Prior to the data collection, I was present at the school on a number of occasions so that I could become familiar with the structure of the school day, speak to teachers and gather information about the school in order to understand its ethos and its role in the community. I also spent time on playground duty with teachers to consider the different spaces available to the children and how these were supervised. After the process of getting to know the school and its practices, the data collection was then carried out in two phases; the first comprised of small discussion groups from which participants were then sampled to take part in the second phase of semi-structured interviews. Visits to the school began in the early part of 2015 and focus groups and interviews took place from May to July 2015.
4.9.1 Discussion groups
At the outset of the project I wanted to gather a wide breadth of opinion from the boys and so data was gathered by working with whole year groups. I spoke to all of the boys in years 4, 5 and 6 in small discussion groups of approximately 5-6 boys in each; thirty three boys were spoken to in total. It was expected that the
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opportunity to meet with all of boys would not only serve to forge a bond and build familiarity but would then allow for purposive sampling for individual interviews so that differing viewpoints could be explored in further depth.
Renold (2001) outlines in her research amongst primary school children how group interviews, when organised by friendship groups, were particularly effective and this is the method I also used. The selection process for the small group discussions was informal and the boys decided amongst themselves who they wished to attend with from their year. Not only did this create a non-threatening and comfortable atmosphere but it also offered the boys some degree of control at the outset in being able to choose their group. Renold also discussed how such an approach helped ‘destabilise the adult-centracism embedded in many research projects’ (2001:372). Interviews were all carried out on the school premises as the open plan nature of the school allowed for me to interview boys without having a teacher actually present in the group.
Whilst I had gained some experience during the pilot study and this had afforded me the opportunity to consider how my approach could be improved with regards to ethical and participatory issues, the hurdle of ensuring that young participants spoke and stayed on topic, remained. In order to address this, an activity was developed which could be completed as a lead into discussion with the groups (appendix VIII). This enabled the children to focus and feel confident and also provided an ice-breaker so that they could relax and participate by initially taking
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turns to answer the questions. This introductory task was centred around discussing an avatar similar to those found on popular gaming consoles and its purpose was to avoid discussing real individuals or participants in the group. This appeared to be fun as the children warmed to the activity and soon became vocal so that the discussion moved on to explore attitudes to academic achievement, literacy and desirable constructions of masculinity. Every effort was made during this phase of group discussion to ensure that all participants had a turn to speak and air their views.
All of the interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts of the discussion groups were analysed subsequent to each one to identify common themes as well as to identify differing perceptions and opinions. The breadth of opinion was then used in the sampling process so that differing perspectives could be explored further.
4.9.2 Sampling
Patton describes purposive sampling as unashamedly selective and an
opportunity to gather ‘information-rich cases from which one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the research’ (1990:69). This method allowed me to target participants who were able to provide insights in
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order to address the research questions (Patton 2002, Cresswell & Clark 2007). Whilst it cannot be claimed that all variables of all constructions of young
masculinities were represented, the initial discussion groups, during which I spoke to all of the boys, allowed me to access a breadth of views so that boys with different perspectives could be strategically sampled to explore their ideas in greater depth. Following the discussion groups I went on to interview sixteen boys individually who were selected for this reason.
4.9.3 Interviews
Given the subject of this study, I considered interviews to be the most effective way of exploring the research questions, both of which were carried out following the guidance offered by Patton (2002) and Fontana and Frey (2005). All of the interviews were conducted at the school without a teacher sitting with us so that the children would feel free to voice their opinion. Whilst the school did prove to be a lively and noisy environment, it appeared that the children felt empowered by being on their ‘home turf’ and enjoyed showing me around the school and
explaining its routines. The purpose of interviews in qualitative research is to ‘allow the researcher to enter the other person’s perspective’ (Patton, 2002:341) and with such a generational gap between myself and the participants, I felt that it
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was important to spend time at the school to better understand their experience and how their days were structured.
Patton (2002) points out that the success of any research project rests upon the expertise of the interviewer and the ability to obtain quality data. Hence, for the semi structured individual interviews there was scrupulous planning of an interview schedule (appendix I). This comprised of a general schedule which was broadly based on having the participant discuss their attitude to academic success, literacy and other ways of being successful at school socially. However, as the purpose of the individual interviews was to explore the breadth of opinion identified during the group discussions, each schedule also included notes and comments made by the particular participant during the discussion group stage so that these could be interrogated further. Every effort was made to allow the boys the opportunity to offer their views and naturally there was some inevitable digression, particularly where some boys wanted to vent their feelings on aspects of school with which they weren’t entirely happy. Whilst there was some gentle encouragement to guide some participants back to the topic at hand, they were encouraged to speak freely to allow for open and broad responses.
I approached all of the interviews from the perspective that total objectivity is impossible as, being a teacher, and from a different generation from the
participants, our views are both historically and contextually bound and as a result cannot be neutral (Fontana and Frey, 2005). My intention, therefore, was to
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recognise from the outset that my definition of labels may be significantly different from the children interviewed and so I probed, wherever possible, what was meant by particular words and phrases, especially those which appeared commonly or were new to me.