INTERVIEW DATA EXPLICATION
5.1 Introduction
This chapter presents and analyses qualitative data collected through 12 phenomenological interviews. The interviews preceded a questionnaire survey data collection. The presentation and analysis of the data follows the same order. I deliberately avoided using the heading data analysis here in order to highlight Hycner‘s caution that since analysis generally means ‗breaking into parts‘, it has a propensity for negative connotations in phenomenological research. Instead, I used explication which means investigation of the constituents of a phenomenon while keeping the context of the whole. I sometimes used the term analysis in this study in the context of Coffey and Atkinson‘s (1996) meaning. They regard it as the,
―systematic procedures to identify essential features and relationships‖ (Groenewald 2004:10). Descriptions of context and what participants say or do form the basis of inductive rather than deductive analysis. Theory is created to explain the data, rather than the data being collected to test pre-established hypotheses (Locke et al 1989).
For anonymity‘s sake, I used 12 pseudonyms in Appendix E for my interviewees.
Due to the economic downturn in Zimbabwe at the time of the interviews, high transport cost forced me to drop Bulawayo Regional Centre from my sample.
Bulawayo is 418 kilometres from Harare where I stayed. I used Mashonaland Central, East, West and Harare Regional Centres. The economic situation was so bad in Zimbabwe that most educational institutions including ZOU, temporarily suspended operations during the second semester. At the beginning of 2009 ZOU
was not fully operational. One could find a few officers who were present to keep offices open and attend to students who visited the regional centres to make inquiries. I had to rely on regional programme coordinators to identify former and current B.Ed. students who suited the criteria in my purposive sample. Arrangements were made for me to interview some participants at regional centres, some at their work places and others at their homes.
My preference for most interviewees who had completed the B. Ed. programme was based on the belief that the descriptions and explanations of their experiences in B.Ed. covered the support strategies used by learners to complete the programme.
Most of them had completed the B.Ed. programme while the Zimbabwean economy was still sound. As former students, and products of the system, I assumed that they would have a passion to have the systems at their former school improved. Besides that, they would tell me the truth as they were no longer susceptible to victimisation by anybody. Those who were still on the programme were expected to give the current student support situation and also describe strategies they were using to cope with the B.Ed. programme under the prevailing situation.
I carried out twelve in-depth phenomenological interviews with purposively selected seven female and five male former and current B. Ed. students of ZOU. Five of these were from Harare, 4 from Mashonaland Central, 2 from Mashonaland East and 1 from Mashonaland West regional centres respectively. Among the participants included 8 who had completed the B.Ed. programme. Six of them had unimpeded completion of the programme in 8 semesters. Two of the eight, had delayed but completed the programme. Another two that delayed completion were doing fourth year. These had delayed completion due to previous temporary withdrawal from the programme. The last two were, one doing third year and the other was in second year. The second year student was a member of the ZOU student representative council (SRC). I deliberately selected him to feel the ―pulse‖ of the SRC at ZOU.
The interviews were based on adults‘ experiences in DL at ZOU in general but with a specific focus on my research questions (P.3):
What structures and strategies do students use to study at ZOU?
To what extent do adult learners use support structures at ZOU to cope with the B. Ed. programme through DL?
How do B. Ed. students use their own strategies to cope with DL at ZOU?
What strategies do B. Ed. students use to cope with information and communication technology (ICT) needs in DL?
How can strategies used by students inform the development of effective support structures and strategies at ZOU?
I created space for the interviewees to say all they could on each by using open- ended questions. This gave participants room to give the multiple-perspectives of their understanding of each of the aspects under review.
Basing on my research questions and themes, I used NVivo qualitative data analysis programme. I coded data into sub-themes and themes and came up with 60 free nodes that I condensed into 10 tree nodes. My tree nodes were sub-themes based on the subsystems I considered in exploring the support structures and strategies used by adults to cope with DL at ZOU. My tree nodes were the themes made up of sub- themes as listed in Appendix E. They included the following:
DT1 The distance learning context, DT2 ZOU support mechanisms, DT3 Availability of learning resources,
DT4 Information and communication technology, DT5 Distance teaching-learning methods,
DT6 Distance learning assessment,
DT7 Socio-academic integration of work, family and study commitments , DT8 Financial requirements of the programme,
DT9 Participants‘ advice to ZOU, and DT10 Participants‘ advice to students.
I sought participants‘ advice to ZOU and students in order to help ZOU improve its systems and assist adults to cope with DL programmes respectively. An attempt to chronologically arrange the issues under discussion was difficult due to their interdependence. Hence I dealt with them in the order which I could defend.
I grouped my twelve interviewees into NVivo sets. As a preamble to the phenomenological interviews, I asked my interviewees to complete a short personal data questionnaire that required them to give attributes that constitute the elements of my NVivo sets. My sets in this study are groups of participants with similar attributes. The attributes I considered included adult learners‘ personal and socio- economic characteristics. They also covered spatial and time circumstances under which they did the B. Ed. programme through DL. I used the commonality of attributes among the members in each set to draw emerging patterns from their experiences. This was achieved through constant comparison of data in the responses to questions by cases in sets. There were two sets of my sample that covered participants‘ enrolment intake groups. My sample covered students from Intake 1 to Intake 20. Participants from the first ten intakes (1-10) were in the earlier intakes and participants from the last ten (11-20) were in the later intakes set respectively.
The 22 sets I came up with were:
Gender- female and male,
Age- below and 50 years and above,
Marital status- single, married, widowed, separated and divorced, Professional qualifications- primary and secondary school trained,
Employment position in the B.Ed. programme- class teachers, heads of departments, deputy school heads and school heads,
Studies prior to DL- recent and long ago, Enrolment intakes- earlier and later intakes,
Previous DL experience- with and without previous DL experience, Programme completion - unimpeded, delayed and on the programme, and Geographical location- rural and urban learners.
Given the number of my free nodes and my sets, it was impossible to complete a detailed analysis of every free node due to the time and other resources‘ constraints.
Some of my free nodes were a result of probing questions meant to make participants relax and open up. So, they were peripheral to and did not directly answer my research questions. My analysis only focussed on those nodes that generated salient points of interest to the research questions. These included: those that confirmed findings in my literature review, those that displayed contrasting views between sets and those that gave new views to traditional DL practice.
My interviews drew qualitative data from adults‘ experiences in DL. I presented and analysed data in tree nodes. I had 12 interviewees identified in Appendix E by their pseudonyms as: Angeline (A), Bee (B), Bvu (BV), Charity (C), Chibayo (CH), Eusabia (E), Petty (P), Rutendo (R), Sharon (S), Varaidzo (V), Zed (Z) and Zvinaiye (ZV). I used the tree node number, the participant‘s initials and the page to cite quotations in my discussion as in (DT1A:1) for Angeline in data tree 1 on page 1 in Appendix F.
Phenomenological research is unique among other human science research methods because it emphasizes descriptions of meaning structures of lived experience.
Opinions are not considered to be lived experience. The use of spoken or written text as data marks the ideological predisposition of phenomenological research methods (Groenewald 2004). Although phenomenological research attempts to minimize a priori preconceptions about the nature of the data, there are unavoidable a priori aspects to phenomenological research such as the fore-understanding which led to
the research questions underlying the investigation. Bracketing the researcher's entering predispositions towards the question is a recognition of the unavoidable a priori dimensions of a research method that attempts to allow the data to speak for themselves as much as possible (Osborne 1994).