D ATA COLLECTION AND PROCEDURES

Process of data collection followed three phases. In the initial phase information about the national context was gathered. For this phase, educational experts and policy-makers were crucial, as well as thorough document review and literature overview. The interviewees were selected based on their expertise within the topic of educational innovation in both Hungary and Portugal. The process was supported by an advice from the supervisors in both cases.

Interaction with the experts and policy-makers was done through semi-structured individual interviews and in one case a focus group.

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In detail, the collection of data from the experts in Hungary included initial interviews with three experts, two of which were also involved as consultants in designing innovation and development policies in previous years. Two of the experts were also involved with high-end educational research, including a leading role in two national research projects on innovation in education. In Portugal, there were two educational expert individual semi-structured interviews and one focus group interview with three representatives from the Ministry of Education. The three governmental representatives were all involved in current educational reform and intervention generating innovations, while one of the two educational experts had a long academic record in understanding development of innovation in Portugal and the other expert served as a consultant to the government and to the schools in terms of supporting the implementation of educational change.

All the interviewees were first contacted via e-mail which provided detailed information on the purpose of the study, scope and overview, researcher’s own background and ethical information such as confidentiality and procedures. The interviews were appointed at times and places most convenient to the interviewees, and they were all conducted face-to-face. The individual interviews lasted between 60-80 minutes, and the focus group interview lasted approximately 100 minutes. Data was audio recorded and transcribed within a maximum of three weeks after the interviews took place. All expert interviews were conducted in English.

After better examining the overall context of school innovation, phase two included school visits which were only informative in character and no formal interview would take place. The visits allowed for unstructured observations and for gathering data in the form of field notes as well as informative question and answer elements, yet these were mainly used for making a better interview guide in phase three. The visits allowed the school leaders and some teachers to get introduced to the research scope and the researcher, enabling a better interview relationship at the third stage. The visits were all setup by the EDiTE technical secretariat and they usually included larger groups of 4-9 researchers. The procedure of a school visit usually included a tour around the school, exploration of specific topics and innovations, and an overall question and answer section. In some occasions the school visit was completely or partly done in Hungarian or Portuguese and, in such situations, there was spontaneous interpretations offered by the technical secretariat. Almost all of the school appointments included visiting a classroom to observe part of the teaching within the class. There were in total 6 initial school visits in Hungary and 7 school visits in Portugal. The visits lasted between 120-200 minutes

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each. Notes and where possible pictures from the visit were stored for further use in the interview guide, but in the case studies these notes will only render as descriptive input.

The essence of the third phase was the conduct of school-based interviews and small focus groups. After the initial visit, each school was further directly contacted in order to arrange a new date for visit and interviews. In all cases the correspondence included the principal from the side of the school. The interview guide with translated questions was sent to the interviewees, and all the interviewees were notified that the questions are mere guidelines for an exploratory conversation. Once the dates were set, the visit usually included first an individual semi-structured interview with the principal. There were few occasions where the principal was accompanied by another member of leadership team or when the deputy principal took the interview instead of the principal. Each school had a different routine, thus there is no typical scenario that followed the leaders’ interviews.

The scope of activities included: another visit to a class and an individual interview with the teacher afterwards, only an interview with a selected teacher, interview with two teachers at the same time, a small focus group interview with three to six teachers, a walk around the school with a teacher and a conversation about the school functioning, coffees and lunches with the teachers and the principal, and short periods of being unaccompanied noting down the information and observing new ones. There were altogether 11 schools from which the data collection has been done, six in Hungary and five in Portugal. Each school was visited at least twice in order to obtain the data, and the total number of school-based interviews was 55, which included 12 professionals in formal leadership position (principals and people from the principal’s office) and 43 teachers (between two and ten per school depending on the school size). The semi-structured individual interviews lasted between 40-60 minutes and the paired and focus group interviews lasted approximately 60-80 minutes. Due to the ethical regulations in Portugal, the interviews were not voice recorded. Instead notes were taken in a written form during the interviewing process. In Hungary, the interviews were voice recorded, and once transcribed, the audio file was deleted. Where possible the interviews were conducted in English, and where necessary they were conducted with the support of an interpreter. The interpreters were people that are fluent in both English and the language of the respective country and they were well acquainted with academic research procedures and the specific research project.

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In the overall picture, the data collection was widely spread across the period of time between April 2017 and May 2018, and the number of individuals participating in the process included altogether 63 professionals. Table 5 presents the breakdown of the participants.

Table 5: Overview of research participants

Participant type Number of interviews Hungary Portugal

Educational experts and decision-makers 8 3 5

School leaders (principals and deputies) 14 9 5

School teachers 41 23 18

Total 63 34 28

Source: author

The final decision on the number of interviewed participants followed the general idea that a sample which is loosely around 30 is an adequate medium size subject pool that can offer “the advantage of penetrating beyond a very small number of people without imposing the hardship of endless data gathering, especially when researchers are faced with time constraints” (Baker

& Edwards, 2012, p. 9).