MAPPING THE RESEARCH JOURNEY - MY RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
4.4 Data gathering methods
4.4.2 Use of interviews
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photographs were also related to the Genocide process and included aspects such as different actors in the Genocide, weapons used in the tragedy and the consequences (See Appendix D). The selection was mainly guided by the literature on controversial issues in the history of Rwanda (Gasanabo, 2010; Nkusi, 2004) and key aspects on teaching the Genocide against the Tutsi as stated in the 2008 and 2010 history curricula (National Curriculum Development Centre, 2008; 2010). The participants were given five minutes to have a look at selected photographs and to choose five of them they thought are related to their teaching of the Genocide and its related controversial issues. The selection helped to identify common and key aspects in the teaching of the Genocide. The participants also explained how some of the selected photographs, or others which are similar but not used in this research, are used to teach the Genocide and its related controversial issues. Most of the participants were eager to choose more photographs or requested to add one or two more and I authorised them to do so to avoid the participants’ frustration.
For a given historical context, the participants were allowed more than one photograph. As with other visual methods, photographs show persons or events that have passed. Thus, photographs enhanced the possibilities of conventional empirical research and helped the participants to evoke their feelings and memories in line with the depiction (Harper, 2002; Packard, 2008). In the process of photo interviewing, I moved from the objects in the photo to what the objects in the photo mean (Harper, 1986), in order to allow the participants to talk mainly about the main aspects taught in the Genocide and its related controversial issues. Thus, what is in the photo guided me to draw conclusions about the participants’ views towards their educational practices (Flick, 2009).
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in Rwandan secondary schools expected to have the knowledge on the teaching of the Genocide and its related controversial issues. As an interview is a face-to-face interaction, I had an opportunity to probe to get more details about my questions.
Moreover, I could discuss deep issues with the participants and even after transcribing the interviews, we could discuss our interpretations according to our viewpoints (Cohen et al., 2011). The following quote illustrates most of the strengths and shortcomings of interviews:
… interviews enable participants – be their interviewers or interviewees - to discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, and to express how they regard situations from their own point of view. In these senses the interview is not simply concerned with collecting data about life: it is part of life itself … The interview is a flexible tool for data collection, enabling multi-sensory channels to be used: verbal, non-verbal, spoken and heard … The interviewer can press not only for complete answers but for responses about complex and deep issues (Cohen et al., 2011, p.409).
The choice of interviews was guided by Atkinson (1998, p.124) who noted that, “If we want to know the unique perspective of an individual, there is no better way to get this than in that person’s own voice”. In other words, during the interview, the participants addressed the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ raised during our interactions (Flick, 2009). Similarly, interviewing was chosen as an obtrusive method because the participants were freely encouraged to tell their story due to stated open-ended questions (Crouch & McKenzie, 2006). The participants are able to give more details about complex questions. The researcher can also probe for areas of which she/he did not have prior knowledge. Interviews also give a chance to note the participants’
different reactions and to enter into the participants’ inner world to understand their perceptions (Johnson & Christensen, 2008). The non-verbal expressions observed during interviews cannot be seen during a memory writing or drawing process (King
& Horrocks, 2010).
This research adopted career life stories methodology and Atkinson (1998) acknowledged the value of interviews for life stories research. Interviews were used to address questions about teachers’ personal experiences and meaning making of personal or more general issues. Within the different forms of interviews available, I refused to use focus groups in my research, despite their strengths. The rejection was based on making a choice on the most effective method for my study (Cohen et al., 2011; Greeff, 2011; Johnson & Christensen, 2008). More specifically the
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dismissal of focus group interviews was motivated by a European student’s story.
When the mentioned student was doing her field research in Rwanda, during focus groups meetings, the discussions went smoothly. Seemingly, appropriate responses were provided. However, during the night, some participants secretly came to her residence to give another version of the story, they could not reveal in public. As a result, I decided to not use focus groups fearing that teachers may not openly reveal certain issues related to the teaching of the Genocide and its related controversial issues. Thus, I decided to use semi-structured interviews where I could talk face-to- face with one participant so that she/he could not fear another persons’ presence. I have also chosen self-interviews because the participants could work independently as discussed after the following paragraph.
Despite the strengths of an interview, “the researcher using interviews has to be aware that they are time consuming, they are open to bias, they may be inconvenient for respondents, issues of interviewee fatigue may hamper the interview, and anonymity may be difficult” (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 409). When the researcher is not able to formulate questions during the face-to-face interaction or when the participant does not express her/herself properly, it affects the interview success. For sensitive research, the participants may respond differently depending on how they see the researcher (Denscombe, 2007).
The researcher’s preconceived ideas influence the orientation of the interview. This means that her/his leading questions can indicate what the researcher wants to discuss or not (Newton, 2010). It is not easy to know if the information provided by the participant is accurate. In order not to alleviate interview’s shortcomings, I developed some strategies. In order not to inconvenience the participants, I decided to use different methods during the interaction with the participants. In this regard, the use of drawings and photo-elicitation aimed not only to obtain rich data which I could not have obtained through other traditional means but also these activities became fun for the participants. The issue of time consuming was not a big concern for this research because it was most important to get rich data despite the time used. The participants’ bias was unavoidable due to my research paradigm which aims at understanding participants’ views. It was also important to understand why
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the participants have such biases (Atkinson, 1998). Regarding other weaknesses, they are dealt with in the trustworthiness section.
Semi-structured interviews
As with other interviews, semi-structured interviews allow face-to-face interaction between the participants and the researcher and help to communicate the perspective. Semi-structured interviews are conducted on the basis of a loose structure (Brikci & Green, 2007). They use open-ended questions specifically for main ideas to widen perspectives. Semi-structured interviews also use closed questions for probing more information and checking the meaning (Newton, 2010).
Despite the use of an interview schedule, the wording is sometimes different and each interview has its own coherence.
As interviews provide personal views, their results are not easily generalizable and their depth may be difficult to analyse (Newton, 2010; Patton, 2002). For using semi- structured interviews, I was inspired by Greeff (2011, p.351) who notes that “in general, researchers use semi-structured interviews in order to gain a detailed picture of a participant’s beliefs about, or perceptions or accounts of, a particular topic”. In this perspective, I carried out semi-structured interviews during a significant time and the interviews became powerful because the participants were eager to respond to the questions. I did my best to master the schedule in advance to be attentive so that I follow the participants without necessarily asking every question.
Thus, one advantage of semi-structured interviews was to probe data from previous methods namely drawings and photographs in a creative manner (Holstein &
Gubrium, 2002). As researcher, I became part of the interview by probing into areas that needed explanations (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). In addition, semi-structured interviews were used to ask other open-ended questions related to the research topic to obtain responses with more depth. The participants were given enough time to answer to questions by talking freely (Johnson & Christensen 2008). I also became part of the interview in view of verifying assumptions in order to “get inside the participant skin so that the topic may be understood from the participant’s perspective” (Greeff, 2011, p. 351).
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Referring to Flick (2009), I thought that the participants had a complex stock of knowledge about the topic under study that I could access through open-ended questions. I used open-ended questions for main aspects of the research. For instance some questions such as “Can you tell me how this drawing represents your experience of teaching the Genocide and its related controversial issues? Why are those topics controversial? Could you describe your experience of teaching the Genocide and its related controversial issues?” were designed to explore areas of interests. My task was to help the participant talk about their experiences from the time they had started teaching the topic under research to the present (Atkinson, 1998). But, the process of writing and constructing the story was done later during the analysis not during the interview process (Atkinson, 1998). In general, interviews lasted between one hour and one hour and half and were carried out at least twice for each participant. But, more meetings were organised with some participants to clarify some aspects of the interviews.
Guided by Flick’s (2009) key points, my in-person interview schedule was formulated and evaluated by asking myself why I was asking specific questions. I had to see if the questions were relevant to my theory and research questions. Secondly, the substantial aspect of questions was thought about. Thirdly, the way questions were formulated also attracted my attention mainly through the use of visual methods in order to get expected results. I had to make sure that the participants understand what they were expected to do. Fourthly, the position of questions was also very important in as much as I had a range of methods. During the interview process, the questions’ order changed due to the responses given by the participants. They could extend their responses and include aspects related to another question. The order of questions had been tested during the piloting of the interview schedule but, the order kept changing in accordance with participants’ responses.
My personal identity as discussed by Denscombe (2007) could have been a problem, but the issue was mediated by the fact that I informed the participants that I had been a history teacher myself and participated in the writing of history curricula.
Therefore, I assumed that the participants could be free to talk to me expecting that revealing their challenges could improve future history curricula and teacher training.
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The issue of generalisability and the participants’ biases are discussed in the trustworthiness section.
Self-interview
Self-interview or self-statement, as a method, has been used in different fields such as psychology and was also used for sensitive topics (Neck & Manz, 1992). The self- interview is a self-constructed dialogue or a kind of memory work in as much as it is entitled to deal with participants’ professional experiences by maximising the depth description of those experiences (Bryant & Livholts, 2007; King & Horrocks, 2010).
In this research, after discussing with the participants using visual methods and semi-structured interviews, the participants were requested to reflect on the formal interview in line with their experience of teaching the Genocide and its related controversial issues in history and write down a self-interview.
The participants were given the power to ask themselves a series of questions and to respond to them. In other words, the participants had to write down other important aspects they felt were not raised during the formal interview but might be relevant for the research. I was convinced that the participants had other important issues to raise if they were given another opportunity. For using self-interviews, I was also inspired by the mentioned students who used to come during the night to give additional information to the expatriate researcher. I felt that when the participants were given more time they could reflect more on the interview and give other constructive views. In my case, the self-interview proposed to the participants was a kind of self-constructed dialogue. Therefore the produced self-interview was a continuation of the formal interview and the participants were requested to maximise the description of their teaching the Genocide and its related controversial issues.
Self-interviews are close to self-talk; being considered as self-verbalisations which
“can be simply defined as what we covertly tell ourselves” (Neck & Manz, 1992, p.683). The difference is that by the self-interview, the participants had to put in writing what they told themselves.
In order to get the feedback, the participants had either to use the internet or to send to me their written self-constructed dialogue. I was aware that the self-interview was successful when the participants responded by using a computer because the use of
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computer protects the participant anonymity (Lamb, Beers, Reed-Gillette, &
McDowell, 2011; Van der Heijden, Bouts, & Hox, 2000). For the self-administered questionnaire, the questionnaire is designed by the researcher and can either be filled via a computer to minimise the draw back or sent by post. By using the computer, the participants respond more freely to sensitive questions because their responses are immediately sent and participants do not fear the disclosure of anonymity due to face-to-face interviews. However, through self-interview through the use of a computer, the participant’s behaviour cannot be observed.
Although the computer recorded the highest positive responses to a computer-based interview, sometimes the researcher can discuss with the participants about their self-interviews. The advantage of discussing self-interviews with the participants seemed to be similar to face-to-face interviews where the researcher can observe the participants’ non-verbal expressions which is not possible through computer- based interviews. A fundamental assumption is that the collaborative exercise of analysing concrete experiences has the potential to produce exciting and rewarding analyses (Jansson, Wendt, & Åse, 2008; Lapadat et al., 2010). By together examining these texts, participants or teachers better understand what they are doing and how they position themselves in front of their learners. Even if I was not in a critical paradigm, this sharing of self-interview as with other memory works has a therapeutic effect and gives authority to writers’ perception of their experiences (Lapadat et al., 2010). It is also a strategy to empower teachers or participants through the act of writing (Bryant & Livholts, 2007; Motalingoane-Khau, 2010). In other words, self-interviews such as self-talks contribute to individuals’ performance (Hardy, 2001; Neck & Manz, 1992).
Regarding the submission, the self-interview had to be ready before the following meeting. We had agreed that the participants only had to submit their texts to me and discuss them for clarification. I had an assumption that to discuss the self- interview would restrict the participants from writing what they had not revealed during the formal interview. But, I realised that by discussing the self-interviews, I could gain more insight into teachers’ experiences. My decision of directly submitting the self-interviews to me was due to the lack of an alternative strategy for submitting them. I dismissed the use of the internet because I was sure that in some rural
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areas, it was not possible to be connected. Even in places such as Kigali City, it could have been difficult for some teachers to find enough time to go to a cyber café to send their self-interviews. Hence, it could reduce the number of participants. In addition, by using the internet, they could use pseudonyms whereas I had to merge the self-interview with the first face-to-face interview during my analysis.
Self-interviews were not extensively used by the participants. However, the participants mainly used self-interview to write some teaching scenes to show how their teaching methods were applied. Moreover, one participant estimated that he had given enough information and found no reason to commit himself to do a self- interview. This could be considered as an avoidance of continuing talking about sensitive issues. Another reason which weakened the success of self-interviews was the lack of proper channels to send the feedback to the researcher without identifying the sender. The anonymity was not possible because I had to relate the self-interview to the formal interview for a better understanding of the phenomenon under study.
4.5 Journey and issues of analysing and interpreting career life stories and