17 Jun INTERVIEWEE
What Makes a Good Interview?
he intent of a qualitative interview is to encourage, elicit, and illuminate the interviewee’s experience in rich, thick detail. Consider that most interviewees will only have a general idea of your research goals and the depth you need for analysis. Therefore, your presentation of the interview questions and engagement with the interviewee are the tools that guide the process.
As you consider your interview, think about:
1-Asking of questions to ask to encourage stories and examples
2-How to “reframe” questions to reduce ambiguity and bias
3-What you can do to make the interviewee at ease
4-What you can do to build rapport and trust
For this Discussion, you will examine the characteristics of a good qualitative interview.
To prepare for this Discussion:
Review the chapters of the Rubin and Rubin course text and consider the characteristics of a good qualitative interview.
Review the Yob and Brewer interview questions in Appendix A at the end of the article and consider how interview guides are used in research.
Review the Interview Guide Instructions and the Interview Guide Example found in this week’s Learning Resources and use these documents to guide you during your interview.
Post your explanation of the characteristics of a good qualitative interview. Also include what makes a good interview guide. Use the interview questions from Yob and Brewer’s interview guide to support your post.
Be sure to support your main post and response post with reference to the week’s Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA style.
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Understanding and Practicing Social Change in Higher Education
Iris Yob iris.yob@waldenu.edu
Patricia Brewer patricia.brewer@waldenu.edu
(Paper under review for publication)
2015
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Understanding and Practicing Social Change in Higher Education
Abstract:
The concept of universities as contributing partners within their local communities is sometimes expressed as seeking to create social change. In this study, students, faculty members, and alumni at one university were interviewed about their understanding of and experience with the university mission of creating positive social change. The discussion of the emergent common themes—focus on others, helping and changing, the ripple effect, the role of education, equity and empowerment–includes suggestions for strengthening the curriculum and learning experiences to better prepare students as contributors to social change.
Key words:
charity, change, ripple effect, equity, empowerment, social justice, social change, agency
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Understanding and Practicing Social Change in Higher Education
Many institutions of higher education in the United States and indeed around the world are reaching out to their neighborhoods as a member of the community to contribute to the common good through research, service, and educational opportunities. In this descriptive study, the understandings and practice around this kind of activity by one university with a mission of creating positive social change is explored. The goal of the study was two-fold: to discover how members of the university currently understand and practice the mission and from this to suggest ideas and approaches that might strengthen the mission going forward. Through a series of interviews conducted with faculty members, students, and alumni several themes were identified using two different kinds of analysis. Similar results were found in both analyses. These results give rise to several implications for the university in developing its community outreach, along with some suggestions for further research. The discussion of findings for this university might have applicability to other institutions of higher education with a similar commitment to the community.
Background to the Study
Over two decades ago, Boyer claimed, “At no time in our history has the need been greater for connecting the work of the academy to the social and environmental challenges beyond the campus (1990, xii).” Duderstadt, a decade later, noting some of the pitfalls to an institution of higher learning that arise from the expectation that it will “address social needs and concerns”, nevertheless declares that “it is clear that public service must continue to be an important responsibility of the American university” (2000, 2003, 146). For the purpose of this
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study, when colleges and universities find ways to serve their local communities and contribute to the common good, their efforts are identified as contributing to positive social change.
The term “social change” has been defined and analyzed across the academic disciplines, reflecting the particular perspective of that discipline and its research agenda. In recent research and professional education literature, one finds little in the way of a definition of social change. In one study, a proposal for social change in schools (Jean-Marie, Normore, & Brooks, 2009), the authors reported that their literature review was aided by such identifiers and organizers as equity, diversity, social justice, liberatory education, race, gender, ethics, urban school, global education, critical pedagogy, oppression, social change, social development, and social order, among others. From the review of the literature around these key terms, Jean-Marie, Normore, and Brooks see social change as bringing about a “new social order” in which marginalized peoples would have the same educational and social opportunities as those more privileged (p. 4).
As the list of identifiers above suggests, the concepts of social justice and equity have been significant in discussions of social change in education, psychology, and social and cultural studies (see also Curry-Stevens, 2007; Drury & Reicher, 2009; Moely, Furco, & Reed, 2008; and Peterson, 2009). The writing and advocacy of Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, civil rights leaders, and feminists during the last half of the 20th century influenced these understandings and helped shape the particular emphases of social change in recent decades.
Farley, writing in 1990, offered an understanding of social change as “alterations in behaviour patterns, social relationships, institutions, and social structure over time” (Hoff & Hickling-Hudson, 2011, p. 189). However, Hoff and Hickling-Hudson found this inadequate from an educational point of view because of its value-neutral stance. They preferred a definition
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that would give social change a “connotation of social progress or social development beneficial to society” (p. 189). For this reason, they chose the definition proposed by Aloni in 2002, which places social change as challenging “trends of discrimination, exploitation, oppression, and subjugation displayed by groups that regard themselves as favored and, thus, take privileges for themselves and deprive other groups of the right to a dignified life” (Hoff & Hickling-Hudson, 2011, p. 189). In other words, the change in social change is defined here in positive and value-laden terms that relate more particularly to the agents of social change than to others they might want to change. They were careful to add that this cannot be cast in universal or absolute terms, but it is dependent on particular contexts and circumstances (see also Itay, 2008, writing in political science).
Armstrong and Miller (2006), working in continuing education and innovation studies, respectively, identified other influences over time arising from new political and social realities. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, they noted that there was an economic recession and a distinct move toward the right; social purposes turned toward economic ones. For instance, education was seen to be increasingly determined by the needs and forces of the market and less by concerns for equity and social justice, a conclusion suggested also by Atkinson (2010) in adult education and Feldman (2001) in economic history. Armstrong and Miller also noted that increasing global and international contact has led to revisions in the meaning of social purpose narrowly defined in Western terms and contexts and the “grand narrative” of modernism being replaced by post-modern discourses (p. 900), an idea echoed also in adult education by Holst (2007).
Brennan (2008), writing in a higher education context, identified many of the same changing influences on society and concepts of social change. He added that the social context in
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which higher education operates today calls for universities to be responsive in a number of ways to their constituent societies. One of these responses, playing “a role in constructing the ‘just and stable’ society” (pp. 387–388), ironically returns the social change mission to the goals of equity, which he suggested includes equitable access to the credentials needed to participate as equals in the new societal realities and guarantees of autonomy and freedom. Furman and Gruenewald (2004), working in educational administration, described yet another new influence on understandings of social change: ecological concerns. Their argument was that “environmental crises are inseparable from social crises” (p. 48), primarily because they usually have to do with the misuse of racial and economic power. So again, in this take on social change, one returns to questions of equity.
Overall, it is apparent that social change and social purpose have been focused primarily on equity issues, although their working definitions, both implicit and explicit, reflect a spectrum of meanings ranging from simple activism around race, gender, and poverty, to more nuanced understandings of the impact of technology developments, diversity, globalization, as well as the ecological environment. More recently, this focus has received renewed attention as the gap between rich and poor is seen to be widening and the middle class to be diminishing (Gillis & McLellan, 2013; Goldberg, 2012; Guy, 2012).
This wide range of what might be covered by social change gives educators plenty of room to move, but what may be problematic for curriculum planners, teachers, and leaders in higher education institutions is the focus of these kinds of definitions. They tend to look at the terminus of social change activity—the end product, the final result, even the goal–rather than at the processes of social change, that is, the change activities themselves. In essence, “social change” can be seen as either action or result, product or process, noun or verb. And while
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educators need a clear end-in-view for their work with students, processural understandings of social change may serve them better in planning for the kinds of learning experiences that will bring about the desired results. While explicit or even stipulative definitions of social change are seldom found in recent professional or research articles in education, different kinds of social change are described or proposed and analyzed. An examination of these descriptions and analyses of social change may be more helpful in the long term than definitions which can be too broad, and hence, too vague to be very helpful, or too narrow and prescriptive to capture a sufficiently wide and nuanced range of understandings.
One of the most frequently made distinctions in social change is that between charity and helping on the one hand and change and justice on the other. In many cases, the distinction is assumed (e.g., Moely, Furco, & Reed, 2008); in other cases, it is elaborated. In simplest terms, charity work sets out to help someone; or in service-learning terms, change efforts aim to modify social arrangements toward equity (Mitchell, 2008, p. 55). In cultural and social studies, charity has been identified as “transactional” service; change and social justice as “transformational” (Peterson, 2009, pp. 541, 545). Consequently, activity in the charity category is described as terminal; that is, it ceases when the various players leave or complete the immediate tasks, whereas in the change category, where the focus is on structural or systemic changes, the activity is no longer continued only if all those affected no longer face such need. In other words, from a social work perspective, charity seeks to discover the immediate elements of a particular individual’s needs and deal with them; change investigates the wider picture of all those with similar needs and how the whole group might be helped by systemic change (Allen-Meares, 2008, p. 86). In effect, charity addresses the symptoms of a social injustice; change seeks to
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remove the root causes (Allen-Meares, p. 83; Mitchell, 2008, p. 52). The former participants can usually see immediate results for their efforts; the latter work for the long term and may actually never see final results, or at least they will discover that results are usually not immediately apparent (Mitchell, 2008, p. 54). One writer summed up the difference: charity “ameliorates a bad situation” and change “remedies a bad situation” (Peterson, 2009, p. 546).
The driving force of those who provide charity is to serve the needy, whereas for the change agents, the service has to become a true community effort, involving the needy, caregivers, policymakers, and others in the social context (Mitchell, 2008, p. 52). So change goes beyond “doing for,” “serving,” or “giving to” those in need, to working together against systems of injustice, and importantly, recognizing that systemic injustice implicates all the members of a community (p. 58). At its worst, charity may be patronizing, perpetuating rather than overcoming the differential in power—the “us versus them” dichotomy—which may have brought about the need in the first place (p. 52). At its best, change may not only amend the situation of the needy but also strengthen authentic relationships among all those involved as it redistributes and shares power more equally between those who are privileged and those who are not (p. 53). In the reciprocity between the needy and change agents, each benefits although in different ways (Peterson, 2009, p. 547).
Emotion serves as both a motivator and a sustainer in social change activities. According to some social psychologists, the most applicable emotion in the charity category is sympathy for, that is, feeling sorry for somebody else in need. In the change category, the emotions most likely are guilt (when one recognizes one’s own privilege and implication in social situations, which benefit oneself at the expense of others); moral outrage at the injustices that have brought
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about inequity and need for some; and empathy, which helps one understand how another feels and experiences the injustice (McGarty, & Mavor, 2009).
Writing within the context of human services, Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri (2007) picked up on many of the distinctions between charity and change but put them in an entirely different light. They replaced charity with focused or peripheral change; that is, advocacy for individuals providing “relatively short-term interventions designed to gain access to, utilization of, or improve the existing service delivery system” (p. 60). These interventions are critical in operationalizing an organization’s mission in that they focus on implementing and achieving the intent of particular policies and processes (p. 61). They are usually manifested as case advocacy—working for “individual clients whose rights have been violated and/or whose access to benefits have been denied” (p. 63). Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri also substituted “change” with “transformation” described as “long-term, structural interventions designed to change the status quo at broad community, state, regional, or even national level” (p. 60). These kinds of interventions may involve “social movement organizations, campaigns for social justice . . . and coalitions with system reform goals” (p. 60). They may threaten the status quo and are usually manifested as cause advocacy—working in “an arena, locus of change, or target,” which may be “an organization . . . legislation, law, and/or community or other large system” (p. 63).
While the literature in general clearly weighs in on the side of change over charity, some writers have raised points in favor of taking a more holistic view of social change that includes both charity and change. Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri (2007), for instance, proposed that because both case advocacy and cause advocacy fall within the professional roles of human services providers, both must be planned for and their success evaluated. One argument in favor of a more holistic view is that charity may be needed as a necessary first step to improve immediate
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