Assess the Strengths and Limitations of Unstructured Interviews for the Study of Pupil Subcultures

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Assess the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews for the study of pupil subcultures A subculture is a group of people within society who share norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes that are in some ways different from or opposed to the mainstream culture e.g. an anti-school subculture formed by pupils in lower streams. In this essay I will be asses the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews for the study of pupil subcultures. An unstructured interview is that mainly open ended questions with no fixed set questions that produces qualitative data and is free flowing like a guided conversation. There are a number of strengths and limitations of using unstructured interviews to study pupil subcultures. Pupils may be in articulate or reluctant to talk, so unstructured interviews give them time and space along with encouragement to work out their responses. However, younger pupils have a shorter attention span so they may find long unstructured interviews too demanding as they can be quite time consuming. They can take several hours each and pupils are restrained to their timetable. There is also the need for training and the interviewer needs to have a background into education increasing the cost. As a result a small sample will be studied in comparison to other methods like questionnaires. This means that it will not be representative so cannot be generalised to different pupil subcultures. Willis’ qualitative methods enable him to find out about working class pupils resisting attempts to indoctrinate them in school. Theses ‘lads’ formed a counter school subculture that was opposed to school and showed this by flouting school rules for example truanting. His study was criticised for ‘romantising’ the lads and presenting them as working class hero’s despite their antisocial behaviour and sexist attitudes. The study only consisted of 112
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