Before the main interviews, I tried out the interview questions by conducting the pilot interviews. A set of open-ended questions were piloted with two mini focus group
interviews in order to find out whether the participants understand and respond to the questions in the way the study intends. More importantly, the pilot was designed to gain
insights into the way in which individuals are influencing and influenced by others through participant interaction.
In order to obtain clearer and more specific information regarding students’ viewpoints, I divided the interview questions into three sections. Section one contains some general
questions that lead the participants to discussions. More importantly, warming up the atmosphere and to guide participants’ into the situation were the main functions in this
section. Section II is used to find out how the related subjects and activities are arranged in a senior high school. I then tried to explore participants’ attitudes towards the learning
of political education with regard to the related subjects at school by asking the questions in Section III. The interview questions are shown in appendix 1.
2.2 The Main Focus Group Interview
Due to the limited scope of this paper, it is not possible to quote all the opinions presented by the participants. Therefore, the key findings and discussions are concluded
as follows. 2.2.1 General Questions
The findings reveal that most of the interviewees cast doubts on the function of politics rather than seeing the positive side of politics, such as the functions of government and
the representatives. Although they all agreed that “politics” does exist and occur in the school, most of them believed “politics”, which was defined by them in different ways,
would result in negative effects. One question might be brought in: what are the intensity and direction they feel about politics?
Although the original purpose of asking these two questions was just for warming up, the interviewees’ responses indicated that two further issues need to be measured with a
larger number of subjects through the questionnaire in the follow-up research: students’ cognitive perspectives towards the meaning of politics, and the intensity and direction
they feel about politics.
2.2.2 Students’ Perspectives towards the Arrangements of School Curriculum
One of the significant findings in this section is that most of the interviewees don’t like to attend the Three Principles of People class. They not only view it as an outdated subject
but also regard it as a kind of political and ideological indoctrination. Their responses also reflect the downgrade status of this subject in the Joint Entrance Exam of
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University.
3
However, it is also interesting that interviewees do not want this subject to be abolished. In other words, they prefer attending this boring class than attending the
core ones. Consequently, a further inquiry concerning the nature of the subject and the arrangement
of school curriculum is derived from the contradiction between students’ preference and willingness. It would become another factor which should receive further exploration.
The second significant finding is about students’ identity and their willingness of participation in the activities containing the nature of political education. The preliminary
finding through focus group interviews show that students have different identity and willingness of participation in the activities of political education arranged by school,
such as the morning assembly, classroom assembly, the election of outstanding students, student associations. Further quantitative research might focus on the relationship
between students’ background, the direction yes or no and intensity how often they view or participate in these activities.
The third factor is about the classroom and interpersonal interactions. Basically, interviewees’ responses toward this issue were very similar. However, an interesting
finding here is about students’ attitudes and reactions towards those teachers and classmates who express the political opinion in the classroom. We realise from
interviewees’ responses that they normally keep silent or are unwilling to express opinions which are different from teachers’, even when they are encouraged by the
teachers. In contrast, their responses reveal that they would not hesitate to discuss or debate on political issues with their classmates. Consequently, the issue of tolerance of
different opinion is worth undertaking a further investigation. 2.2.3 Students’ Perspectives towards the Learning of Political Education Rationales,
Goals, and Contents
One of the important purposes of asking these questions is to explore what students’ preferred contents are regarding the learning of political education at school. However,
the preliminary findings show that, except for question 9, the interviewees’ options in this section distribute widely. In order to explore further meanings of the results, a
quantitative study undertaken through a questionnaire to examine the distributions of the preferences as well as the relationship between students’ background and their
preferences is needed.
3
The weight of score in the Three Principles of People were equalised with other subjects, such as English, Chinese Literature, Mathematics, et al, since the Joint Entrance Exam of University JEEU had been
undertaken decades ago. In the 1990s’, after lifting the Martial Law, its weight has been downgraded gradually in the JEEU. Some university departments even do not adopt the score of this subject as the
entrance requirement.
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3 Limitations and Values 3.1 The Limitations: Validity, Reliability, Generalisability and Ethical
Issues
Stewart Shamdasani 1990 argue that a single group may be sufficient when the population of interest is relatively homogeneous and the research question is relatively
simple. However, with only a single focus group, the range of participants who need to be interviewed to have a full understanding of the topic cannot be reflected in this study.
Since comparison and contrast of responses across different groups become impossible, differences in perspectives between groups of people cannot be understood. This could be
the most significant limitation of this study since the findings and information generated seem not to be rich and sufficient enough.
Although the focus group conducted in this study does afford more opportunity for participants to share ideas, it cannot be denied that the restricted size also results in a
smaller pool of total ideas. This leads to another limitation of this study. Moreover, focus groups are rarely used as the primary research tool. Rather, they are
often used as a supplementary or preliminary source of data in studies that rely on some other primary method such as a survey Morgan 1997. Since focus group interviews are
often used as an initial test of hypotheses before conducting a larger study, follow-up investigations are required so that the research questions of this study can be fully
answered. For instance, further quantitative exploration can be undertaken by formulating a questionnaire for a larger number of senior high school students to answer.
A final yet interesting finding regarding focus groups is the issue of confidentiality, which could be another limitation of this study. It is generally agreed that all stages of
focus group research design, implementation and presentation are surrounded by ethical issues Kitzinger Barbour 1999; Cohen et al. 2000; Robson 2002. Unlike other
research methods such as one-to-one interviews, focus groups are made of more than one group member. Obviously, absolute confidentiality cannot be guaranteed to the
participants who share and exchange perceptions in the group discussion.
In my study, nevertheless, many interviewees felt disappointed when knowing that their name will be noted in the form of anonymity. They even asked if I could possibly put
their names in the written paper. As one maintained,
“Since I don’t mind allowing people to know who I am and what I said, why do you still want to make me anonymous? I really want to let your readers know that I am
one of your contributors.”
This unexpected finding seems to overthrow the principle of anonymity associated with ethical issues raised by all research method textbooks and lectures, although it might not
have a direct influence on the results of this study.
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3.2 The Values: Validity, Reliability, Generalisability and Ethical Issues
