METHODOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION AND LIMITATIONS

METHODOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION AND LIMITATIONS

In keeping with the tradition of phenomenographic research, this study used interviews to elicit data from children. An initial draft of interview questions (see Appendix 1) was pilot tested with two upper primary children in Brunei. Both pilot interviews elicited limited data from the children. Accordingly, the supervisory team and the researcher, with input from Professor Ference Marton, agreed to use

a scenario approach. The scenario approach helped the children to reflect on their own learning experiences and share these experiences with the researcher. Two scenario ‐based sets of questions were used in this study and both scenarios were constructed based on the children’s limited responses in both pilot interviews. The children’s limited responses were used to construct both scenarios to make sure that the scenarios were in line with the children’s actual learning experiences. Nevertheless, consideration could be given to the extent to which the scenario‐ based questions may have influenced the children’s responses.

This study is the first of its kind to use a scenario approach in phenomenographic interviews with children. The scenario‐based question is similar to the problem‐ based questions used in early Swedish phenomenographic studies to obtain data. Problem ‐based questions have also been used in recent phenomenographic research (see for example, Edwards, 2006). The benefit of using the scenario approach was that the children could relate their experiences of learning to the characters introduced in the scenarios. Each character had different ways of experiencing learning that ranged from ‘learning to play computer games at home

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and in school’ (Scenario 1), ‘learning through listening, watching and doing work’ to ‘learning through doing experiments and projects’ (Scenario 2). These learning experiences were constructed using the children’s limited responses during pilot interviews. All learning experiences used in both scenarios (Scenario 1 and Scenario 2), therefore, were based on the children’s actual experiences of learning. Learning is quite an abstract concept for children to reflect on and share with others. This was evident throughout all pilot interviews where the children found it difficult to articulate their understandings of learning to the researcher. They were more comfortable with questions that asked ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions. Both scenarios provided more concrete experiences for the children to reflect on and share their experiences of learning with the researcher.

Apart from the abstract nature of learning as a phenomenon, one of the problems in getting the children to talk during both pilot interviews was that the children were not used to being asked questions about learning, even when asked by a researcher who spoke their Mother Tongue and a Brunei resident. They were reticent and seemed unsure with what to say to the researcher. Indeed, according to Zwiers and Morrissette (1999), gaining the perspective of children is often a challenge, and children may find it unusual to be asked to reflect on what they have experienced.

The scenario approach, however, enabled the children to comment on the characters’ learning experiences and, in so doing, the children became more open in

The influence of structural hierarchy on the children’s role and behaviour in school was evident during the interview. In a social background in which they are expected to conform to their elders’ expectations, the children have limited scope to reflect on their experiences and express their understandings about an aspect of their world. Despite using the scenario approach, the children’s responses were still limited. Probing for further clarification was particularly difficult as the children paused and repeated their responses. The following excerpt illustrates how difficult it was for the researcher to probe the children’s responses,

I: What is the kind of learning that you like best? P: Doing something. [Hands‐on] activities [pause]

I: Why is that? P: I like [hands‐on] activities, but it’s important to listen to our teachers

too [pause]

I: Because [pause]?

P: [Silence]

I: Can you tell me more about ‘doing something’? What do you mean by ‘doing something’? Can you give me examples?

P: [Hands‐on] activities [pause] like [pause] umm [pause] experimenting, looking at pictures, puzzles [pause]

(Gayah, Interview Phase 2)

While the scenarios could have provided a direction for the children’s responses during the interviews, leading questions were avoided and open‐ended probes were used to elicit responses from the children.

The findings are grounded in the data and the outcome space of this study reflects the researcher’s attempt at describing the children’s qualitatively different ways of learning as faithfully as possible. The researcher made a conscious decision to avoid moving too quickly from the data to an attempt to structure the data in a hierarchy. During the analytic process, the researcher set aside the assumption that the categories of description would be hierarchically related. Indeed, the categories of description were discussed with different groups of researchers (for example, the supervisory team, PhD colleagues and university based phenomenographers) before any attempt to outline a structure was made.