El Distrito de Buenaventura

I initially planned to collect data from both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources were to be interviews with study school personnel and follow-up phone interviews and email discussions with selected key informants. Secondary data were to be collected from a range of school related documents, as well as the memos I wrote throughout the research process.

Interviews

The interviews with study school personnel took place, largely as initially planned. Once a person agreed to be interviewed, an in-depth, face-to-face interview was conducted with each interviewee at a time and place of their choice. Two interviews were conducted by phone, four interviews were conducted at the school of the interviewees, and two were conducted in my home. The other 28 interviewees selected their own homes. Interviews took between two and three hours each and were a combination of “the unstructured interview” and the “non-directive interview” (Cohen & Manion, 1989). My approach to each interview differed slightly, depending on my relationship with the interviewee but, in every instance, I was aiming to “enter into a kind of interactive relationship in which communication becomes a two way street” (Anderson, 1990, p. 227). I allowed each interviewee to have a high degree of control over the direction of the dialogue while ensuring all the key areas were covered. When I knew the interviewees well, and we had shared experiences, the interviews were conducted less formally. When I did not know the interviewee, the interview process was more formal, though still semi-structured. Each interview began with the suggestion that the interviewee tell the story of their time at the school, starting with the time they first arrived. It is argued that story telling enables the person to relax and to recall the things that have meaning and seem the most important to them (Bishop, 1996, p. 25). Fink (1997, p. 79), a Canadian researcher who used a similar interview process, said that the “collective” or “rehearsed” memories of interviewees tend to be recalled first. My prompts and questions ensured that I covered all aspects, including tapping into their “dissident memory”, which might include a version that differs from the version of events that has become accepted and recounted. The following example demonstrates this point:

Kay: You talked earlier about how the school seemed to carry on as usual in spite of the concerns that many staff had. As things got worse, do you think the students knew about what was happening?

Interviewee: Some of them definitely did. I had some of the senior students come to talk with me about what they had heard

Kay: What had they heard? And how were they feeling about it?

Sometimes interviewees knew that I knew what they were talking about and skipped, or missed, detail that I needed to hear. I often countered this by an explanation such as:

Kay: It is very important that I hear your recollections and do not assume I know what you experienced or thought. Even though you know I was there, please describe it all for me in detail so I hear it through your words.

I used the research questions (Appendix D) as a memory prompt for my role as interviewer. Interviewees had seen the questions in the information posted to them as part of the process of gaining informed consent but I did not give them a copy again. I was open, however, about referring to my list of questions in the latter stages of the interview.

Kay: We have covered a great deal of ground and you have given me fantastic information to work with. Let me just quickly check my guiding questions to make sure I have not forgotten to ask you anything.

There were times when I asked interviewees for advice on the process I was using. In the instance of the example given below, it resulted in an addition to the sampling strategies.

Interviewee: In the early days [school name] lost about a third of the staff. And that continued at a senior level because people couldn’t work with him. Some were certainly good people, but they just didn’t fit his mould so they left. So the people who stayed, I guess, adjusted themselves into the system and thought “well if I want to survive I will have to compromise”.

Kay: So it’s going to be very important for me to tap into some of those people who left? How important do you think their views would be to this research?

Interviewee: Extremely important because they made a different set of decisions and it affected the school greatly.

As the interviews progressed, and I was involved in the data analysis, questions and themes began to emerge that required further investigation. I began to add extra questions towards the end of the interview with an explanation that I was beginning to test various themes as well as “to tap the unique knowledge or perspective of interview subjects” (Fink, 1997, p. 92). I explained this explicitly to the interviewees:

Kay: Let me run a couple of questions past you for your opinion. I am pretty well advanced now with my interviews and some ideas have begun to emerge that I am exploring further. One of the things I have learned is that there is a difference, almost like two samples of people. There are people who stay and people who go, when a school is declining, and they have quite different perspectives. Do you have any comments on that issue?

Interviewee: That was certainly my experience. A lot of staff left …

Interviewees were encouraged to phone or email me if they had further information or ideas to contribute. I received emails from six study school participants, following their interviews, and the comments were used as additional data. The following email is one example:

I couldn’t stop thinking after you left the other night and decided to put some more thoughts in writing for you. One thing I remember vividly is … (Middle manager)

Key informants

Initially, I had planned to identify two key informants for each school and to keep regular contact with them during the data collection and analysis phases, both of which were interconnected and ongoing. This strategy was intended to provide further information for me, if required, as I learned about each school, and also to act as a means of triangulation as I collected and analysed data. This plan, however, did not turn out to be effective and I abandoned it. Figure 1 shows the “Key Informants” listed under the heading “Initially Planned”, with an arrow moving them left into the “Not used” category. Of the six identified people, one died soon after the first interview, one left the country and another

was very busy and difficult to contact. At the same time, other interviewees, who had not been identified as key informants, were making extra contacts and showing an extended interest. I abandoned my initial idea in favour of encouraging anyone to have further input, if they chose to offer it.

Documents

As Figure 1 shows, I initially planned to collect archived documents from each school for validating and triangulating data from interviews. School BOTs had agreed to allow me to use school documents, within the confines of the agreed confidentiality. I also planned to use ERO reports, which are public documents, as well as documents from ERO files. Documents provide an unobtrusive and stable source of data that, on occasion, is the only source of evidence on some issues (Fink, 1997, p. 80). As is appropriate, using grounded theory, the planned process was changed and extended as the collected data indicated the need to take new directions. While some documents were unavailable, documents played a greater role in my research than was originally anticipated. I used school documents from my work files37 _{and sought access to study school files from ERO and MOE. Figure 1} shows under the headings, “Initially planned” and “Not used”, that, while I was able to access all the ERO reports, the ERO files during the study schools’ decline periods had been destroyed in line with ERO policy. Under the heading, “Newly introduced”, in Figure 1, are documents from my work collection and MOE file documents obtained under The Official Information Act 1982. Chapter 4 describes how the planned document collection took place as well as the adapted and extended process that evolved.

A key attribute, and strength of the grounded theory method, is its broad approach to what constitutes data and the ongoing analysis of data throughout its collection. The planned collection strategies (Figure 1; “Data used”) have provided rich data but so have the unplanned strategies (Figure 1; “Newly introduced”) that evolved as the research progressed. These are discussed more fully in Chapter 4. They include my own analytical and interpretive notes made as “memos”, updates for supervisors, MOE documents, new literature and feedback on propositions from the school interviewees as well as from a sample of educational advisors.

37_{Documents included meeting minutes, reviews, action plans, correspondence, media articles, reports,}