My Original Research Design
When I first planned this project, my intention was to evaluate a newly designed inclusive pre-session questionnaire by collecting data from several students across the Autumn term. My research design combined:
- A semi-structured interview method, guided by a flexible interview schedule.
- Thematic analysis as described by Braun & Clarke (2006, 2013), which is designed to identify patterns across multiple accounts.
My expectation was to gather a small but sufficient dataset to look for common themes around how students experience the questionnaire, how it shapes their 1-to-1 learning, and how it influences feelings of confidence, inclusion, or anxiety.
This design aligned with standard qualitative practice: semi-structured interviews allow depth and flexibility, while thematic analysis supports an inductive exploration of students’ experiences across a dataset.
Interview Schedule:
Analysis method
When the action phase began, the timing of the academic calendar became an unexpected constraint. Because my intervention launched at the end of term, very few students were booking 1-to-1 technical support. In reality, I was only able to complete one full cycle:
- 4 students completed the new pre-session questionnaire.
- 3 student attended a 1-to-1 tutorial with me.
- 2 participated in a follow-up interview.
Although I spoke with two students, the small scale of the data meant my original analytical based on thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; 2017) was not viable. Given this limited dataset, I decided not to pursue thematic analysis in its conventional form. As Braun and Clarke (2017) emphasise, thematic analysis is designed to identify patterned meaning across a dataset, rather than to support close analysis of a small number of cases. Applying this method with only two interviews would have risked overstating the analytic claims or forcing themes that were not adequately supported by the data.
Rather than forcing a method that no longer fit, I treated interviews as illustrative, case-based accounts that enabled a closer examination of how the UDL-informed questionnaire functioned in practice. My focus of analysis shifted from identifying themes across students to examining how they articulated their learning preferences and access needs, and how these articulations shaped the one-to-one interaction.
My analysis uses an interaction-focused approach. I conducted a close, reflexive reading of the interview transcripts alongside field notes from the tutorial sessions, paying attention to how meaning was produced through talk and relevant nonverbal interaction. I specifically examined points where the questionnaire seemed to influence students’ preparedness, session responsiveness, and the ways students raised or clarified their needs (Jordan and Henderson, 1995). Features such as pauses, hesitations, adequacy checks and requests for reassurance were analysed as indicators of comfort, confidence and inclusion in practice, rather than as a separate analysis of power dynamics (Jordan and Henderson, 1995).
The specific approach was informed by Kvale’s (1996) concepts of interviews as “an exchange of views” an InterView, where the interviewer (i.e., myself as a researcher) engage in an almost “therapeutic exchange” with the interviewee, co-creating meaning and curating discourse on the subject. I’ve also drawn inspiration from Holstein and Gubrium’s (1995) notion of the “active interview” — understanding the student’s behaviour as a performance of a “good participant”: agreeable, supportive, and careful not to challenge me, a common dynamic in interviews shaped by institutional roles. Irvine et al.’s (2013) discussion of adequacy checks was particularly useful for interpreting how students monitored their responses and sought confirmation during the interview. These interactional cues provided insight into whether the pre-session questionnaire helped reduce uncertainty, anxiety, or the emotional labour associated with disclosure.
Rather than aiming to produce generalisable findings, this analysis of the results remain as a situated, practice-based account of how a UDL-informed pre-session questionnaire can operate within one-to-one Technical Resources support. By focusing on process, interaction, and anticipatory adjustment, the analysis seeks to illuminate how UDL principles may be operationalised at a micro-pedagogic level to improve inclusivity, preparedness, and student experience.
Reference:
Anyan, F. (2013) ‘The influence of power shifts in data collection and analysis stages: A focus on qualitative research interviews’, The Qualitative Report, 18(18), pp. 1–9.
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2017) ‘Thematic analysis’, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(3), pp. 297–298.
Holstein, J.A. & Gubrium, J.F. (1995) The Active Interview. Thousand Oaks, CA: https://methods.sagepub.com/book/mono/the-active-interview/toc
Sayrs, L. (1998) ‘InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing (Steinar Kvale)… [book review]’, American Journal of Evaluation, volume(19), pp. 267-270
Jordan, B. and Henderson, A. (1995) ‘Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice’, The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(1), pp. 39–103.