It is important that this study acknowledges that there are some limitations to this study (Chametzky, 2013) owing to:
• the private nature of the first hand data • small size of the sample
• use of only one data collection method • potential for influence by group members
• limited to one cohort of pre-service teachers in one year • constraints of memory loss, distortion of facts, etc.
Part of the issue is because this study used the reflections of pre-service teachers upon their interactions within private social media of themselves and others on their pre-service teacher education course. There is no way to verify or refer to precisely those first hand interactions from private social media and thus in these terms this study has some limitations in terms of generalisability. However, within the confines of these restrictions, it can be seen how the structures of private social media interactions within communities occur and to
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develop training and input for pre-service teacher education courses and school placements that can be applicable when it comes to influencing the private social media interactions that takes place on teacher education courses by pre- service teachers. A pre-service teacher is under no obligation to use private social media, but the model of how pre-service teachers use private social media to help the core enterprise of becoming a qualified teacher can
demonstrate both what they are excluded from as well as what the nature of what takes place within these private social media based interactions.
Another limitation to acknowledge is the fact that not all those within the cohort were interviewed. There were limitations on the potential number of volunteers which reduced the ability of this study to investigate the reflections of all
members of the cohort and instead the study was relying on the reflections of a sample of pre-service teachers on the interactions of the community of pre- service teachers. With semi-structured interviews being expensive and time consuming (Newby, 2014), this was always going to be a limitation that had to be considered.
This is also a case study of a single HEI secondary course, at only one location and over one year. This limits the ability to make comparisons across different courses and over different time periods.
Lastly, with the nature of the group interviews relying on second hand data through recollections there is scope for misrecollection and distortion of events that will accompany a group jointly reflecting on events from over a period of time.
4.6.1 Reflective pre-service teachers
With content and interactions from the private social media being used by the pre-service teachers in their communities of practice having to maintain privacy at all times, the methodology of this study was relying on interview participants to be reflective in relaying and sharing narratives during the semi-structured interviews. Without interviewing every member of the PGCE cohort, it would be impossible to gather a complete recollection of interactions. Even if this was so, some recollections would be redacted or reshaped as the nature of the
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recollections and the different dynamics of the group would bring their own interpretative and reflect slant to the reflections. There could be no single
representative group which would reflect the ‘true’ nature of the interactions and nor was this study seeking to establish such a thing. The purpose of the study was not to gather precise logistical details of each interaction between pre- service teachers, but rather to be able to see how private social media
interactions helped establish the pre-service teachers’ communities of practice and to interpret the interactions through the lens of Wenger’s analytical
framework of the community of practice.
4.6.2 Transcriptions
To ensure that the interviewer was able to explore the recollections with the pre-service teachers and to have good focus, each interview was recorded on an MP3 recorder. As part of the ethical approach to anonymity, these interviews were transcribed by an independent person who did not meet the pre-service teachers as part of their course. Each set of interviews was transcribed and interpreted prior to the next set of interviews in order to develop themes and the questions asked at subsequent sets of interviews. For example, in the first interview, one pre-service teacher referred to a WhatsApp conversation. Subsequent questioning within this interview and subsequent other interviews revealed that others were using WhatsApp, but had not been referring to it as part of their private social media interactions.
4.6.3 Ethical considerations
With privacy being the driving force behind both this study and what this study seeks to circumnavigate, the methodology had to make anonymity, data
storage and the right to participate or withdraw at any stage of the study central tenets of the ethical side of this methodology. As laid out in the earlier sections, each participant not only gave formal consent, but had to iterate this formal consent at the start of each interview. The participants were reassured by the researcher as both the interviewer and course leader that their reflections were not only anonymised, but also had no bearing on their place on the course and the study sought only to establish what was occurring within their communities of practice so that it could be interpreted within the context of improving the
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nature of teacher education. It was acknowledged that a power relationship was in place between the interviewer and the group and at the start of the interviews it was expressly made clear that part of the anonymity meant that participants would be anonymised through the transcription, meaning that the researcher would not have transcribed records as to which participant made which statement.
All data was kept securely on an encrypted PC within a locked office at all times and this fact was outlined to the participants as part of the study.