhood and adolescence (Greig et al., 2013).

The concepts of childhood and adolescence in one region of the world may not necessarily be the same elsewhere. Therefore, the researcher must be open to the use of methods that are better suited to children, particularly their “level of understanding, knowledge, interest, and particular location in the social world” (Greene & Hill, 2005, p. 8). Childhood has different stages ranging from infant to adolescence; each stage needs to be treated differently. Age is considered to be a fundamental criterion to distinguish infants, young children, teenagers

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and adolescents (Greene & Hill, 2005; Hendrick, 2000; Scott, 2008). Scott (2008) establishes that a child of 11 has the ability to express its perceptions and deal with open-ended questions.

This study adopted the definition of a childhood established by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as being up to 18 years of age (see Chapter One). In this research, 18 school dropouts from secondary classes were individually interviewed to understand their perspectives of the issue under investigation. The individual interview technique offers the opportunity for an interviewee to express the reasons “for holding a particular view” (Bryman, 2016, p. 502). The age range of the school dropouts included in the study was 14-18 years.

I found the school dropouts fully capable of expressing their perspectives on the issue of dropping out and reflecting on their own experience. Some interviews with them were held at their workplaces, such as shops and bus stands. However, I realised that the shop owners interrupted the interview process. To assure the accuracy of data, I had to change the strategy of interviewing such children at their workplaces and I therefore negotiated meetings with them during their free time and in a quiet public place or at their homes.

Although Pakistan is a signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and declares its constitutional responsibility to provide compulsory schooling to children up to age of 16, child labour is common across the country. This means that a different approach is needed when considering children and young people being able to contribute to research independently and without their parents’ consent, but with their own consent across different cultures.

I noted that often the dropped out children were more confident, responsive, and expressive than their parents and in some cases, even than their teachers. It was further revealed that two of them were married and living independent lives. This implies that the social construction of childhood for boys in a patriarchal society such as rural Pakistan is based on cultural structures rather than biological approaches. Thus, I treated all children as adults while interviewing them.

For all interviews, the researcher followed the guidelines suggested by Bryman (2016), such as: ordering and altering the questions for an easy flow of information; using language relevant to the interviewees; asking general information about the participants to know their gender, age and experience; becoming familiar with interview settings; being prepared for questions interviewees may ask during or after the interview; negotiating the interview in a

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quiet place; and possessing a good quality recording device. The interviews with the school dropouts lasted between 40 minutes to one hour.