As I see it, there are two problems inherent in the use of the concept. On the one
hand, "interviewing" has turned into an umbrella term that covers almost any type of
interaction between researcher and subjects. Almost everything is considered
interviewing. Many texts even use interviewing as synonym of different modes of
interacting such as discussion or verbal report. I strongly believe that one cannot use a
term so loosely. On the other hand, the term is so widely used that it seems to carry
certain universal default features. For instance, most people think that if the interviewee
starts asking questions there is something wrong in the interview. Moreover, the fixation
of InterviewerZinterviewee roles presupposes the control of discourse on the part of the
interviewer. All this seems to be part of folk wisdom, However, this is an essential issue
if we consider that I was going to use it with the participants of the project. Let me quote
a simple straightforward definition of interview:
the transaction that takes place between seeking information on the part of one
and supplying information on the part of the other ( Cohen and Manion; 1994,271)
Definitions like this make me avoid the term when working with in the project. I
absolutely did not want them to think of an interviewing situation where it is the
interviewer, and the audience, if there is one, who are interested in the answers of the
questions and in which the interviewee, in most of cases, does not focus on the answers,
either because she is already aware that she knows them or because she is more
interested in discovering the hidden agenda of the interviewer. I wanted the participants
to think in terms of a counselling event where, on the contrary, there is supposed to be a
balanced interest in the answers of the counsellee, and of the counsellor as well and in
which both parties have enough reasons to make questions and to give answers, and both
parties are equally interested in what is being said for this is the basis for both, further
interaction and study plans.
Cohen and Manion (1994), consider the therapeutic interview as an antecedent of
non-directive interview. Actually, this type of interview is similar to the counselling
session in self-directed learning because none of them occur as isolated research
phenomena. Both are part of larger schemes, therapeutic and learning schemes,
respectively. However there are still big differences between both genres. Among them,
the most important for me are two. First, that the learner cannot be regarded as a "sick"
person whose "motivation is to obtain relief from a particular symptom" (ibid., 288-9).
Second, one of the main motivations of my own interactors, FL learners, is educational.