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Unstructured conversational interviews
In order to broadly understand the meaning of telling of stories and the crosscultural boundaries of the co-researchers in the conversational interviews, an unstructured mode was formulated. This structure was non-linear, incoherent and fragmental (Tietze et al. 2003:59). An unstructured interview does not mean that I accessed adolescents in remarried families using an empty-handed, unprepared approach, but instead, as Bellah et al. (1985:301) put it, “we sought to bring our preconceptions and questions into the conversation and to understand the answers we were receiving not only in terms of the language but also, so far as we could discover, the lives of those we were talking with”.
The content of questioning has emerged from an unstructured conversation (Kotzé et al. 2002:154). All the questions advanced were not known before the co-researchers responded to previous questions. In this approach, the process of conversation and its relationship was more focused than the content of the conversation. The equal voices of the conversational partners, a sense of solidarity with them, and putting aside the use of any authoritative position had to be practised in the process of the interviews (Browning 1991:203).
Semi-structured interviews
It is possible that people may be unwilling to reveal their stories, even sometimes extremely defensive in their conversation (Müller 1999), or it could be that they do not know what they should talk about when interviewed.
Therefore, I intended to draw on a semi-structured interview so as to, first of all, create an open space for my co-researchers by telling my own story or using various images, analogies and comparative situations. Secondly, I used similar questions in each co-researcher’s interview to elicit common themes.
In any interviews, the questioning, one of the key characteristics of narrative research, was based on the following self-reflexive questions first. Freedman and Combs (2002:8) use some of these ideas when they consult with couples:
*What am I tending to assume here?
*How might my gender be influencing what I am attending to and what I am not attending to?
*Am I in any way imposing my beliefs about what intimate relationships should look like?
*How can I clarify the preferences, beliefs and values that the people consulting me hold about their relationship?
*How can I provide the opportunity to those consulting me to unpack their own assumptions about their relationship? In terms of my pastoral view, I questioned myself in a similar way (Gerkin 1997:12):
*What was it about that pastoral care experience that made it an experience of care for me?
*What, if anything, about the experience identified it as pastoral care?
*What associations does the word pastoral conjure in your memory and imagination?
*Is it significant to me that the care I recall was offered by a Christian pastor?
*If so, how and why was that significant?
Using letters
By using letters, I planned to let my co-researchers bear in mind what they had worked on in telling their stories in the previous interview. A letter helped them to think thoroughly and reflect on how I had listened to their stories. I agree with Epston (1994:31), who sees therapeutic letter writing as “extending the conversation”, and believes that is applicable to research as well. He says:
“Conversation is, by its very nature, ephemeral… But the words in a letter don’t fade and disappear the way conversation does, they endure through time and space, bearing witness to the work of therapy and immortalizing it.”
My research letters could also help my co-researchers to think ahead for a next section, contributing to evoking alternative imaginations for the future. Morgan (2000:104) acknowledges that “letters assist people to stay connected to the emerging alternative story that is co-authored in narrative meetings”. Not only did I expect all of the above effects, but I also wanted to let the letters be reread, told, and re-told, like “a heroic story of adolescents” or “family tales” in the family (Freedman et al. 1997:112).
Using language to describe
The use of language is a critical issue in a narrative social construction approach. Who uses what kind of language is the subject of who represents what and whom. In short, language expresses a person’s identity and her or his system (Tietze et al. 2003:5-14). Thus, to understand my co researchers’ world holistically, I needed to participate in their system through the explorative and
descriptive language they have used in conversation. If this is not done, Derrida and Caputo (1997:13-30) warn, I would close down many possibilities and prevent my co-researchers from going on a journey to create a new world. Hence, I make use of the first person singular voice in this dissertation when describing my co-researchers’ voices, which is not commonly accepted in many popular journals and writings (Pienaar 2003:66).
CHAPTER ONE: STIMULI FOR THE STUDY
1.1 STIMULUS ONE: MY STORY
1.1.1 My story
1.1.2 The purpose of sharing my story for the study
1.2 STIMULUS TWO: STATISTICAL URGENCY AS THE IMPETUS FOR THE STUDY
1.2.1 Divorce in South Africa
1.2.2 Divorce in other countries
1.2.3 Discussing the statistics
1.3 STIMULUS THREE: PROBLEMS WITH EXISTING RESEARCH ON THE ISSUE OF REMARRIED FAMILIES AS A REQUIRED ALTERNATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR THE STUDY
1.3.1 The problem of categorizing remarried families and their children
1.3.2 The problem of the point of departure
1.3.3 The exclusion of children from research
1.3.4 Failure to integrate therapy and research
1.3.5 Indifference of pastoral care
1.4 THE PIVOTAL TERMS IN THE RESEARCH: ADOLESCENCE, REMARRIED FAMILY
1.4.1 Remarried families
1.4.2 Adolescence
1.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY
1.6 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
CHAPTER TWO: PARADIGM / METHODOLOGY
2.1 RESEARCH PARADIGM
2.1.1 Paradigm shift
2.1.2 The birth of modernism
2.1.3 Modernism
2.1.4 Postmodernism
2.1.5 Social constructionism
2.1.6 Narrative
2.1.7 Imaginative work
2.2 THEOLOGY
2.2.1 Practical pastoral theology
2.2.2 Minjung Theology
2.3 RESEARCH CONCERN AND METHODOLOGY
2.3.1 Research gaps
2.3.2 Research question
2.3.3 The aims of the study
2.3.4 The researcher’s attitude in this research
2.3.5 The ABDCE formula
2.3.6 Qualitative research
2.3.7 Brief summary
2.3.8 The possible modi
2.3.9 Interpretation
2.4. CHAPTER SUMMARY
CHAPTER THREE: THE MAIN CHARACTERS OF THE RESEARCH (CO-RESEARCHERS)
3.1 THE RESEARCH JOURNEY
3.1.1 Changing the main characters of this research
3.1.2 Meeting the main characters from remarried family stories for the research
3.1.3 Interviewing the co-researchers
3.1.4 Listening to other voices
3.1.5 Interview agenda
3.2 WE ARE HERE: THE CO-RESEARCHERS’ STORIES
3.2.1 The story of Co-researcher One
3.2.2 The story of Co-researcher Two
CHAPTER FOUR: OTHER VOICES SURROUNDING THOSE OF THE CO-RESEARCHERS
4.1 BACKGROUND: ABOUT ADOLESCENTS
4.1.1 A constructed definition of adolescence
4.2 BACKGROUND: THE MILIEU OF MEMBERS OF A REMARRIED FAMILY..
4.2.1 Typological argument for remarried families
4.2.2 Characteristics of remarried families in general
4.2.3 Prejudice
4.3 BACKGROUND: CONSULTING WITH THE BIBLE
4.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY
CHAPTER FIVE: ATTEMPTS TOWARDS INTEGRATION FOR THE FUTURE
5.1 PROPOSALS FOR PRACTICAL IDEAS FOR REMARRIED FAMILIES EMERGING FROM OUR STORYTELLING
5.1.1 The first proposal to remarried families: responsive conversation, rather than reactive conversation
5.1.2 Second proposal for remarried families: an alternative concept of step-intimacy
5.1.3 Third proposal for remarried families: personal growth
5.2 PROPOSAL FOR AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON PASTORAL THEOLOGY FOR REMARRIED FAMILIES
5.2.1 Alternative perspective on remarried family households
5.2.2 A pastoral perspective on remarried families
5.2.3 Other grains: “heart eyes”, the law and remarried families, student files
5.3 CLOSING RESEARCH
5.3.1 Evaluation from all the participants
5.3.2 The researcher’s remarks
5.3.3 Research experience
5.4 CLOSING STORIES
5.4.1 Light for the future
5.4.2 Dripping for the future
5.5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
BIBLOOHRAPHY
APPENDICES
