Initially, I thought I would be able to observe students in their job placements but this proved to be unrealistic. Students were very nervous about being observed and having me enter their job placement settings. The instructor who visited the students at their placements also felt my observation would not be easily facilitated: she expressed concern about getting permission for me to go into placements sites, and worried that the sites may think they were part of the study. For these reasons, I decided not to accompany students to their placement sites, but instead asked them to describe their work at their placements during the individual interview sessions.

Student Interviews

The same students who were observed in the coffee shop and classroom were also interviewed. In addition, each of the three program instructors was interviewed. The elements of situated learning were used to design the interview questions (Appendix G) and the questions focused more on the unseen elements of learning, such as motivations, personal learning values and goals, ideal learning conditions, and the impacts of learning in their lives. I also asked students to describe what they did and who they worked with on their job placements, in order to make up for not observing this setting.

During the interviews, it was equally important to not only focus on the whats of the interview process, but to also focus on the hows of the process, which included paying attention to the interview context, body language of the participants, and possible silences (Fontana & Frey, 2000). After each of the recorded 45 minute to one–hour sessions, I transcribed all of the tapes. Then, after reading through the transcriptions, I wrote a narrative of the interview to capture the essential elements of the conversations. The narratives focused on the key ideas expressed in the interviews and included extensive quotations from the transcripts. The narratives were then returned to all of the participants (and read if desired to the students) as part of a member–checking process.

I was aware of my position of power with the students, and came to the conclusion that there was very little I could do to close the gap between who I was (program instructor, white, middle–class, educated), and who they were (multi–ethnic, visible minority, social assistance dependent, and disabled). We had very different life experiences that could not and should not be disregarded, and I was in a position of power that could not be ignored. All I could do was listen to their stories with all of my mental, physical, and emotional attention. This meant I had to listen with an open heart. This was not simply a matter of being respectful nor passing judgment in an attempt to mentally understand; but it was more about opening the self up to their described experiences. It was about feeling their words and not just thinking about them.