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Primary education: listening and observing
Primary education: listening and observing

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7.1 Interview schedules

A photograph of a woman writing on a pad of paper.
Figure 8

Interviews with children should be informal, semi-structured and conversational. They are more like chats with a specific purpose. If you have an opportunity to interview children, parents or school staff, you will have a clear idea of what you want to ask and you will want to use the time effectively, but you will also want them to feel relaxed and confident about sharing their thoughts with you.

If you have an opportunity to do an interview in a school, you would devise a list of questions you wish to ask. This is called an interview schedule. It is good practice to share the questions with those you are interviewing, so that they have a chance to think about how they might answer. At the start of the interview, you should talk with the other person about what you are trying to find out. Try to keep your list of questions brief, so you and the person you are talking with have time to discuss other, unexpected questions that might arise over the course of the interview. Ethically, you are obligated to allow the interviewee to stop at any time and not continue the interview. If this happens, the interviewee may also have the right to delete or destroy anything that was recorded or written down.