DESARROLLO DE LA TEMÁTICA

The qualitative design of this research is divided into two parts, the interviews which were conducted with the faculty members and the focus groups conducted with the students. The teaching faculty members were interviewed in a structured format for a variety of reasons. First, the interview format was chosen in an effort for the

participants to discuss interpretations of their teaching experiences and express how they regard situations from their own perspective. Members of the teaching faculty are also the international participants, which this study seeks to explore the perceptions, effects and experiences of. The participants come from culturally diverse backgrounds. An example of this would be that some of the participants are from cultures which

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Hofstede characterizes as more Individualist while others come cultures which are characterized as Collectivist (Hofstede, 1980). Due to the variety of length of experience, culture of origin, age and previous locations of teaching experience, the decision was made to collect this qualitative data individually in one-on-one interviews.

The following from Moustakas (1994) was considered during the planning, approaching and conducting of the interviews,

The interview involves an informal, interactive process and utilizes open- ended comments and questions. Although the primary researcher may in advance develop a series of questions aimed at evoking a comprehensive account of the person’s experience of the phenomenon, these are varied, altered or are not used at all when [the participant] shares the full story of his or her experience of the question (p. 134).

The open-endedness of the interviews was in hopes of procuring anecdotes, experiences, specific instances and stories which would exemplify their perceived stages and development of intercultural competence for later analysis. It also provided space for spontaneity in their responses that might further provide insight into each response. Additionally, this allowed for me as the researcher to press for more complete responses, ask for clarification and further explanation. As a result, the structured set of question items were, at times, followed up with additional items of inquiry as points arose, clarification was needed and tangents avoided.

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The interviews question items and order were the same in each interview (See Appendix A). This uniformity of the question items and their order were designed to produce comparable answers across the participants and to facilitate organization (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2010). I offered a uniform set of structured question items to elicit a complete, comparable set of data which could be analyzed and interpreted. However, as seen in the sample transcripts in the Appendices, some question items were skipped as responses and data were provided to these items in previous questions.

Tuckman (1992) lays out 4 major purposes of such standard open-ended interviews which are to first, find out what is in the persons head; second, to find out what the person knows (knowledge); third, to find out what the person likes or dislikes (preferences); and fourth to find out what the person thinks (perspective). These four points are especially crucial when discussing knowledge of, adherence to or deviation from official institutional policy regarding issues such as attendance, late-submission, plagiarism, frequency of group vs. individual projects and frequency and approach to negotiation of marks.

Students were interviewed (See Appendix A) in focus groups in attempt to allow group discussions and interaction to develop as well as a range of responses (Watts & Ebbut, 1987). The student participants in each focus group had been together for over 2 years, have had the same teachers and courses. As institutional practice dictates, they have been on the same academic journey together. This type of data collection also allows participants of the group to cross-check responses, contribute additional points, clarify or argue responses which leads to a more complete and reliable record of

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data (Arksey & Knight, 1999). The focus group format also allowed for a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere among the student participants which lessened the feeling of interrogation among them. I encouraged the student participants to speak freely, build upon or counterpoint the responses of their fellow classmates.

Furthermore, the focus group interviews were conducted solely in English to native Arabic speaking students which allowed for student participants to help each other in translation of words or points they wished to express which would not have been possible with individual interviews. In addition to this, a fellow Arabic-speaking colleague (non-participant) was present in all of the focus groups to offer translation if needed. It should be noted however that this external translator was not needed

throughout any of the focus groups. The precaution was made, however, to negate any possible effects on the credibility and ensure the reliability of the data.

4.3.1 Research Instruments

The research instruments are two groups of question items, one for the one-on- one interviews with faculty members and another for the students in focus groups (See Appendix A). The questions were designed to receive responses to issues and

research questions of this study (See Section 1.4). For example, I wished to learn how and how often each faculty member adhered to institutional policy, therefore question item #18: “How do you deal with students submitting work late?” was posed.

Furthermore, I wished to discover what faculty perceptions of their lived experience were in working in a multicultural environment and how this affected their preparation for classes, team membership and other factors. Question items #4 and #5 (See Appendix

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A) asked for the advantages and disadvantages of such from both their own work and the perceptions of the effect on the students’ experiences.

Efforts were made to avoid pitfalls in the collection of data. For example, I hoped to avoid using ‘loaded’ questions with pejorative overtones (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2010). I did not want the participants to simply agree with my point of view but rather wanted to create items which drew reflection from each participant to find if their experiences run parallel or are dissimilar to my own and other participants. The items were designed to avoid extreme rating scales such as ‘always’, ‘never’ or ‘totally’ (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2010). For example, when questioning attendance taking practices of teachers, instead of asking “Do you always take attendance at the

beginning of class?”. I preferred to ask “How do you take attendance?”. This open- endedness gave the participant opportunities to account for exceptions when their practices may have fallen out of line with that of institutional policy.

Wording of questions differed between those posed to faculty and to those posed to students. I wrote items for students which had more clear and simple language involved considering these students are being interviewed in their second language (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2010).

The questions for both faculty and for students were sequenced to promote a level of comfort and ease with both parties, often asking absolute and quantifiable questions first such as “How long have you studied/taught at this institution?” and “What other countries have you taught in?”, to questions with possibilities of a more varied response such as “What countries have your teachers come from?” to very open-ended

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and varied questions such as “How has the international teaching faculty at this institution affected your education?”. This was done to build up the comfort and confidence in the participants as well as their motivation to give more complete and robust responses (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2010).