Guión interpretativo

I used a variety of methods to collect t h e data: interviews, documentary evidence and participant observation which produced field notes, research diaries and records of informal conversations. I was able to use data triangulation to verify the accounts given. For example, documentary evidence, combined with observational data on teachers' perspectives and actions, began to produce an outline of how parental involvement related to what staff felt the school was all about.

At the end of the Spring Term, I asked the H e a d if it would be possible to return in the Summer Term to carry out some further field work. She replied, " No!” I left the school depressed, blaming myself and questioning my competence as a researcher and the use of my work to date. The Head told me that I would not be allowed back into the school because major building work w a s going to occur over the next year. The following term was going to be spent preparing for it. As Hammersley and Atkinson note:

It is often precisely the most sensitive things that are of most prima facie interest. Periods of change and transition, for example, may be perceived as troublesome by participants themselves, they may wish,

therefore, to steer observers away from them: the conflict of interests arises from the fact that such disruption can be particularly fruitful research opportunities for the fieldworker. (Hammersley and Atkinson: 1983:

P 6 6 )

The Head, as gatekeeper, was able to shape the conduct and development of the research. At first she had restricted areas of the school open to observation and now she was limiting my time in the school. As a result I had to gain access to another school and pursue a comparative analysis of parental involvement which had never been the intention of the original research plan.

Interviewing

Although unable to return to the school, I was still able to carry out my interviewing. I u sed issues that had been raised in my observations to form the basis of questions. I had coded my field notes into major topics and listed where the relevant incidents could be found in a separate book (a running record) . I used these topics as a framework for developing my research schedule.

I sampled parents in terms of the events they took part in or did not participate in. Some of the data that I collected in these interviews, and the patterns which emerged in the data, came as something of a revelation to me. The interviews emphasized to me the importance of different meanings that people develop in relation

to a specific context. This highlighted the danger of researchers drawing their own conclusions, however tentative, about 'what was going on' in a situation without fully exploring participants own meanings. Emphasis on the subjective meaning of actions is a characteristic feature of symbolic interactionism. In the words of Herbert Blumer:

On the methodological or research side the study of action would have to be made from the position of the actor. Since action is forged by the actor out of w h a t he [she] perceives, interprets and judges, one would have to see the operating situation as the actor sees it, perceive objects as the actor perceives them, ascertain their meaning in terms of the meaning that the y have for actors, and follow the actor's line of conduct as the actor organizes it. In short, one would have to take the role of the actor and see his [her] world from his [her] stand­ point. This methodological approach stands in contrast to the so-called 'objective' approach [of positivism] so dominant today, namely that of viewing the ac t o r from the perspective of an outside detached observer. The 'objective' approach holds t h e danger of substituting his [her] view of the field of action for the view held by the actor. (Blumer:1966:p542)

I sat in the drop-in group week in, w e e k out, drinking coffee, joining in the conversation yet questioning what significance this situation had for my research and the importance the drop-in held for these women. Why did they come to the drop-in whe n they felt it to be so 'boring'? In interviews, a whole new meaning revealed itself. When asked why they went to the drop- in they did not immediately reply that it was for their personal pleasure as I had anticipated. Instead, they

argued that they went to the drop-in in order that their children would be able to socialize with other children. Their own personal enjoyment was secondary. Similarly, the drop-ins had become boring not simply because there were less women attending but because this meant there were less children there to play with their own children. This led me to look at the relationship between women's roles as housewives and mothers, and their experience of 'leisure' time I began placing women 's experiences of school in the wider context of their lives as housewives and mothers. I was able to make a leap of the sociological imagination between the 'private troubles' of these women to 'public issues' surrounding gender (Mills 1959) . As a result I developed an interest in gender roles and the experience of parental involvement; male power and its manifestations within the school. As I began to uncover the experiences of the mothers at the school I increasingly felt it was important to make women visible in research on parental involvement in schools. It seemed that researchers so far had taken their presence in schools for granted.

This illustrates one strategy in the process of data analysis. I began by looking at a particular aspect of my data that struck me as surprising. Other surprises in the data were not as crucial to the development of theory but raised serious methodological issues. Here I am referring, in particular, to my interviews with

Bengali parents. Since I had no Bengali and the parents had little English, I had not been able to observe the terms in which Bangladeshi parents described their children's education and their involvement in it. In interviews, I had to rely upon an interpreter. This was problematic since exact translation is impossible because it is:

not simply code switching, where one code is retrievable if the other is given. The world of different speakers is not just the same world with different labels attached. (Werner and Campbell;1970 ;p403)

Given the nature of ethnographic interviewing, where an attempt is made to discover the interviewee's meaning by exploring the terms and phrases they use to describe a situation, there is a serious danger that such meaning could be lost in translation. One thing did become clear - the concept of parental involvement was itself alien to the community. On reflection I question my approach to these interviews. Was I not forcing the information required into English categories by focusing on parental involvement?

Exact translation of my questions was impossible whatever they were. Werner and Campbell suggest that back translation is a strategy to improve the quality of translation. Her e two translators are required. One translator translates questions from source language to target language and the other translates them back from

target language to source language in order to assess the quality of the translation. Resources did not allow such checks on the quality of translation. It was difficult enough to find a translator at all. More problems arose since the translator had her own axe to grind regarding the educational needs of the Bangladeshi community. With hindsight I should have spent more time with the interpreter translating key concepts.

Another revelation came when I interviewed parents who I had observed in workshops. There was a significant difference between their behaviour in the workshops and their account of their experiences of the workshops. Parents who w ent weekly to workshops, and were not seen to question the methods their children were taught by, privately held reservations about how and what their children were being taught. This parental impression management had already been noted in Sharp and Green's study which outlined how parents learnt to present a 'good' parent image to teachers (Sharp and Green 1975) . Confirmation of this process, by my research, led me to question further Cowburn's model of parents as educational dupes. Again, I could agree with Cowburn that parental involvement was an attempt by educationalists to gain the support of parents for the type of education their children were being supplied. However, my research findings seemed to indicate that

parental involvement did not lead parents to accept unconditionally the education on offer.

Other evidence led me to acknowledge the complexities of the response by parents to their children's education and their involvement in it. Some parents admitted they had initially been bored at workshops. However, by developing their own view of what they could get out of the workshop their motivation for attending had been renewed. Parental experiences were not always obvious neither was it clear what motivated them to go.

By the end of the summer term, I had developed a number of themes. Women's experiences of school; teacher's practical and idealistic perceptions of parental involvement; and the strategies they developed to direct parental behaviour. At the same time, my data highlighted parents' knowledge of teachers, the meanings which emerged in various situations and the strategies which parents employed in contact with teachers. I decided to research another school. I chose a school which was equally recognized for its work with parents. However, Allestree School contrasted with Baker School b o t h in terms of the school's population and the ways in which parents were involved. I felt if the themes I h a d developed in Baker School were also to be found in Allestree School, this would indicate they

were not just issues specific to a particular type of school involving parents.

I began my research in the Autumn Term. In Allestree Infant School I decided I would focus on the Nursery section, having already studied a primary school. Here, I would be able to observe the initial contact between parents and teachers in a number of nursery classrooms. In Baker School, I had researched during the Spring Term and so I had not been able to observe these initial encounters. I wanted to investigate the process of establishing parent-teacher relations and to further explore parents' and teachers' knowledge of each other - how they typified each other. I also continued looking for issues which were important to parents and teachers in order to understand how they perceived the situations they faced and their resultant actions. I had become more adept at locating what was important to participants and had learnt to cope with the demands of ethnographic research - the travelling, the time spent in the field and then writing up the field notes, transcribing interviews, and analyzing data. I decided to adapt my method of note taking in Allestree School. In the previous school, I had tended to jot down an outline of the day's events, noting key phrases and issues, at the end of the school session. I then filled out these notes when I reached home. I had found this an exhausting technique. By the time I had written

these copious notes the last thing I felt like, whe n I returned home, was writing them up. My involvement in Baker School had not been conducive to rushing off to mak e notes on events as they happened. Workshops were short, hour long periods and I could not leave the situation for fear that I missed something. The only opportunity I really had for making notes during the course of the day had been scribbles on The Guardian newspaper as I sat in the staffroom attempting the crossword. At Allestree School things were much different. In the nursery context parents were entering a n d leaving the classroom all day. There were no specific time periods each week for parents to attend t h e classroom (except Child's Play). Also, each classroom was within easy access to the toilet. As Hammersley and Atkinson note, "a common joke made about ethnographers relates to their frequent trips to the toilet where such hasty notes can be scribbled in private soon after action." (Hammersley and Atkinson: 1983 :pl46) . Indeed, this was an accurate description of the method of note taking I developed in t h e school. When a particular incident or conversation finished, I would often go off to the toilet and try a n d scribble down what had been said or write down key words or phrases which would trigger my memory w h e n I wrote my field notes later that evening. As other researchers have commented (Schatzman and Strauss 1973, Atkinson 1981), key words and phrases noted in this way

would later allow me to recall great details about incidents which had occurred during the day:

A single word, even one merely descriptive of the dress of a person, or a particular word uttered by someone usually is enough to 'trip off' a string of images that afford substantial reconstruction of the observed scene. (Schatzman and Strauss:1973:p95)

T h i s technique made writing up field notes a lot more manageable. I was not having to write an outline of the day's events, as a preliminary to writing up the field notes, since my jottings during the day provided such an outline. Furthermore, I felt this technique led to a m u c h richer and more accurate set of field notes. I began to use direct speech in my field notes when referring to conversations made during the day. I tried t o record a verbatum account of what had been said, although this was of course impossible. This technique d i d increase the amount of information I recorded, information which had often been lost in the compressed a n d summary accounts of my previous note taking. However, employment of this technique was dependent u p o n the situation. The circumstances prevalent at Allestree had been conducive to this method of recording data.

M y analysis of data became more frequent than the half termly sessions at Baker School. At the end of my first t w o weeks in Nursery One, I categorized my field notes a n d used these developing categories when moving to

observe the activities in Nursery Two. In this way I was building categories which went across all of the classes. These developing categories guided the collection of data. Thus descriptive categories were developed, for example, on teachers' talk about parents which became refined into analytical categories e.g. parents who teachers described as wanting to 'get rid' of their children, parents who were 'competent' or 'pains'.

I began interviewing parents who visited the nurseries and sampled them according to categories which had developed from my observations. I interviewed parents both in terms of the length of time they had been going t o the school and how they had actually experienced their visits to the school - if they had been bored; if they had chatted or simply sat and watched. Initially, I limited myself to six interviews, two women who were on familiar terms with the teachers, one woman who had been bored by her visit, another woman who had experiences of two nurseries, and finally two women who had just begun to bring their children to the nurseries. Their experiences of being in the school, their descriptions of the teachers, what they did in the nursery, helped to establish themes and categories on parental perspectives which I developed with further interviewing.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to interview the people you want. One case comes to mind of a father who began visiting with his daughter - this was quite a rare event and I was keen to interview him. However, he refused saying he had "a lot on". I became sensitive to this response. As I got to know the parents and the teachers I became more aware of the circumstances in which some of the parents lived which made my research pale into insignificance. If someone is about to have their electricity cut off or their marriage is going through a "rough patch" then an interview may be the last thing they want. However, if a woman has two toddlers and is unable to "get out of the house" she may be very glad of someone to come and talk to her (Finch 1984). Finch points out that women's:

..consignment to the privatised domestic sphere (Stacey 1981) , makes it particularly likely that they will welcome the opportunity to talk to a sympathetic listener.

(Finch:1984a:p74)

Like the whole of research, sampling is a social process and the kind of people who want to be interviewed will affect the kind of data which you obtain.

As the number of parents I interviewed increased, key words began to emerge. Parents would talk about "getting to know teachers", knowing "what went on at school" as I reflected on my data from Baker School, I

found that such terms were common to both schools. I focused my interviews so as to unpack these member defined categories (Lofland 1971).

The triangulation of data raised some interesting issues. It became clear that whilst some terms were shared by parents and staff they did not have the same significance and meaning. For example, some staff passed moral judgements on parents who seemed to want to 'get rid' of their children. These parents were not seen to be performing their duties as parents properly. When interviewing these parents I was aware of the need not to moralize on the issue in the same way as the staff appeared to. When these parents raised the subject in the interview (no one had to be prompted) it became apparent that these parents felt 'getting rid' of their children was inevitable and was linked to particular circumstances. Having such feelings was certainly not shocking to the parents concerned but rather matter of fact. The incident taught me two