The research interview has been described as ‘a conversation between the interviewer seeking response for a particular purpose from the interviewee’ (Gillham, 2000:1), and ‘a professional conversation – an inter-view, where knowledge is constructed in the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee’ (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009:2). Kvale and Brinkmann’s definition best describes the purpose of using the interview in this study. The interview, which was a conversation between me as the interviewer and my colleague as the interviewee, aimed to build an understanding of the issues, especially why some parts of the TBLT and mediation and my teaching worked well but others did not, what they thought were the causes of the problems, and how to improve them. Thus, co-construction of understanding of the issues through interview was highlighted in this research.
Conducting an interview was a significant part of this study because the interview results were one of the main data sources for triangulation. Two sets of interviews – with the observers and with the learners – were conducted after the implementation of TBLT and mediation, with the aim of gaining their feedback and opinions on the effectiveness of the intervention. Thus, the interviews were a means to gather in- depth information on their perspectives. The use of interviews also opened up an opportunity for receiving suggestions and solutions to the problems, allowing some undetected issues to be identified.
Researchers categorise interviews into three types: structured, unstructured (also defined as open or in-depth), and semi-structured interviews. I adopted a semi- structured approach because as Dörnyei (2007:136) explains, in this approach the interviewer provides guidance and direction (hence the ‘-structured’ part in the name) but is also keen to follow up interesting developments and to let the interviewee elaborate on certain issues (hence the ‘semi’ part). This allowed me to combine an element of planning (based on the questionnaires and observations) with sufficient openness to allow new elements to emerge.
In developing an interview guide, observations and questionnaires were used to generate ideas as to what was effective and what was not effective in the implementation of TBLT and mediation, including my performance. I then framed open-ended questions for semi-structured interviews to further investigate the issues. The same process was applied to interviews of the learners, except that the topics or issues for semi-structured interviews came from the pre-/post-intervention questionnaire results, as well as learner engagements in task-based activities. While feedback from observations and questionnaires provided me with breadth of information, the follow-up semi-structured interviews offered in-depth understanding of whether the designed tasks were appropriate and the implementation of TBLT and mediation were effective.
To conduct interviews, researchers suggest similar procedures from preparation to interpretation of the data, but the steps and procedures may not be arranged exactly in the same order. I decided to follow guidelines offered by Richards (2009) that are divided into four steps: preparing for an interview, setting up the interview, managing the interaction, and after the interview. I first needed to consider the
content of the observation notes and then identify interesting or problematic issues specified by the observers in order to develop an interview guide. However, not all issues were chosen, only ones relating to the areas of investigation and research questions, so that the selected issues were relevant to 1) the appropriateness of the designed tasks, and 2) and the effectiveness of the TBLT and mediation approaches. This meant that I was able to prepare some guiding questions and group them under each issue or topic (see Interview guide, Appendix E).
In setting up the interview, most researchers (e.g. Gillham, 2000; Richards, 2009; Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009) pay attention to scheduling and confirming, arranging the venue, and considering whether recording of the interview and taking notes are necessary. It is also important to assure the interviewees of confidentiality and anonymity. All of these arrangements could be made easily because the interviewees are my colleagues. I interviewed them in their offices at their convenience, starting with a chat on general topics before opening the interview. I also let them know that they could ask me questions if they wished, thus adding an element of discussion, sharing ideas and giving advice.
The next step was conducting the interviews. As Roulston (2010) notes, the interviewer must have very good listening skills to ensure that the interviewee has covered key topics and also be able to capture when and how to follow up the issues raised by the interviewee. Richards (2003) also suggests that interviews should allow the interviewee a proper space by avoiding interruption, and importantly letting the interview flow over the topics or areas raised by the interviewee not just ones the interviewer thinks important. In my view, the last element is crucial because excessive control by the interviewer on topics that are perceived as important may
result in a loss of opportunities to discover something new or more important. A variety of question types are available to the interviewer (Gillham, 2000; Patton, 2002, Duff, 2008; Richards, 2009) but checking, following-up and probing questions were particularly important in these interviews. Before ending the interviews and thanking the interviewees, I also asked if there were any more issues, comments or advice the teachers wanted to add.
Ethical issues of interviews
Researchers (e.g. Rubin and Rubin, 1995; Bassey, 1999; Walford, 2001; Gillham, 2005; Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009) emphasise the importance and necessity of ethical issues and proper practice before, during, and after any interview session. Discussion of ethical obligations is often related to issues of confidentiality, anonymity, sensitivity, privacy, security and honesty. All of these have to do with the rights of interviewees, which must be protected as well as their feelings. Before an interview, it is important that interviewees be informed about the research project, its aims and the purposes the data will be used for, expectations from the interviewees, potential consequences of participating in the study, confidentiality, and their rights. In this study, even though the interviewees were my colleagues, they were still asked to sign a consent form. Sensitivity was not a serious issue in these interviews because the main content of the interview was the effectiveness of TBLT and mediation implementation and my teaching performance, which was fully open for any criticism and suggestion. As the research was conducted at my university, full anonymity was impossible to achieve since all teachers in the English department know each other, though the interviewees and learners were still anonymised through the use of pseudonyms.