Reflections on interviewing children and young people as a method of inquiry in exploring their perspectives on integration/inclusion

There has been increasing interest in eliciting the views of children and young people; one arena for this has been the integration/inclusion context. However the increasing emphasis on the right of children to be heard has tended to emphasise the fact of production over the complexities of elicitation and interpretation. Ethical considerations in interviewing children about integration/inclusion include issues relating to confidentiality, anonymity, protocols, consent, assent and intrusion. Sampling issues include access, mode of communication and selection of data for analysis. This paper also discusses the use of various interview strategies applicable in this context. They include the merits of various ways of initiating (e.g. use of statements rather than questions) and sustaining (e.g. use of pause, interviewer phrasing) the dialogue. It is concluded that researchers in this field need to be rigorous in acknowledging and probing the complexities of child interviews in the integration/inclusion context.     

Discovering physical abuse: insights from a follow-up study of delinquents.

In a follow-up study of incarcerated Connecticut youth, 66 subjects participated in extensive personal interviews. This paper documents discrepancies between early data regarding abuse and retrospective self-reports of abuse given at the time of follow-up. It describes the development of an interview protocol in which inquiries regarding medical history, the general temperament of caretakers and their behaviors when intoxicated, and instruments and methods of punishment used in the home enabled subjects to describe abusive experiences not disclosed in response to direct questions about maltreatment. The paper also discusses the use of explicitly worded probes to flesh out a clear picture of subjects' experiences. The conflicts that underlie denial or minimization of abuse are discussed, along with interviewing strategies for overcoming them.     

Training and education of teachers in higher education in developing countries

The article describes our experience and experiments in helping to develop a training programme for academic staff at Universiti Sains Malaysia and the model of staff training associated with this programme. This is used as a basis for proposals for a more general scheme of staff training for universities in the South East Asian region, a special feature of the proposals being the use of distance teaching and of individualised learning materials in teaching and learning in higher education. The ultimate aim of the scheme is to make the region independent of outside assistance.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Open University Conference on The Education of Adults at a Distance, Birmingham, 19–24 November, 1979.