Diseño del Plan de Manejo Integral de Residuos Sólidos del TP.

The limitations of Study 1, the AUSSE survey, have been discussed earlier as have some of the limitations of Study 2. However, other aspects of the design of the qualitative study warrant a more detailed consideration here in the thesis. This reflection on the research process also includes recommendations for future studies.

There were strengths and limitations to the data collection methods in Study 2. Overall, a weekly video diary bracketed with interviews was an effective design. The participants found the process of recording their diaries simple and fast, and there was only one technical issue resulting in the loss of a diary. When asked, participants commented that they would not have wanted to do a written diary as it would have seemed like a chore, another assignment. They also felt the videos were more detailed and more honest as they could not edit or polish what they said. All the participants said that meeting me first at the initial interview was important because they felt they knew me and could therefore talk more openly. The only participants that withdrew from the research project were those who also stopped studying, which is testament to the comfort and ease of the process.

In contrast, the choice to include children as participants in Study 2 was, in hindsight, poorly conceived and executed. Trying to capture the voices of the student, partner, and children in a single interview was too much and resulted in the partners’ and children’s data being less detailed. In addition, while I had some experience facilitating focus groups, I had no experience interviewing children. Generally, the children’s responses were brief and I did not have the time, the skills, or the planned strategies to draw them out. Others have also noted the

challenges of getting younger children to fully participate in family interviews (Åstedt-Kurki & Hopia, 1996) and the need for developmentally appropriate and creative data collection

strategies (Christian, Pearce, Roberson, & Rothwell, 2010). The children’s perspective therefore is unexplored in the analysis and is a useful direction for further research.

Including the partners in the interview potentially revealed a more complete picture of the student’s experience, particularly relating to support. However, the couples may have wanted to present the family in a positive light and may not have felt comfortable disagreeing or criticising each other in the interview. The interview data therefore represent their shared perspective. In particular, it is likely that the agency each partner has within the family, as discussed in the analysis of space and time, will have affected some family members’

willingness to share certain experiences or feelings in the family interviews. This was evident in one family. The student talked in her video diaries about her husband not supporting her, in particular pressuring her to study less, and suggesting she should be in paid work. In the final family interview, however, these issues were glossed over by both the student and her husband and the impact on her experiences was minimised. Future research with individual interviews of

students and their partners may reveal interesting contrasts and contradictions in perceptions of support and provide valuable insights into this important influence on engagement.

The sample for Study 2 was broad in terms of factors such as family structure,

geographical location, and socio-economic status. This is reflected in the rich diversity of stories summarised in Chapter 5 and highlights the individual nature of student engagement. However, the disadvantage of such diversity is that it is difficult to draw conclusions about subgroups. For instance, culture is potentially an important influence on student engagement and studies focussing specifically on Māori or Pasifika students would be valuable. The ethnicity sample sizes were small, but the stories did raise questions about how family roles in different cultures impact on lifeload and therefore student engagement. Intersections between culture and socio- economic status also warrant exploring. In addition, the particular experiences of male mature- aged students are underexplored in the literature; this is an important issue that the current study, with just four male participants, only touched on.

A related issue is gender roles. Much has been written about the impact of gender on mature-aged women’s experiences returning to study, in particular their caregiving roles and lack of power in the family (Alsop et al., 2008; Christie et al., 2005). In the current study, the analysis of space and time revealed as much diversity within genders as there was between genders. However, there were no participants where the male was the stay at home parent, and caregiving responsibilities did influence the female students’ experiences. The nature of that impact varied depending on the family structure and financial resources. This raises interesting questions around the interaction effects of socio-economic status and gender. As gender roles, including caregiving responsibilities, continue to change in New Zealand this merits future research.

Three final aspects of the wider research design warrant mention. Firstly, taking part in the research will have changed the students’ experiences, an unavoidable limitation of

prospective qualitative research. Firstly, being asked to discuss expectations and plans in the initial interview may have encouraged the family to think about the issues and therefore be better prepared. Secondly, as discussed earlier, there were times when I gave the students information and advice about the university processes. Thirdly, a number of students

commented that reflecting on their study and their lives each week was beneficial and helped them to work through some issues. That the students found taking part in the research valuable opens up a possibility for a future study trialling mentoring and reflection as interventions to increase student engagement.

Secondly, I developed the student engagement framework from the literature prior to conducting the qualitative study. I then used that framework to formulate my questions for the family interviews, and the framework was the foundation of the trigger diagram that the

found support for the elements of the framework, including the three dimensions of engagement and the range of variables affecting their engagement. While I strove to remain open to other ideas, it is possible that another researcher, less familiar with the framework, would have interpreted the data differently. On the other hand, the students had no difficulty talking about their study in terms of the three dimensions of engagement and the influences, suggesting that the framework did parallel their reality to some degree.

Finally, this thesis has focussed on a particular population of mature-aged distance students at a single university. It is unlikely that these experiences will be exactly paralleled at other institutions or with other populations. The diversity evident in the 19 stories illustrates the wide range of influences as shown in the conceptual framework; but different policies and practices in other universities will no doubt result in different patterns of student engagement. Nonetheless, maintaining an awareness of the overarching principles illustrated in the

framework, including the three identified features of student engagement: as multifaceted, contextual, and dynamic, will enable a better understanding of all students’ experiences. Similar work, using interviews and video diaries throughout the semester, would be useful with other groups of students. In particular, it would be interesting to follow this study with a project focussing on campus-based mature-aged students to explore where their experiences are similar and different to distance students.