Semi-structured interviews

The main method of data collection in this study is semi-structured interviews, which were designed to be conducted in sets of two: one to be held sometime before the classroom observations took place; and one after. This method was employed with nine English teachers, two Head teachers (one from each case study school), two SBA Coordinators from each school, the Senior Teacher from the first case study school, and one State Facilitator in order to discover their understanding about the new curriculum, especially in relation to assessment change. The use of semi-structured interview enabled me to probe for more information and to clarify the responses given by the person being interviewed (Johnson and Christensen, 2008; Patton, 2002; Marshall and Rossman, 2011; Wellington, 2000; Rahman, 2014) and contributed to the gathering of rich and thick data (as it allows participants to express their views and speak for themselves) that I might not have obtained from using structured interviews. I was interested in the extent to which teachers make sense of the new assessment system and the factors that might enhance and/or hinder their enactments of the new assessment procedure and its practice. Therefore, this in-depth semi-structured interview method allowed me to obtain insightful information about teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, knowledge and feelings of a problem being researched (Dörnyei, 2007). This method also allowed for an open response in participants’ own words (Longhurst, 2003) to be obtained, and enabled me to discover teachers’ opinions and understandings about the new curriculum. I initially considered conducting the interviews with only the English teachers and the Head teachers, however, during the fieldwork, I found it necessary and useful to also gather details and information from the SBA Coordinators from the two schools, the Senior Teacher, and also

participants. In addition, the interview with those who were not English Language teachers also allowed me “to cover a more limited area of the same ground but in more depth” (Mason, 1994, p. 91, cited in Mahmood, 2014), which supplemented the data gathered from the main participants in this study, that is, the English teachers, as they were also directly involved in the implementation of the new assessment system in the new curriculum. The total number of semi-structured interviews conducted is shown in Table 4.2.

Table 4.2 Total number of interviews

Schools Head teacher English teacher SBA Coordinator and Senior Teacher Number of English teachers interviewed twice State facilitator Case Study 1 1 6 2 5 Case Study 2 1 3 3 Total 2 9 2 8 (out of possible 9) 1

Grand Total 22 interviews

For the purpose of conducting the semi-structured interviews, separate interview schedules were prepared, not only as a guide to ensure that similar questions could be pursued with each person interviewed (Patton, 2002), but also to help me to build a conversation by focusing on the particular predetermined subject (ibid.). The interview guide for the state facilitator was aimed at discovering his views and understanding of KSSR and what he perceived was actually required of the teachers in the new curriculum, as he was in charge of providing the cascade training for the teachers before the implementation of the new curriculum. English teachers who participated in the study from both schools were interviewed in Malay in order

contents of the interview schedules for the different groups of teachers who participated in this study.

Table 4.3 Interview schedule

Participants Main questions

Head teacher Teacher’s background

Values and belief Training and support

School’s administration system View about KSSR, challenges and recommendation

English Teachers Teacher’s background

Values and beliefs Training and support Views on KSSR and SBA

Challenges and recommendations Non-English teacher

(SBA coordinator and Senior Teacher)

Teacher’s background Values and beliefs Training and support Views on KSSR and SBA

Challenges and recommendations

State facilitator Teacher’s background

Training and support Views on KSSR and SBA

Challenges and recommendations

The pre-interview with the English teachers was conducted in order to build clear ideas about teachers’ views on the implementation of KSSR, their values and beliefs, and their understandings of the practices relating to the new assessment process. The follow-up interviews after the classroom observations were more unstructured, as these were derived from the information gathered during the observations. This strategy was adopted mainly to probe for more information and to clarify any information that they had provided during the

classroom teaching; in other words, to indicate whether what they had said during the first interview matched with their classroom practices. These helped me to obtain in-depth explanations about teachers’ practices. It also provided me with an inside view of what the teachers perceive is happening, thus allowed me to make informed judgements about what is actually happening. In addition, interviews are seen as a conversation and how the data that are generated might be considered as a co-construction (Mann, 2016) between the participant and their experiences and me, as a researcher, as well as my own experiences of implementing KSSR in my teaching practices. Although conducting semi-structured interviews allowed the participants to provide diverse ideas and responses, it also helped to open up room for the participants to negotiate and discuss the topic further (Mann, 2016), thus reducing the power imbalance between me, as the researcher, and the teachers in my study. The responses from the follow-up interviews did contribute greatly to the richness of the data.

Each interview session lasted between 40 minutes and one hour. All of the interviews were audio-recorded and were first piloted with two English teachers in Sabah prior to conducting those in the main study for the purpose of modifying the interview questions accordingly. As the interview schedules were originally written in English, and the interviews were conducted in Malay, I first translated the questions into Malay and had them revised by the Senior English Language Lecturer from one of the public universities in Sabah Malaysia to ensure the accuracy of the translation. The number of interviews varied from each case study school depending on the number of English teachers and the different types of teachers’ roles available in the individual schools.

In one case study school, I had the opportunity to interview the Senior Teacher, who provided valuable information about the nature of the school and the overall implementation of the new curriculum, particularly in relation to the assessment aspect, as practised by the teachers in that school. All interviews were then translated into English and transcribed for the analysis. To build rapport with the teachers, prior to the pre-interview, I explained that careful attention