Group Interview

After the individual student interviews, seven of the eight students participated in a group interview. One student was absent from school the day of the interview. The group interview, along with all other interviews, including the instructor's group interview, were conducted in a private office in the school that hosted the program. This was a convenient and neutral site that was not used as part of the program's regular activities. Before beginning the interview, the students had read their narratives from their individual interviews. The group interview was an opportunity to bring the students together in order to share their views about issues that emerged from both the individual interviews and previous observation sessions. The group interview also helped to shift the balance of power towards the students and away from me. In a one-on-one interview, power is shifted towards the interviewer, but in a group, in which the interviewer is outnumbered, power can be more evenly distributed. This power shift helped to "foster free expression of ideas, encouraging the members of the group to speak up" (Frey & Fontana, 1993 cited in Madriz, 2000, p. 838).

As with the other interviews, the group interview was transcribed, but a narrative was not done. My reason for doing narratives in the individual interviews did not align with the group interview. In the individual interviews, the narratives were completed for two reasons: to allow a more readable document to be given to students and instructors for member–checking; and to begin to reduce data and focus on key issues. The group interview was not reviewed by the participating students, and it was used, not to illuminate new issues, but to build on previous data sources, such as the observations and individual interviews. For these reasons, I felt a narrative was not useful.

Document Analysis

Documents that included planning and curriculum guides, teaching materials and student work were analyzed for two reasons: to complement the words of the instructors and students, and to assess how they could be used within a sociocultural learning environment. The following questions were used to guide analysis: How are the documents and materials connected to the students' daily experiences? How do they reflect the situations, values, and beliefs of the students and teachers? How do the materials shape interactions? And, how do the students and instructors use the documents? As I went through the collected documents, I made notes to answer the three guiding questions. These notes were then used to shape the findings.