Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 46

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the background and rationale of such courses, it is necessary to go beyond a description of the workshops and to explore the nature of clowning itself. In this context, it became decisive to elicit Gladwell’s own thoughts on his work. Hence the interviews which I conducted with him proved to be an essential element of this research. All of the sessions were recorded and later transcribed.

From March, 20–22, 2005, I was a guest at his house in Castel Magnoc, in Southern France. In the course of these three days I had the opportunity to conduct seven semi-structured interviews with him, each lasting between 60–90 minutes. It is an accepted research paradigm that an interview should occur in a social setting in which people can converse in a relaxed and undisturbed manner. In this respect, these interviews were conducted in ideal circumstances.208

The general framework and design of the interviews followed the underlying principles of interviewing which Irving Seidman has elucidated. Seidman suggests a three-part format beginning with general and personal background material, followed by a descriptive phase focused on contemporary experience, which in this case involved extensive questioning about each consecutive phase of a clowning workshop, and finally more general reflections on the meaning of the work.209

In keeping with accepted research practices, he had full access to the transcriptions and was given the freedom to change any of the wording.