Interviews were the main source of data in the study. The purpose of the interviews was to explore experiences of student teachers during teaching practice. The questions touched on the setting of teaching practice, the actions of student teachers, the community in teaching practice, the resources for teaching practice, the mission for teaching, supervision, and other pertinent issues during teaching practice. These elements all fall within activity system of teaching practice. The interviews generated data in form of notes, brief phrases and full
paragraphs of texts. These were useful in understanding the experiences of student teachers during teaching practice from an activity theory perspective.
The current study adopted semi-structured interviews. This allowed me to probe some responses in the course of the interview sessions. There are many advantages of semi- structured interviews. The semi-structured interview may have high validity in that people are able to talk about something in detail and depth. In addition, complex questions and issues can be clarified during semi-structured interview sessions. The interviewer can probe areas suggested by the respondent's answers, picking-up information that had either not occurred to the interviewer (http://www.sociology.org.uk/methfi.pdf, 2007).
In addition, these interviews have been credited because they facilitate organisation and analysis of the data as such data is easier to organize unlike unstructured interview data (Patton, 1980). Face-to-face interviews have the advantage of providing both interviewer and interviewee with non-verbal cues which may promote the development of rapport between the two people involved (Heyl, 2001). Semi-structured interviews promote positive rapport between the interviewer and interviewee. The semi-structured interview is very simple, efficient and practical way of getting data about things that cannot be easily observed, such as feelings and emotions (Heyl, 2001).
There are limitations of semi-structured interviews. The drawback with face-to-face semi- structured interviews as was the case in the study is that they tend to be costly. I was involved in travelling to the interview location and this may be expensive in terms of time and money. I made sure I conducted interviews on specified days when all the student teachers were available. This made me to go to the schools and the college on fewer occasions. In terms of validity, the researcher has no real way of knowing if the respondent is lying. Equally, the respondents may not consciously lie but may have imperfect recall, or an interview can sometimes be a ‘second chance’ to do something; having been given the time to reflect on something they did, the respondent may try to make sense of their behaviour by rationalizing their actions (http://www.sociology.org.uk/methfi.pdf, 2007). Their explanation for their behaviour, with hindsight, may be very different from what they actually felt at the time of experiencing a phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews also depend on the skill of the interviewer especially the ability to think of questions during the interview. The other limitation with semi-structured interview is that the interviewer may give out cues that guide respondent to give answers expected by the interviewer. Semi-structured interview is also blamed for being not very reliable at times. It may be difficult to exactly repeat a focused
interview. Respondents may be asked different questions. The depth of qualitative information may be difficult to analyse.
The interviews in this study included a list of pre-prepared questions. I devised a semi- structured interview schedule which I gave to student teachers at the beginning of teaching practice. I arranged with them that I would come again later to conduct interviews based on the interview schedule I had left with them. In addition, I gave student teachers research consent forms for them to sign and declare that they had understood the research they were going to be involved in. I also put it to student teachers that they had the right to withdraw from the data empirical research at any time they deemed it necessary (see Appendix C for a sample of student teachers’ consent form).
Teaching practice can be tedious for student teachers and that student teachers would be supervised during teaching practice. I had to make sure that data collection did not interfere with the core purpose of teaching practice. I went to the schools and was able to conduct interviews with student teachers who expressed that they were not busy on the days I was in the school. What guided me were the time tables that student teachers gave me at the time I gave them the interview schedules. The interviews were conducted at the house (where student teachers were accommodated) or staffroom. I tape-recorded the interview sessions as I held them. There were two levels of interviews. In the first category, I interviewed student teachers at the four schools twice (see Table 6.3). These interviews were meant to elicit student teachers’ perceptions of the teaching profession a teacher education programme on which they were enrolled.
The other level of interviews involved two secondary schools (Limbani and Gawani secondary schools) where I intensively interviewed four second year and four third year student teachers on a number of issues regarding their experiences of student teachers during teaching practice. I kept going to the schools and was able to raise some questions with the student teachers I had interviewed earlier. This was a way for cross-checking and clarifying some of the points which arose during earlier interviews. I found this approach to be very useful as it helped me get some feedback from respondents on some issues that were forming in the data transcripts and initial analyses. I also conducted in-depth interviews with four student teachers (second year cohort) at the end of teaching practice. These student teachers had conducted teaching practice at Gawani secondary school. By the time the interviews were conducted, they had started the third year of their teacher education programme. These interviews were meant to probe, clarify and fill in some gaps in the data that had been
generated from the earlier interviews, observations and critical incident logs. These in-depth interviews were conducted with some student teachers from the initial group of participants. I conducted the in-depth interviews at the college where the participants were studying. I used an office to conduct the interviews. I made sure that the interviewee relaxed before I could start asking questions. I started by talking about general issues and what the student teacher had been doing over the vacation (see Appendix K for a sample of in-depth interview schedules for student teachers).