Interviewing for Education and Social Science Research: The Gateway Approach (review)

How often does a genuinely new concept emerge in academia? Reviewers are expected to refrain from personal complaints and attacks, but this review must begin with one. However, the complaint is not about Interviewing for Education and Social Science Research: The Gateway Approach, but instead that Carolyn Lunsford Mears' fine work was not available when this reviewer was beginning his dissertation. Challenging enough to be of interest to faculty, yet readable enough to hold the attention of a graduate student, this work is an explanation of the methodology Mears used when conducting her American Educational Research Association award-winning dissertation research. In interviewing her fellow parents after the Columbine shootings, Mears "faced challenges that could not be met to [her] satisfaction through traditional means" (5): she thus invented a way to present her research that drew from the work of Eliot Eisner and Corinne Glesne but was similar in scope to that of Alan Peshkin and those of his ilk.

Mears views her research purpose as "creating a gateway to deeper understanding of the complexities of human experience" (xv), providing the novel approach in its name. While solidly grounded in oral history techniques for its data collection, the gateway approach is not so much a new approach to doing oral history as it is a radically different approach to presenting the rich data mined from such research. Mears' new approach is in six steps. The first step is preparation, clarifying the research question and gaining knowledge to produce an informed perspective. The second is interviewing, conducting a series of three oral history interviews with each subject. Third is presenting an interpretive display, reducing data so that "an excerpted narrative can be created to disclose the data in an accessible and evocative manner" (71). Fourth is the narrator check, sharing data with the subjects to verify meaning. Fifth is data analysis, searching for understanding via thematic analysis across interview subjects. And sixth is reporting, arguably the most interesting step, presenting that data using the narrator's voices in creative, poetic form.

Parts of the book are of more value to certain audiences than others. Chapters 2, "The Nature of Interview Research"; 3, "Ethical Research Practice"; 5, "Preparing for the Research"; 6, "Conducting the Interview"; and 7, "Learning from the Data," together make an outstanding oral history primer on qualitative dissertation and research writing for all novice researchers and graduate students. Although some of the techniques Mears presents are oversimplified, overall these chapters are excellent, serving as a fine introduction to methodology and a means of encouraging reflective practice in research.

Explaining that the gateway approach is "from the tradition of oral history" (48), Mears makes explicit, extensive connections to oral history throughout the book. Some oral historians may challenge Mears' details, such as her definition of oral history as "a variety of undertakings that include everything from formal interviews . . . to informal, facilitated conversations with aging ancestors for family lore, to community initiatives designed to capture a sense of place and shared identity with voices of the past, to admittedly fictionalized accounts based upon real stories told by real people" (55-56). However, her expansive scope allows for new perspectives and should not distract from the overall work as an additional tool for completing oral history narratives.

The remainder of the book establishes the groundwork for the gateway approach. Being of the Columbine parent community gave her insider status that allowed access and provided richness to her presentation. Mears addresses this notion of insider-outsider status several times throughout the work—which is the most (albeit relatively insignificant) troubling issue. Throughout her description of the gateway approach, Mears presents these opposing sides in equal fashion, indicating on the one hand how being an insider is necessary to complete the work fully and to truly understand the "complexities of human existence," while later explaining that insider status is not necessary, and sometimes may be detrimental, to the project...