LA MUJER PERUANA EN EL CINE

As each interview was carried out, the audio of these interviews was transcribed (see 3.6.5) and then loaded into Atlas Ti, a qualitative analysis software programme often used for

working with qualitative data. The writing journals, field notes and images were also uploaded into Atlas Ti. The data was organised and labelled in such a way that a full set of data was visible for each participant.

Atlas Ti was chosen as an instrument to support analysis for three reasons. First, it

facilitated the grouping of the data into a range of configurations, so that one could look at, for example, the participants’ interviews and their writing journals alongside each other. The full range of data was thus juxtaposed against each other in different ways. Second, it was a useful tool for engaging with writing focussed ethnographic research, as Atlas TI accommodates written texts as images or as (editable and not editable) depending on the needs of the researcher and the form in which each text has been submitted for the study. Third, I was able to create a series of codes and write notes against these codes, across the multiple types of data. There was also a range of options available for looking at these codes in different groupings.

Once the entire data-set had been collected and uploaded onto Atlas Ti, I proceeded to read and analyse the data taking note of aspects which I saw connecting to the research questions. Barton and Hamilton (1998, p. 2003), in their study of literacy practices, highlighted the iterative nature of analysing qualitative data. This was also the case in the analyses that took place for this study, that is, analyses for me, were a set of processes in which each new analysis was built on those analytical processes that had gone before (see also Barton and Hamilton, 1998 p. 2003).

As a researcher, I was particularly cognizant of the fact that both the participant and I were making sense of ideas discussed in each interview or journal entry. As a consequence, I felt it was important to reflect on whose perspective I was foregrounding at any particular moment. I took account of these differences by creating categories which enabled me to be mindful of these differences. For example, in Theme A (Figure 6) and its codes there was a code called ‘Identity/roles – researcher reading into data’ and a code called ‘stories about gender and work/professional contexts’. The latter code referred to stories the participants told about gender related to their prior work and professional contexts, while the former code was attached to parts of the data in which I could be heard explicitly discussing gender. This reflects the perspective (as discussed in 3.6 of this thesis) that as a researcher, I was working across both emic and etic dimensions of the research.

Once I had read and re-read the data, and had begun to create broad categories that corresponded to the research questions. For example, with regard to gender, I searched for words which are traditionally connected to roles which are gendered, such as husband, partner or father, mother etc. I did this to locate extracts where gendered notions had either been referred to, or were being explicitly discussed. While I do not see notions of gender as always being primarily attached to these specific terms (or roles), I did find through my early readings of the transcripts and writing journals that searching for words like ones that are often marked as explicitly gendered, e.g. mother, allowed me to quickly focus on talk and writing in which the participants had been considering issues which might be considered gendered. Searching for these terms, then, enabled me to more easily locate areas of the text I felt deserved closer analytical scrutiny. The final codes are illustrated in the diagrams which represent Themes A, B and C below (Figures 6, 7 and 8).

People & relationships framing writing activities

Identity/roles – researcher reading into data

Talk of explicit links between gender and writing

Gendered practices – personal reflections

Figure 6 Gendered experiences and academic identity

Figure 7 The spaces we write in

Gender and talk with peers, colleagues, superiors about gender

Gendered practices – historical perspectives

Stories about gender and work/professional context

Gendered experiences affecting academic identity Education history

Personal/familial history

THEME A

Gendered Experiences & Academic Identity

Writing in personal spaces

Places framing writing activities

Gender and domestic setting Institutions framing writing activities

THEME B The Spaces We Write In

People & relationships framing activities

Gendered practices – personal reflections

Education history Professional history

Gendered practices – historical perspectives

Challenges associated with writing activities

Figure 8 Struggles and tensions

Personal/familial history Emotion verbal or non-verbal – indication of a

feeling within body or mind related to writing

Time

Pleasures associated with writing activities.

Identity/roles – researcher reading into data

THEME C Struggles and Tensions

In summary the three main themes generated through the reading and analyses undertaken for this thesis are:

• Gendered experiences and academic identity • The spaces we write in

• Struggles and tensions

The data chapters that follow are each designed to explore and represent these themes. Table 4 below shows how each of the main themes can be seen to connect with data chapters in this thesis.

Themes Data Chapter Headings

Theme A: Gendered Experiences and Academic Identity

Chapter 6 Writing tales: struggles around writing; Chapter 7 Writing tales: reinventing space

Theme B: The Spaces We Write In Chapter 5 Writing tales: crafting texts; Chapter 6

Writing tales: struggles around writing; Chapter 7 Writing tales: reinventing space

Theme C: Struggles and Tensions Chapter 5 Writing tales: crafting texts; Chapter 7

Writing tales: reinventing space

Table 4 Connections between the main themes for the postgraduate research writing study and the data chapters

3.6.3 Documenting postgraduate writing

To empirically document the types of writing that postgraduates engage in, texts were collected and analysed in the following ways. First, the written texts volunteered for discussion in the interviews (see Table 3 for a complete overview) were labelled according

to names the participants had provided when discussing the texts in the interviews (see 3.6.1 for a discussion of the importance of the emic orientation, to this study). Second, the transcripts of the audio recordings of the interviews and all the writing journals were read and re-read to locate instances where other written texts the students had worked on over the two years of the data collection period were mentioned (see Figure 2 for an overview of a complete data-set over two academic years and Table 5 for a list of all texts

documented in the study). These written texts were also labelled according to names the participants had provided when talking, or writing, about the written texts. The amount and range of texts, variation in relation to individuals and disciplinarity and the extent to which texts can be considered ‘occluded’ (Swales 1996) or institutionally visible is discussed in Chapter 4.

3.6.4 Exploring and representing postgraduates’ perspectives and practices: Writing