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planning. In relation to this study, much of the data which interested me could be
uncovered only through such interviews. The major English work for students of
educational research methodology advises that:
...the more one wishes to acquire unique, non-standardised,
personalised information about how individuals view the world, the
more one veers toward qualitative, open-ended unstructured
interviewing.
(Cohen, Manion 2000)
While the insights of the powerful are significant, Stephen Ball points out pitfalls in
what he describes as “elite interviews”: “interviewees do not produce simple, guileless
descriptions of events; they are sophisticated interpreters of events" (Ball 1994: 112).
A related warning of Ball’s, considered by Ecclestone when assessing her interview
data, is the risk of accepting individuals’ justifications of policy as “simple realism”
(Quoted in Ecclestone 2002: 175). My approach to avoiding that pitfail was to
interrogate the accounts of the same issues as provided by a number of individuals in
order to identify common strands.
Certainly it is no guileless description that I was seeking. On the contrary, it is the
sophisticated interpretation which can, I believe, throw an informed light on issues
which have remained in obscurity because of the inherent caution and the culture of
confidentiality which have always formed part of the examining boards’ culture. My
reading of the literature around the major changes to the examinations structure in
1911, 1944 and 1986 revealed that what was written about those changes had been
based for the most part on documents, without the insight that informed participants
can provide. I strongly believed that the perceptions of those most directly involved
could provide invaluable evidence not generally available. To obtain the best data
from such interviews, Maurice Kogan, whose early experience co-writing a book with
Edward Boyle and Anthony Crosland lends credibility to his advice, suggests that: