Using Exploratory Interviews to Re-frame Planned Research on Classroom Issues

In this paper we describe and illustrate the use of an exploratory first interview to refine research questions or interviewing ideas prior to finalizing plans for a study about classroom issues or practices. Three researchers give accounts of their exploratory interviews concerning student “aliteracy,” the school experience of immigrant students, and mathematics teachers’ experience of assessment and grading. The researchers endeavored to acquire an holistic understanding of their participants’ experiences by: using open-ended questions about both the topic and the participants’ lives in general; asking participants to complete pre-interview activities such as drawings or diagrams about either the topic or their lives in general; and framing the guiding data collection question as “How does the participant experience [topic of interest]?” Each of the researchers either revised their research questions or changed their ideas about how to do the interviews based upon what transpired in these interviews. The value of research on classroom issues or practices depends upon the use of pertinent research questions and productive approaches to any interviews undertaken. In this article we suggest that even before conducting pilot studies or undertaking large-scale field-testing of data collection activities, it can be helpful to “test the water” through an initial exploratory interview. In what follows, three researchers report on a first interview with a “field test” participant and explain how what they learned prompted them to re-frame or refocus either their research questions or interview plans. The particular processes employed in their interviews, and highlighted in this article, enabled the researchers to acquire a more holistic understanding of their participants’ experiences of the research topics and alerted them to important whole-part relationships. The understandings and insights the researchers acquired prompted them to either or both re-focus their research questions and/or alter their ideas about interview approaches. The three interviews were concerned with the phenomenon of student aliteracy, the school experience of immigrant students, and mathematics teachers’ experience of assessment and grading. Qualitative research, constructivist paradigm, and hermeneutics Qualitative research conducted in the constructivist/interpretive paradigm is necessarily hermeneutical (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Key themes from hermeneutics include the importance of clarifying whole-part relationships to inform more adequate interpretation, aiming for holistic understanding rather than reducing what is learned to pre-existing categories, and appreciating that the language and history of one’s community both enable and limit interpretation (Smith, 1991; Smith, 2002). Key metaphors from hermeneutics include the hermeneutic circle and understanding interpretive inquiry as a spiral, with each loop in the spiral representing a separate data collection or analysis activity (Ellis, 1998). Each loop in the spiral can also be understood as a distinct hermeneutic circle with its own forward projective arc and backward evaluative arc. In a forward 1 Ellis et al.: Using Exploratory Interviews to Re-frame Planned Research on Clas Published by PDXScholar, 2011 12 NORTHWEST PASSAGE, 9(1) projective arc, the researcher makes sense of what is encountered by drawing from previous experience or expectations—forestructure and pre-understandings in hermeneutic terms. In the backward arc this first interpretation is evaluated by re-examining the data for contradictions, gaps, or material not adequately explained by the first interpretation. The goal in the backward arc is to develop the most adequate interpretation that best addresses all that was found. What one learns, notices, or recognizes as a new question in the backward arc gives direction or purpose to the next loop or research activity. If the first research activity in a study is conducted in the right way it has the potential to change the direction of the study quite dramatically (Ellis, 1998). Scholars in hermeneutics have clarified that beginning the research, or entering the hermeneutic circle in the right way requires: concerned engagement; humility; openness; a capacity for reciprocity and interactive, dialogic interviews; and availability to negotiation of meaning (Packer & Addison, 1989; Smith, 1991; Smith, 1993; Smith 2002). The particular interview processes employed by the researchers in this article were intended to enhance the likelihood of entering the circle in the right way. Processes employed in the interviews In a qualitative research course, doctoral students anticipating their dissertation research were encouraged to explore the use of three strategies in a first interview related to their research interests. First, regardless of their research questions, they were asked to frame a main question to guide data collection or the interview in the following format: “How does the participant experience the topic of interest?” Taking this broad view or goal for the interviews could help researchers learn about the participants’ experience holistically. All that was learned could be “mined” for how it related to the initial research question. Another strategy was to invite participants to complete a pre-interview activity such a drawing, diagram or list that was related to either the research topic or the participant’s life more generally (Ellis, 2006).