ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about interviewing as a recognised method of gathering information in the social sciences – within which the book includes the study of education and educational research. It attempts a simple typology based on the interviewer-interviewee relationship. The book considers how interviews might profitably be classified or whether indeed it is more useful to look at interviewing as a process, with interviews as special kinds of conversations. It also considers potential conflict, or confusion, between the roles of an interviewee and normal professional roles. The book attempts some guidelines for using the limited time of an interview to best effect. These are concerned with translating the broad questions of a research project into a plan for interviewing. The book considers perhaps the most daunting task – making sense of all the material collected in the interviews.
