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Another challenge was collecting data from stakeholders; I knew that they should answer the research questions: and the data analysis had to be in line with the ontological stance of the study.
Therefore, in the researching design stages, I made critical choices to collect data. Pascarella (2006) shows that quantitative methods explained the existing relationship between people while, on the contrary, qualitative research methods were indispensable for my study as it made coherent the “why” of a relationship between people. I learned that the qualitative method was, among others, for selecting the remarkable opinions or attitudes of employers, academics, and graduates’ experiences while learning. For this study, this concerned qualitative studies in stories with details, for example, the participants who would spell out their rich stories about the theme of the research. Salehi and Golafshani supported a comparable study adopting a qualitative method (2010). Creswell (2007) noticed that someone accepts qualitative methods when issues are difficult to analyse or to understand. I, therefore, selected the qualitative methodology that could produce, develop, and even describe the experiences of individuals. The concept is supported by Hendricks (2009) who gives details of what the study population experiences and gives them manners of seeing. Analysing internships was paramount in understanding the details of all participants’ experiences.
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of human nature better. I applied the interpretive model because I looked at many reasons from my viewpoints. My belief of interpretive was that access, whether proved about society, was composed through the grammatical construction of language, awareness, and values experienced in common. More so, the interpretive model existed in realising the world as taking place within the mind and the experiences adjusted by individuals’ bias. I found out that observation and interpretation underpin interpretive paradigm, and therefore to discover is to assemble data about situations, as to perceive was to arrive at the understanding of that data by presenting a sound judgment by circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions. I believed it would be rather than by considering the identical or consistent elements between the data and the methods which did not represent external reality. I tried to look at the phenomenon through the interpretations that graduates, employers, and academics attached to them. During my research study, I was a participant-observer in the interpretive approach. I expected to know the nature or meaning of phenomena through the significations the interviewees assigned to participants. They involved me and recognised the significances of actions as they appeared within different social contexts.
I observed that findings emerged through critical dialogues in which they debated conflicting interpretations between academics, graduates, employers. It was through this dialectical method they could produce much knowledge and a sophisticated understanding of the social world. For instance, because human perspectives and experiences were taking place within the mind and changed by individual bias, social reality might vary and could have over one view. I imagined the participants’ worlds as a particular built society where these realities were multiple, unique to participants, shaped differently. Therefore, they took on different meanings for participants in the study. Wenger (1998) associates this opinion as for the notion of “negotiation of meaning,”
with understanding and meanings assigned to one another ‘s experiences. It thus implied that each one’s perspectives or realities were expected to be different for stakeholders. Besides, to understand the nature or meaning of these multiple worlds, there was a need for reflection on the reasons determined by or in context with that comprised by the respondents of the research.
Wenger (1998) cautions against learning as “doing” and recommends our understanding and the environments in which they took place. Therefore, communities of practice, like other social learning, allowed individuals within different communities and with their surrounding environments to shape the meanings, experiences, identities and learning that took place because of these interactions. To better understand the participants’ interpretations, I needed to think about the purposes and significance of the information they gave in our interviews. The keywords of this methodology were collaboration, participation, and engagement.
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I placed my research within the interpretivism and constructivist paradigm. Something related constructivism to interpretivism which often handled with critical features of shared meaning and the capacity for rational thought, inference or discrimination. In social constructivism, human interests are important for research and it constructs knowledge through social interaction. Such knowledge is shared rather than an individual experience. According to constructivists, reality is a subjective creation. For my study, participants modelled their know- how within the social-cultural circumstance shaped by their anterior cognition and intellect, and therefore, I positioned myself in the arguments of a constructivist relating to an epistemology discussion. The significance was, concerning society, built on the quality of the world, it carried out the learning environs in such a way there was a close relationship between myself and what was being explored. For example, participants in the research could report or suggest their unique individual experiences in internships. As a result, the planned research environment had allowed me to look at, explore, and understand the participants’ experiences in an internship.
Authors of interpretive investigators believed that they understood the meaning of a phenomenon of the society from the experiences about the subjects as opposed to objects significances that individuals assigned to it (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Neuman (2011) maintains that researchers also work with qualitative data, which provided rich descriptions that expressed objects in conversations of social ideas. I adopted an approach of phenomenology which centred on telling the features of an identified element as they were, for example, the lived experiences of graduates, employers, and academics about internship and employability. The interpretive pattern allowed several methods that could be exploited, including phenomenology, ethnography, case studies, and life stories. I opened a phenomenological approach to my study.
As this possesses a plan or aims to dig into the knowledge attained by observing the participants in their everyday practices. Some authors viewed phenomenology as the deliberate, systematic search of a human being’s experience with a particular event (McMillan & Schumacher, 1997;
de Vos et al., 2005). The qualitative phenomenological research was to report "lived experiences" for many people about the theory or the phenomenon. I gathered “thick”
information and views from research participants through qualitative research methods, for example, interviews and observation.
I read interviews and observation of participants as the critical methods for data collection within phenomenology. I, therefore, adopted a phenomenological research approach to study graduates, employers, and academics who had experienced internships.
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In Section 4.1 research design, I presented information about the participants in this study, while, in this section, I would give more details on these stakeholders who had progressed through unique developed experiences in internships.
According to Brink (1996), a research population is an extensive collection of peoples or objects engaged as the central point for a scientific inquiry, and we conduct researches for promoting the well-being of the population. However, it was costly and time-consuming to investigate large sizes of peoples. While Burns and Grove (1993), revealed that a community represented some targeted number of individuals whom the researcher had access to. The chosen population had to be “accessible” to the researcher. I explained sampling as the act of selecting a set whose representatives are representatives of another group of people who showed features of the entire population (Dempsey & Dempsey, 1992). I contended that there were more individuals from the population when the sample was more meaningful, even still there was no simple formula showing how broad a sample should be in a proved study (Polit & Hungler, 1995). For my study, I selected people with purposeful samples who complied with the demand of the study. I negotiated with graduates who have had an experience and had engaged in internships before participating. The other participants, employers, and academics in my study had taken part in internships and employability experiences which enhanced their contribution of knowledge to this research. More so, their know-how added specific information and meanings to make more robust the potential findings.
While with quantitative research, I perceived random sampling to be a formal trend in qualitative research, purposeful sampling was being looked upon as an opportunity for my study. In this sampling, I selected people, or that could best have supported one knew and comprehended the nature or meaning of the critical project (Creswell, 2002): I, therefore, set up the identity of participants by purposeful sampling. Participants were graduates who had gone through internship programmes and were in employment and academics and employers who have had recruited graduates for internship and employment. On personal talks and with a formal request, the Mauritius Employers’ Federation provided a list of employers who had joined and recruited graduates with internships’ experiences. The selected graduates and employers for this study were on that list.
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According to Polkinghome (1989), there shall be a sampling of 5 to 25 participants to work out the opportunities for experiences, Creswell (2007) believes that they needed 10 participants for collecting information in a phenomenological study. Taking these propositions as a basis, I selected 18 participants to set up a sample in this study.
Given the variability of an internship programme across its selected professional, six graduates who had completed an internship programme. Selected graduates were:
• two graduates from Accommodation (Hotel and Tourism) (one male and one female);
• two graduates from the Finance (one male and one female), and
• two graduates from the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) (one male and one female).
For the academics, the university chose two people engaged in executing at least three internship projects or the group owning the most experience in similar projects. Given their capability and skilfulness because of specialised knowledge, six academics who delivered internship-related academic courses to undergraduate I selected university students who had undergone at least one an internship programme:
• two academics in the Accommodation (Hotel and Tourism) Department (one male and one female);
• two academics in the Finance Department (one male and one female), and
• two academics from the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Department (one male and one female).
The six employers chosen for the study had had experiences in an internship programme and had completed training and developing students and graduates for at least one internship programme.
Selected employers in many fields were:
• two employers from the Accommodation (Hotel and Tourism) (one male and one female);
• two employers from the Finance (one male and one female), and
• two employers from the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) (one male and one female).
4.3.1 Seeking Permission or Consent
Before conducting the research, I sent out the following correspondence:
• a letter to Graduates to take part in the interview (Appendix 5).
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• a letter to Employers to take part in the interview (Appendix 6).
• a letter to Faculty Staff to take part in the interview (Appendix 7).
Bryman (2004) encourages seeking permission from gatekeepers to gain access to the eventual participants. Before I started data collection for this study, I applied for permission from the respective Gatekeepers in the list above to access participants and pertinent documents. A written approval, signed by graduates, employers, and academics was received from each graduate, company, and university involved.