3.1. Research Concerns 59
3.1.7. Deciding on Data Collection Method
3.1.7.1. Choice ofInterview Questions & schedule construction.78
Open-ended questions were used, as this allowed coverage of both my concerns i.e. issues with race, language and assessment, and permitted teachers to raise their own issues. Powney &
Watts (1987) say that open questions allow tentative hypothesis to grow from the data rather than having a pre-set list of hypotheses. I adapted the questions used by Akhurst (1997) which seemed to suit the needs of my study and which had been found to elicit rich data previously.
Deciding on which questions to include incorporated the following steps:
• As was previously mentioned, I scrutinised questionnaires included in related research endeavours.
• I consulted with colleagues and friends who were in the teaching profession about their concerns,
• I relied on my own experiences as a teacher, (even though this was for only one year and at a primary school in Northern Natal, in a semi-rural area),
• I had discussions with professionals in the language department at the University of Natal,
• I relied on assistance from my supervisor.
Chundra (1997) emphatically states that novice researchers have difficulty deciding on which topics to include in questions. No doubt as a result of this and my lack of experience, the interview schedule (Appendix 2) is flawed. Bogdan & Biklen, (1992) state that questions invariably reflect the interests of the researcher and perhaps equal or even more important events or issues may have been excluded. The only recourse for the researcher then, is to be aware of these and to face them when working with the data (Cohen& Manion, 1989). (In fact, when reviewing the data it became obvious that the schedule did not cover other important areas of change that may have occurred in schools in the recent past (Chundra, 1997) e.g.
admission policies, assessment, school ethos).
The question schedule consisted of ten questions. The questions ranged from what I thought were easy questions, to ones which were more difficult to answer. The easier ones dealt with personal and historical data, which I intended to use to create rapport. Schatzman and Strauss (in LeCompte& Preissle, 1993:172) divide questions into five groups:
Reportorial questions eliciting a respondent's knowledge factors in a social situation usually preceded by interrogatives such who, what when, where, and how, (2) devil's advocate·
questions eliciting what respondent's view as controversial, (3) hypothetical questions encouraging respondent speculation about alternative occurrences, (4) posing-the-ideal questions eliciting respondent's interpretations and (5) propositional questions eliciting or verifying respondent interpretations.
Questions would also be divided as follows, according to Patton (1990) in LeCompte &
Preissle (1993 :171)
I) Experience and behavior questions that elicit what respondents do or have done, 2) opinion and value questions that elicit how respondents think about their behavior and experiences, 3) feeling questions that elicit how respondents react emotionally to or feel about their experiences and opinions, 4) knowledge questions that elicit what respondents know, about their worlds, 5) sensory questions that elicit respondents' descriptions of what they see, hear, touch, taste and smell in the world around them and, 6) background and demographic questions that elicit respondent's descriptions of themselves.
The questions included in the schedule (Appendix 3) are divided according to the above definitions. Experiential questions were Question 1, 2, 4, 5a, and 7 in the interview schedule.
These questions dealt with reasons for teaching, teacher expectations versus the reality in the classroom, teacher experiences of rewards and difficulties in the education field, as well as their experiences with learners, respectively. Questions related to 'rewards' were included so that teachers would have the opportunity to relate what they found to be positive experiences in the teaching field, whilst the 'difficulties' related to both experiences at home or as a result of their career paths or in their community, as well as within the school bounds. The 'ideal' questionwas based on what they envisioned as the qualities of the perfect teacher (Question 3).
The first three questions were intended too bereportorial.
Knowledge or propositional questions related to OBE and desegregation (primarily language- related issues (Question 5b). These latter types of questions were raised if teacher did not mention them spontaneously and were questions that were not incorporated in the supervisor's original questioning. Hypothetical questions asked how to change government practices (Question 8,& 10). Question 9, which asked about the future of education, can be viewed as an opinion questionas well as adevi!'s advocate question.
The phrasing of the questions plagued me. Boulton and Hammersley (in Sapsford & Jupp, 1996: 283) say, "With interview data, it is necessary to remember that the questions are likely to have influenced the answers given." I only truly realised the importance of the phrasing of questions during the interviews with teachers. For instance, with Question: 5 a - What aspects of teaching do you find difficult? I may have implied to teachers that they ~hould experience problems with teaching. I also discovered after the interviews had been conducted that I would on occasion ask what Patton (in LeCompte & Preissle, 1993:174) calls 'double-barrelled' questions. This may have confused teachers, as they had to remember long-winded questions - e.g. in one case a respondent even asked me to repeat the question.
3.1.7.2. Triangulation of Research.
Chetty (1995:44) mentions that data triangulation is a necessity as "every form of data is potentially biased and that the use of a variety of different forms of data collection, e.g.
observation, interview, and questionnaires can eliminate or high light biases". Lather's statement (in Leibowitz, 1990) that the inclusion of many data sources, methods and theoretical schemes adds to the validity of fmdings and is advantageous in overcoming any bias and prevents the researcher from seeing only a "slice of reality" (Cohen & Manion, 1989:12) concerned me. I had only utilised one data collection strategy, namely interviewing.
As was previously mentioned, I felt that triangulation of my data would have had to have been engaged in to ensure better reliability of my results. Time constraints however prevented this.
If, however one interprets triangulation as Flick (1998) does, saying that it is studying a phenomenon from different peoples' perceptions, then I have indeed fulftlled this requirement.
Chundra (1997), however, encouraged me with the knowledge that one could compare one's results to those of other researchers as a form of triangulation. Inthis case, I decided to study her results as her study closely resembled my own.
3.2. DATA COLLECTION