The study was designed as a longitudinal study in order to explore student participants’ experience of their development of critical thinking over a period of time. In addition, I was exploring the progression of the students’ development in their understanding of the meaning of critical thinking over time. Following permission from the Dean of School, and ethics approval, a letter of invitation and participant information sheet was emailed to all students enrolled in the first year of the radiography programme in September 2013. Students were given two weeks to respond to the email with a specific date and time deadline. Seventeen students emailed their expression of interest by the set deadline. Although the initial minimum number of participants I aimed to recruit was twelve, when I received seventeen expressions of interest, I was keen to recruit all seventeen in order to account for possible attrition over the research period. All seventeen students were therefore sent ‘thank you’ emails offering them interviews. Fifteen students responded to that email and interviews were scheduled with them. Of the fifteen students who responded, fourteen interviews were conducted. The three non- responders were followed up; they did not reply to emails thereafter and were not pursued further. Unfortunately, one of the fourteen students left the programme at the end of the 2013/2014 academic year. Consequently, the participant’s transcript was removed from the study as there would be no continuity with respect to exploring development through the programme period. This yielded the final sample size of thirteen student participants. The student participants attended one semi-structured face-to-face interview at the beginning of their first, second and third year of study in accordance with the timeline presented in Table 1 below.
Table 1. The timescale for conducting the interviews
The first phase of student interviews October 2013 – December 2013 for 14 interviews
The second phase of student interviews October 2014 – November 2014 for 13 interviews
The third phase of student interviews August 2015 – September 2015 for 13 interviews
Tutor interviews March 2014 – July 2014 for 5 interviews
The aspect of the study involving tutor participants was designed as a cross-sectional survey of radiography tutors. The tutor participants’ involvement in the study comprised one interview only. At the time of data collection, there were sixteen radiography tutors who taught on the
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programme. All were invited to participate, however, only five tutors volunteered and were recruited to the study.
In planning and conducting the interviews I took cognisance of the power dimension which will
be discussed in Chapter Eight and took reflexive measures to ensure that the participants felt
free, comfortable and relaxed during the interviews. All interviews were scheduled at mutually suitable times. They were conducted remotely from my office whereby meeting rooms were booked for this purpose to ameliorate any feelings of discomfort, avoid interruptions and to demonstrate value in the interviewing process. Interviews with participants began with a light ‘chat’ about how they were getting on at university before moving on to the nature of the study. I thanked them for giving up their time to talk with me and assured them that there was no right or wrong response and that they were not being tested or judged. This was of particular importance due to the perceived power relations in research of this nature, where I am a tutor, programme leader, and colleague. More details on my reflexive positions are given in Chapter Eight, p. 179.
In addition, I thought about how student participants would feel during the interview, so I took care with my appearance where I opted for a more casual, relaxed look in denim jeans, rather than the more formal look I adopt when teaching or attending meetings. I also took bottled water to the interview room and took care in setting up the room, for example, in positioning the chairs in a way I thought the participants would feel comfortable. Participants were again given the participant information sheet to read and opportunities to ask questions. Thereafter they were invited to sign the consent form. I then explained the context of the interview and how that fitted into the entire study to be conducted over the three-year programme period. Interviews were then voice-recorded on a portable recording device to enable transcription thereafter. The interviews were then conducted using the schedule as an exploratory guide.
I did experience from the interviews conducted during the pilot study that participants would sometimes ‘go off on a tangent’ but nonetheless responded in a ‘round-a-about’ sort of way. When this happened, I needed to listen attentively throughout this time, as often at the end of that conversation stream, I found 'nuggets of gold', which were unexpected. It was important, therefore, for me to keep an open mind for surprising and unexpected information. It required skill and intuition to be able to decide whether to curtail a certain conversation or allow it to proceed in light of what could emerge as a result. In my experience, the skills required to become a good interviewer develops with the practice over time. During the interviews, I found it important to ask questions in an open-ended manner to enable participants to freely express their views. I also used probes and prompts as tools to get the interviewee to expand on a
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response. I did this on a number of occasions when I felt that participants had more to say. Examples of common probes that were used were: 'can you tell me more about that?' or 'anything more?’ as suggested by Robson (2011). He further advises that interviewers should avoid asking questions using the following style: long questions, multiple questions, complex questions using jargon, leading questions and biased questions (Robson, 2011: 282), which I was mindful of during conducting the interviews. See APPENDICES 10 and 11 for an example of a student and a tutor interview transcript respectively.
All interviews were conducted without problems and lasted approximately one hour. I thanked participants for their time and participation at the end of each interview. At the end of the interview, participants indicated that they enjoyed the ‘chat’ saying that it was very rare that they got a chance to speak about critical thinking. They offered their ongoing support if more time was required. They were very supportive of the study and saw this as a valuable contribution to the programme that could make a difference to student learning. Five examples of verbatim quotations from student participants are given below:
I really enjoyed it and I feel like I’m being useful and helpful. If there is anything else that is needed, let me know. (Isla)
Nice room…at least we’re not disturbed as your office is always busy. (Lola) Definitely enjoyable. I never thought about critical thinking in the way I did in these two years. (Emily)
It is not something that anybody generally speaks about, so I really enjoyed the deeper questions that you have asked. (Chloe)
You have asked a lot of searching questions and it has helped me to learn more about myself. Learning should be a life-long process. (Jacob)
These data extracts exemplify the value of pedagogical research of this kind.
3.6.2.1. Summary
In this section the following was presented: the process followed in the recruitment of participants, the interview process, and progression of interviews. The next section describes how the interviews were undertaken over a period of time.