no such thing as a bad interview

According to Jan Blommaert that is? During the 4 interviews I conducted in the past two days this was the thought foremost in my mind. Maybe it was just my psychological little 'get-out-of-jail-free card' helping me not become overtly critical about my interview abilities. What this little adage does provide, is the security and confidence to just be yourself in the interview and actually just engage with the interviewee on a personal level. However, deep down I do wonder whether the data from the interviews will deliver. I can't say now because I think the true quality of the data will only become obvious during the intense analysis period.

I'm more concerned about my staff interviews at the moment - the ones where I'm trying to tap into the knowledge construction underpinning specific assessment tasks and their criteria. I just don't 'get' what it is I should be asking about, and realised on Thursday that once I start drilling down into the basis of the assignment construction - it becomes exactly that - a drilling exercise where the lecturer is inevitably put on the spot (certainly not my intention) and it starts to feel as if I'm evaluating the lecturer's theoretical knowledge, prowess and the credibility of their assessment strategy. So it's a difficult balance to reach and maintain.

I love the student interviews - I just come away thinking - wow! what phenomenal young people, who are so acutely aware of what's happening in there course. Educators out there - if you ever think your students aren't aware of the underlying hidden agendas being transmitted via your curriculum and your actions and behaviours - think again.

reflecting on fieldwork

I have just about 1 scheduled week left in my first research site and I'm feeling a bit frantic as I try to arrange interviews with both staff and students before the end of term and ensure I have sat in on each lecturers' class at least twice. I wonder if my fieldwork strategy has been successful -i.e. if it has enabled me to gain as much insight into the daily practices of this department as possible. I realised it was going to be difficult to spread myself across all the cohort levels over the 7 week period I was in the department and that moving from class to class meant I wasn't able to develop and maintain more lasting relationships with any particular cohort/student. You need to be present in a particular class everyday to build relations with those students - and if they are dashing from class to class and from level to level you lose out on that interpersonal closeness. You have to make compromises - and now I'm wondering about those compromises. Today I was asked why I'm not staying in the department for a longer time - why I've split my activities between two research sites / departments? I've wonder this myself. My justification for working with two departments was really about building a better case for generalisating across a specific departmental context and saying something more broadly about multimodal academic literacy practices within vocational higher education. Focusing on one department would mean I could only say something about that particularly course, possibly drawing some inferences for other courses like it at other institutions. I wanted to say less about the specifics of a particular course and more about the nature of multimodal literacy practices at vocational higher education - hence I needed to consider more than one case. And so the compromises started.

My timing is completely messed up (I'm using a far more descriptive phrase in my head) I've run out of time to do interviews - many of them will have to happen when I'm officially suppose to be in the new research site. I feel now I should have 'pulled' out of the class observations earlier, spent more time considering my data analytically, rather than simply collecting 'stuff' to be subjected to some analytical process when back on the small island, identified core assignments I wanted to explore earlier in my fieldwork period and so concentrate on those - possibly using these core assignment to drive my observation activities rather than the level or cohort structures imposed by the course. I will need to rethink my strategies for the new research site which exist on multiple campuses and have more complex staffing considerations to take into account.

But on a more personal note - I'm actually sad that I have to leave my current research site - I'm just beginning to 'fit' in and become valuable to staff thus becoming both visible and invisible in my presence. I've also attached to certain students - and would love to see their continued development as they progress through the course and go make a living in the real world - big big *sigh*

@%*king e-mails and other crap

It's midnight, I've just lost an e-mail destined for my supervisors that took me almost 20 minutes to compose and I'm totally fed up. I'm a bit stressed because my schedule is being stretched and I'm having to adopt a more flexible approach to not only my scheduling, but also the whole notion of what fieldwork may or may not mean. I'm also panicking a bit about deliverables - having said I would write up a case study of my current research site before I go into the new research site...ja ja! What am I doing making such irresponsible commitments anyway? It's not like my supervisors asked / instructed me to do it - I said I would.

In all this madness, and alongside trying to be more in control of the situation, deadlines, interviews and the accompanying paper work (which for the life of me I cant seem to find in the many multi-coloured plastic sleeves neatly stored in various locations around my little lounge/come-desk area), I remembered what I did last Tuesday evening with my sister and niece. Trying to escape the 37 degree day I went for a cooling swim at Sea Point Pavilion and then we enjoyed supper on the beach. I captured the beautiful Cape Town sunset.

Maybe now I'll try writing that e-mail again.