Teaching outdoor and adventure activities: an investigation of a primary school physical education professional development p

Qualitative methods of data collection. 
Interview.
The purpose of the interview is to gain an understanding of an 
individual’s perspective on a given topic and/or life experiences (e.g. a teacher’s 
perspective on his or her work, lessons, decision-making etc). An interview is a 
purposeful conversation between two (or more) people that is directed by one in order to 
get information from the other (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Kvale, 1996; Rubin & Rubin, 
2005). Increasingly, researchers are realising that interviews are not neutral tools of 
data collection but rather active interactions between people leading to contextualised 
based results. The focus of interviews is moving to the how’s of people’s lives (the 
constructive work involved in producing order in everyday life) as well as the 
traditional what’s (the activities of everyday life) (Gubrium & Holstein, 1997; Kvale, 
1996; Silverman, 2005). The research question focused on the evaluation of a 
professional development programme and its impact and the purpose of the interviews 
was to supplement the initial questionnaire data and the observation data collected 
throughout the research, to provide answers to the research questions. The main 
advantage of interviews as a data collection method was that they provided a more ‘in-
depth insight into the topic’ (Denscombe, 2003).

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All interviews were semi-structured in nature as they provided the opportunity 
for participants, both teachers and children, to speak extensively on the subject at hand.
Denscombe (2003) outlined the benefits of semi-structured interviews as follows; 
the interviewer …has a clear list of issues to be addressed and questions to be 
answered…the interviewer is prepared to be flexible in terms of the order in 
which the topics are considered, and, perhaps more significantly to let the 
interviewee develop ideas and speak more widely on the issues raised by the 
researcher. The answers are open-ended, and there is more emphasis on the 
interviewee elaborating points of interest. (p. 167) 
The interview with the Principal (Appendix F) was the only one-to-one 
interview organised as the Principal’s opinion and point of view was best sought using 
this method. Interviews took place on completion of both stages of the professional 
development programme. All subsequent interviews with teachers and children were 
organised as focus group interviews. The schedule focused on three areas, physical 
education practices in the school prior to the PDP, post the PDP and the Principal’s 
views of the professional development programme. The following is a summary of the 
topics of the Principal interview schedule: 
Description of physical education in the school pre PDP 
Professional development context
Changes in practice 
Changes in attitude of school community to physical education and 
O&AA, due to PDP 
Challenges to change 
Effects of PDP on school