4.5 Data collection techniques
4.5.2 Interviews
Gillham (2001) described an interview as a conversation between two people. Creswell (2010) viewed an interview as a two way conversation in which the interviewer asks the participants some questions about their ideas, beliefs, views, opinions and behaviours.
According to Cohen, Manion and Morris (2011) an interview is used to gather information that have direct bearing on the participants. They stress that an interview provides the interviewer with what is ‘inside’ the person. The interviewer gets an opportunity to probe the participants for detailed information which enables him or her to understand the participants’
views, ideas, opinions and ways of thinking (Bertram & Christiansen, 2014).
According to Wallen and Fraenkel (2013) there are three types of interviews. The three types are structured, semi structured and informal interviews. Structured interviews are interviews that require the interviewer to have a set of pre determined questions before the commencement of the interview process. All interviewees are asked the same questions and the questions are asked in the same order. In semi structured interviews, the interviewer uses predetermined questions but has an opportunity to ask follow up questions during the interview process. Thus the main difference between structured interviews and semi
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structured interviews is that in semi structured interviews the interviewer can ask questions that are not part of the pre determined questions. Informal interviews involve the interviewer asking questions that are not predetermined. The questions are created during the interview process. The environment or the situation at hand leads to the formulation of the questions to be asked by the interviewer. Machaba (2013) also identified three types of interviews.
Machaba identified the following types of interviews: open ended interviews, structured interviews and semi structured interviews. Machaba described open ended interviews as interviews in which the aim of the interviewer is to get the participants’ ideas, views, beliefs and attitudes about an event or an object by having a series of interviews that do not make use of predetermined questions. Cohen, Manion and Morris (2011) and Creswell (2010) claimed that there are four types of interviews: structured, unstructured, non-directive and focused interviews. They defined structured interviews as those in which the interviewer uses predetermined questions. Unstructured interviews involve the uses of questions that are not pre determined. Non-directive interviews are interviews in which the questions to be asked are not prepared in advance. The interviewer simply asks what comes to his or her mind. The interviewer goes on to interrogate the interviewee on points of his or her interest. The questions depend on the prevailing situations. They sometimes emanate from what the interviewer observes at that particular point. Focused interviews are event specific. The interviewee is given time to respond to questions on a specific subject.
Interviews can be done through different media. An interviewer can carry out an interview through a phone call, over the radio or using face to face mode. Descombe (2014) stated that semi structured and structured interviews are mostly done face to face. According to Lincoln and Guba (2006) semi structured interviews are mostly used in carry out qualitative research studies. It is because semi structured interviews allow the interviewer to clarify concepts and problems to the participants. They also allow new aspects of the problem to emerge during the interview process. White (2005) identified the following advantages of using an interview as a data collection instrument:
a) Eradication of cheating
The interviewer makes sure that the questions are directed to the rightful participant and the rightful participant answers the questions.
b) Flexibility
The interviewer has the opportunity to clarify questions that may need clarity. The interviewer can ask follow up questions on vague and incomplete responses in order to
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get rich data. The interviewees can also ask questions to the interviewer if they wish to do so.
c) Communication through gestures
The interviewer gets important information from the gestures and behaviour displayed by the interviewees. Gestures are a way of communicating. They assist the interviewer to assess the interviewees.
d) Controlling the interview process
The interviewer remains in control of the interview. The interviewer maintains the order of answering the questions and controls the time to be taken by each interview session. The interviewer makes sure that the focus of the interview is not diverted by the interviewees.
e) Spontaneity
Immediate answers may be more informative than answers about which a participant has had time to think. If participants are given time to think, they may avoid answers that give them bad image or they may think of responses which they think please the interviewer.
Faces to face semi structured interviews were used in this study. The researcher interviewed the mathematics teachers who participated in this study. English and Shona were the languages that were used in the interviews. Since the researcher had permission to carry out the study, the interviews were carried out during the teachers’ working hours and at the teachers’ workplaces. The teachers and the researcher agreed on the time for the interviews.
This arrangement was done so that the interviews would not interfere with the normal day to day business of the teachers. An interview session lasted for about thirty minutes. The mathematics teachers were interviewed individually. This was because the researcher wanted to avoid a situation in which an interviewee’s response was influenced by responses from another interviewee. As advised by Leedy and Ormond (2005), the researcher used probes in order for the participants to provide further information. During the interview sessions, the researcher recorded the proceedings on audio tapes. The researcher asked for permission from the participants to audio tape the discussions since it was not possible for him to capture the proceedings otherwise. A diary was used to record the researcher’s own reflections. The gestures, reactions and behaviours that were displayed by the participants were recorded as field notes. After the completion of the interviews, the researcher asked all participants if they had questions to ask in case the researcher left out something important. The researcher
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thanked all the participants for their time, their contribution, and for agreeing to take part in this research. After the interviews, the researcher played the tapes five times while transcribing the information verbatim.
Interview guides were employed in accordance with the principles outlined by Hollway and Jefferson (2001). Since the study was carried out in three phases, three interview guides were prepared, one for each phase. The first interview guide had seven questions. The first question asked the teachers to state their highest professional qualifications and the length of their teaching experience. This question was very important in the study as it served to enable the researcher to assess the expertise of the participants in the teaching of mathematics at secondary school level. Question two and three asked the participants to explain what they knew about students’ learning styles and how they got the knowledge about these learning styles. The forth question wanted them to explain what they thought were the causes of the learning styles differences in their students. The fifth question required the teachers to explain, giving examples, how they implemented their knowledge of students’ learning style when teaching mathematics. The sixth question sought the teachers’ views on the use of students’ learning styles in teaching mathematics. The last question was an open question which sought any other information that the teachers could share on the use of students’
learning styles in mathematics teaching.
The second interview guide had four sections. This interview guide was targeted at getting the teachers’ responses to questions related to their use of students’ learning styles in the teaching of a chosen topic in mathematics; Functions. The first section had questions on the participants’ qualifications and experience. The second section probed the mathematics teachers on the strategies they used in teaching functions. In the third section the interviewer asked about the teaching tools that the teachers used in the teaching of functions. Emphasis was on how these teaching tools were related to the learning styles of the students. The fourth section had questions on how the teachers’ assessed their students. By probing the teachers on the ways they assessed their students’ progress, the researcher wanted to check if the teachers’ methods were targeted to assess the students according to their learning styles.
The third interview guide had both closed and open-ended questions. This interview guide was aimed at getting the teachers’ responses on questions on barriers that impinged on their use of their knowledge of students’ learning styles in the teaching of mathematics. It had five sections. The first section sought data on the participants’ teaching experience and
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professional qualifications. In the second section, the interviewers required the interviewees to state and explain barriers that were related to the teachers’ personal attributes and pedagogical skills. The third, fourth and fifth sections required the teachers to state and briefly explain giving examples barriers that were related to the students, the curriculum and the socio-economic status of their schools respectively. In the sixth section, the mathematics teachers were asked to give any other barriers that could not be classified under the given categories.
Although using interviews in collecting data had great advantages in terms of flexibility and adaptability, the process was costly and time consuming. It involved the researcher travelling from one school to the other in order to carry out the interviews. At times the researcher had to visit a school more than ten times depending on the number of participants at the school.
The time required for all the teachers to be interviewed was quite long. It required a lot of patience on the part of the participants and the researcher.