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Reflections on the Meaning of ‘Non-Participation’ in Research

case study of teacher involvement in decision-making at a time of rapid change in a fifteen-teacher primary school in the south-west of England (Golby, 1993; Yin, 1994). As a tutor in a local teacher education faculty with links with the school through student teacher placements I learned from some teacher contacts about the headteacher’s enthusiasm for collegial staff participation in decision-making (Chapman, 1990; Campbell and Southworth, 1992; Johnson and Short, 1999). As I was interested in this aspect of school policy, it gave me an ideal opportunity to get close to the action during a period of change in curriculum organisation and school governance. In my search to clarify the decision-making process I tried to capture the meanings produced and conveyed by the teachers as witnesses to the event (Stromquist, 2000). The research ethics protocol agreed with the headteacher and governors included the condition that my role would be that of ‘non-participant’ in the sense that I would not assume an active or recognised role or function. Data were gathered principally during attendance at staff meetings and team meetings, and interviews with serving teachers, through which I sought their views about their role in, and the headteacher’s policy for, staff involvement in decision-making. All the teachers were interviewed on a minimum of two occasions; the headteacher was interviewed once every half-term. I gave respondents an opportunity to comment on my findings to correct any factual errors and, later in the research, offered a ‘right of reply’ to the substance of my analysis that related to their contribution. I was intent on using a standard approach in carrying out the interviews, transcribing the text and using categorisation as the principal means of analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1990).