ACERCAMIENTO AL CONCEPTO DE JUSTICIA Y SUS CLASES

Pilot teacher interviews played a major role in making better preparations for the actual interviews. They were conducted in New Zealand prior to the data collection trip. The pilot interview participants were three Malaysian postgraduate students who were also tertiary teachers from different disciplinary areas and universities of origin, very similar to the

interview participants’ background. On the whole, the pilot interviews gave a sense of the

richness and messiness of qualitative data. It made me realise how important it is to plan towards having more structure and to control unpredictability in an exploratory research. Crucial lessons learned from the pilot interviews were the importance of:

x breaking the ice and establishing rapport – It was important to make the

interviewee feel at ease from the start of the interview; to start on “the right key” Gillham (2000, p. 40).

x dealing with exploratory questions – It was important to be in control; to strike a balance between being open-ended and exploratory, as well as being focused and direct in the way I asked questions.

x controlling the duration of the interview – Interviewees’ responses could be

lengthy. It was necessary to interject when the interviewee digresses from the question. It was also important to listen actively and to make quick decisions about whether what the interviewee was saying was relevant and useful.

x being confident and assertive – It was important to ask questions with

confidence.

i) The sequence of data collection

Phase one of the data collection took place between the 8th of June and the 5th of August 2009. The sequence of data collection was done thoughtfully. Being the primary data source, the teacher interviews were arranged first. Information gathered from them provided the basis for further investigation in the documents and the manager interviews. Scheduling more than one interview in one day was avoided since interviews can demand a lot of concentration and as Gillham (2000) notes, can be a “wearing business”. The interviews were arranged in a mixed sequence of faculties to get a broader sense of different teaching contexts.

Halfway through the interview phase, the institutional records were accessed. The first record to be accessed was the Department of Pedagogical Training that provided information on the

central phenomenon being investigated – institutional perceptions of quality teaching. The next department was the Department of Human Resource. It provided clarifications of the types of institutional constraints and support. The last two departments explored were the Department of Organisational Planning and the Department of Quality Assurance. The Department of Organisation Planning was not part of the initial plan. It was added during data collection when I realised that it was closely related to the Department of Quality Assurance. Combined, they

both provided background information of the institution’s overarching quality contexts.

Interviews with the respective managers followed immediately after reviewing each department records. Table 3.1 shows the specific order of the qualitative data collection processes. The order in which different sources of data were collected influenced the order in which themes emerged and the way further exploratory inquiries were conducted. This will be dealt with in the discussion of findings.

Table 3.1: The order of data collection process

Week Beginning Teacher

interviews

Document gathering Manager

interviews

1 June 8th Interviewed all 15 teachers in mixed sequence of faculties of origin. An average of three teachers were interviewed every week.

2 Gained access to documents from the

Department of Pedagogical Training. Obtained record file for self-selection

3

4

5 Academic semester I 2009/2010 commenced 6 Gained access to documents from the

Department of Human Resource,

the Department of Quality Assurance and finally the Department of Organisational Planning. 7 Interviewed M1, M2 part I, M2 part II, M3 and M4. 8 9 July 30th 10

The demographic information of the interviewed teachers is as in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2: Demographic information of teacher interview participants

Demography Number of teacher interview participants

1. Gender 6 females; 9 males

2. Academic positions 3 principal lecturers; 2 senior lecturers; 6 lecturers; 2 assistant lecturers; 2 lab tutors.

3. Years of teaching experience Between less than one year to 11 years.

4. Formal teacher training Only one had formal teacher training; one other teacher had some trainer courses; 3 admitted to not having any; the rest did not discuss teaching experience.

ii) Conducting teacher interviews

Interviews with the teachers began during the course of a semester break when the teachers were not teaching and were preparing for the new semester. It provided flexibility in terms of appointment times and uninterrupted conversations. I used the short breaks in between interviews to reflect on how each interview went. Reflections and refinement of skills were

made mostly by hunch, referred to by Kvale (2007) as “craftsmanship” comprising the

interviewer’s “skills, sensitivity and knowledge” (p. 48). I was aware that I needed to

“decentre” from myself (Gillham, 2000, p. 3). The conversation was about what the interviewee has to tell me. I went into the interviews with genuine interest to listen to their stories and with a broad purpose of exploring their views on quality teaching (see Appendix G: teacher interview schedule). In order to guide the exploratory investigation, the structure of the interview was adhered to: (i) demographic information; (ii) perceptions of quality teaching; (iii) existing institutional support; (iv) existing institutional constraints and (v) needed support.

Interviewing the managers was challenging since they were persons of higher academic positions, social standing and wider age gap. This was consciously countered in two ways. Firstly, establishing initial contact through e-mail helped ‘break the ice’. The tone of approach when setting up appointments was kept informal yet straight to the point noting the idea that overfriendliness can be off-putting (Gillham, 2000). Secondly, I found that appearing confident when meeting people in person was crucial. Combined with genuine interest in and open- mindedness about what they had to say, elicited personal stories that provided rich information. At some points, it was sensed that some interviewees had “an axe to grind”. Information such as this was treated with caution. Matters raised were given due attention as issues that mattered to some individuals and checked against other interview data. These personal stories are given due respect in this study by citing only the relevant parts and by maintaining participants’ anonymity.

Other important lessons were firstly, to take notes. Although the interviews were recorded, jotting down key points and interesting topics helped me return to some that were felt worth pursuing. Active and selective listening were employed to make these instant decisions (Gillham, 2000; Merriam, 2009; Seidman, 2006). The second lesson learned was to expect

interruptions and to be prepared with how to deal with them such as interviewees’ phone

ringing and visitors knocking on the door. The audio recording was put on pause out of respect

for the interviewee’s privacy and personal contexts. Change of plans should also be noted. A teacher who had agreed to participate was not available at the time of the interview. My teacher reserve list proved to be helpful.

On the whole, I received full co-operation from the teachers who readily and enthusiastically shared their views. I had thoroughly enjoyed all the interviews and generally sensed honesty

and trust from the participants’ responses.

iii) Gathering and analysing documents

As the interviews progressed and themes began to emerge, I had a clearer sense of the specific kinds of information I wanted from the institutional records. The relevant officers and institutional managers were contacted to arrange for access. Accessible and relevant records were decided by the managers with all due respect. Some documents were obtained in electronic format and some on paper. Once obtained, they were examined at two levels. First, striking themes of constraints on and support for quality teaching that emerged in the teacher interviews were sought in the documents for verification. These themes formed the basis for the manager interview schedules. Second, other information pertaining to support for quality teaching that did not emerge in the interviews was also noted. They were investigated further with the respective managers. Therefore, each interview manager had a unique interview schedule (see Appendices H, I, J and K: manager interview schedules). A general structure that applied to all of them comprised four parts: (i) clarification of the roles and the nature of activities of the department; (ii) clarification of information from teacher interviews; (iii) further elaboration of support for quality teaching not mentioned in the teacher interviews and (iv) managers’ views on quality teaching with regards to the institution’s quality assurance contexts.

iv) Conducting interviews with the managers

Following the preliminary document analysis, interviews with the respective managers were arranged. With the institutional managers, maintaining respect was crucial (Seidman, 2006). All

appointments were made through the manager’s personal assistants and re-scheduled meetings were respected. Since managers generally have high work commitments and tight schedules, some interviews had to be cut short while some took place in more than one session.

As I browsed through the documents, I realised that information from the Department of Organisational Planning which was not part of the initial research plan was needed to supplement information from the Department of Quality Assurance. The Department of Organisational Planning (DOP) was then included in the investigation. Although the department played a smaller role, understanding the nature of its activities helped illuminate the quality assurance context of the institution. Like the teachers, the managers too gave full co-

operation and responded well to elicitations. To protect the manager’s identity, they are identified as M1, M2, M3 and M4 based on the sequence of interviews.

v) Interview transcriptions and preliminary data analysis

The interviews recordings were transcribed at first by a professional transcriber. Following accent issues, the service of a non-professional transcriber who had the same language background as the interview participants was sought (Appendix L: transcriber confidentiality agreement). The service of a translator was also used to translate and transcribe one interview into full English (Appendix M: translator confidentiality agreement). All interview participants

– both the teachers and the managers - were given a copy of their own transcriptions to be

verified and returned to the researcher with full consent (Appendix N: authority for release of tapescript).

Preliminary analysis of major themes was done on paper using a matrix developed as in Appendix O: Sample of preliminary analysis of teacher interviews. The coding categories were developed based on the frequency of mentions and recognising patterns or themes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Merriam, 2009). At this early stage, the interviews were analysed for breadth of common themes by listening to all the interviews repeatedly, as well as going over the transcripts and highlighting the themes. As a summary of findings, a matrix was created, structured by sections of the interview and put against individual teacher’s input, clustered by faculties. Data was filled in by bullet points and keywords. Clustering the data by faculties did show some patterns of faculty cultures. Since the teacher identities needed to be protected, the faculties they came from are not identified in the thesis. The report and discussion of findings acknowledge unique faculty contexts but omits specific references to them in the way that can identify the teachers.

vi) In-depth analysis of qualitative data and coding strategies

Following the preliminary analysis on paper, further in-depth analysis was done using NVivo computer software. The use of NVivo has enabled combined analysis of all three qualitative data sources together. It was easier to move from one data source to another when they are all compiled within one system. Among the features that were found useful compared to doing paper analysis were coding and re-coding categories or collapsing and creating new nodes, immediate tracking of sources, as well as quick word search that enabled content analysis by word count (Lavery & Hansen, 2008).

Various writers have described similar coding processes or data reduction technique in qualitative data analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Creswell, 2008; R. B. Johnson & Christensen, 2004; Merriam, 1998, 2009). They are (i) reading through all text data, (ii) dividing data into segments with similar ideas, (iii) labelling the segments into codes, (iv) eliminating overlaps and redundancies and finally (v) collapsing overlaps into themes. Following this, tree nodes were first developed in NVivo based on the structure of research questions. Open coding began with an expansive list. A long list of themes was developed under each research question. Overlapping themes were identified and re-coded until the themes look physically separated (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Data that did not fit into the developed categories were coded under free nodes. The coding categories were finalised once they reach the point of saturation where nothing new emerges (Merriam, 2009). On the whole, the analysis was highly inductive, looking for the specific to identify broader themes.

3.3.4 Phase Two: Quantitative data collection procedures