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legal academic community, a past editor of highly reputable law journals and a prolific author, this ex-Dean’s views seemed to represent those of conservative White male academics. All these participants were helpful in providing documentation and verifying pieces of information that I was able to glean from various sources. All three participants from this Task Group were white, and middle-aged, or older, having been Law Deans over ten years previously, at the end of the apartheid era.
I was unable to gain access to any African ex-Deans who had participated in the deliberations on legal education during the period 1995-6. Although there had been African Deans at HBUs at that time, I was not able to trace their whereabouts at present.
For this reason, I was fortunate to obtain an opportunity, by sheer chance, through a social acquaintance, to interview a NADEL60 activist lawyer, who had been a fairly vocal participant at the Legal Forums. Although he was neither an ex-Law Dean, nor a member of the Task Group, and therefore did not meet the criteria for my intended data set, his active participation in the debates on legal education during 1995 and 1996 had given him access to many of the same discussions in which the Task Group members had participated, but from an entirely different perspective. His voice represents a dissonant view: the “other side”, both from the fact that he was and still is a legal practitioner, and due to his activist background, of being part of a “subversive movement” during the apartheid area, planning for the anticipated transition to democracy and the changes in the legal profession. His vivid depiction of the policy-making process often throws the academics’ views into sharp relief, verifying and elucidating their vague suspicions about “the other side”. Three participants were male, (two ex-Deans and the activist-lawyer), while one was a female.
I contacted each participant personally by e-mail, explaining the purpose of my research and what information I was seeking to discuss with them, by sending them a copy of my information sheet (Appendix 3). I requested their participation, which was given without hesitation. I arranged to visit each one at his or her office, which entailed my travelling to Johannesburg and Cape Town for two of the interviews. A copy of the interview schedule was sent to each ex-Dean a week prior to the interview date (Appendix 4).
60 National Democratic Lawyers’ Association.
142 4.9.2 Data Set 3: current Law Deans
My sampling with this data set was purposive, as I wished to select a range of Deans from HBUs, HWUs and both English-medium and Afrikaans-medium universities in order to obtain a varied sample (Cohen et al., 2007, p. 115). However, the sampling was also to some extent opportunistic or based upon convenience (Cohen et al., 2007, p. 114), in that it was influenced by issues of access and availability, and my personal familiarity with those Deans whom I had met at SALDA meetings. I chose to interview Deans who I imagined, from my personal knowledge of them, would be rich sources of information, able to provide textured data from a variety of perspectives. I offered to travel to meet them at their various campuses, as I considered it important to interview them in their own setting. Copies of my information sheet (Appendix 3) and intended interview topics (Appendix 5) were sent a week in advance to each of the participants both at their request and, from my perspective, to enrich the discussions by allowing for reflection ahead of the interview.
I also interviewed the Dean of the merged institution (HBU and HWU) where the graduates in the second part of the research study had been students. The predominance of male Deans is notable, although in the first six months of 2009, at least five women Law Deans have been appointed at a range of Law faculties in South Africa.
Table 3 sets out the details of the five current Law Deans who were selected as participants for the study (Data Set 3) according to the institution where they are employed and their language group, race and gender.
143 Table 3 Composition of Data Set 3: current Law Deans Institution type Language of
institution
Race and gender of Dean
HWU English White male
HBU English African male
HWU Afrikaans White male
HBU English/Afrikaans White male
Merged Institution English White male
My access to this group was facilitated by my own Dean, who acted as a “sponsor” or intermediary, giving me access to SALDA,61 in return for which I agreed to serve as chairperson of a committee to review legal education and as Chairperson of their Task Team to work with the CHE62 on an appraisal of legal education. His kind of reciprocal benefit situation is akin to what Lee (1993) refers to as: the researcher “servicing” participants, as a strategy to gain access to a powerful or elite group. Walford suggested also that female researchers are often at an advantage in that they are seen to be “more harmless and non- threatening” (1994). However, the negative side of that view, that women researchers are sometimes regarded as less important, has been expressed by Deem (1994). In the context of legal academic hierarchy there was little choice open to me to interview women, given the male-dominated nature of the legal academic hierarchy at the time.
The choice to interview Law Deans was based on my knowledge that all of them are not only in positions of management but they are regularly involved in teaching activities currently within their Law faculties. Because of the small size of Law faculties relative to that of other university faculties, Law Deans are generally expected to participate in teaching activities to help deal with low staff numbers relative to large student enrolments. Thus their experiences include a perspective that is sensitive to current pedagogical practices and
61 South African Law Deans’ Association.
62 Council for Higher Education.
144
challenges in Law faculties. As a teacher-researcher, I also felt that my voice contributed to the viewpoint of law teachers on issues of pedagogy.
Again, I contacted each participant personally by e-mail, to explain the purpose of my research and to describe what information I was seeking from them, by sending them a copy of my information sheet (Appendix 3) and requesting their participation. I obtained their agreement and arranged to visit each one at his or her campus, which entailed travelling around South Africa over a period of one week so as to maintain coherence with regard to key issues in the interviews.