Doing research with busy people: Enacting rapid walking methodologies with teachers in a primary school
Walshe, Rachael, and Law, L. (2024) Doing research with busy people: Enacting rapid walking methodologies with teachers in a primary school. Cities, 145. 104707.
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Abstract
Teachers are busy people. How do we, as researchers, address the challenges of doing research with busy people—especially if we wish to enact ethical, more radical futures? How do we adhere to the pressures of fast-paced urban life when research, especially interviews, takes away people's time? This paper presents a novel method for doing research with busy people, combining the ‘walking interview’ method with a ‘free listing technique.’ The interviews were carried out with teachers at a north Queensland primary school in a rapidly urbanising neighbourhood, and formed part of a larger project exploring the barriers and opportunities of incorporating community gardens (as important green spaces) into schools. The method itself yielded important findings and this paper is a reflective analysis of how simple factors such as the weather, noise, and interruptions shaped 20 min of a teacher's day. We extend these ideas to explore how conditioned and situational temporalities, along with more-than-human influences, affect the knowledge produced in rapid walking interviews. Keeping track of these affections can yield important data relevant to the project. The research will be invaluable for other researchers struggling with ethical and other issues shaping access to stakeholders in a diverse range of urban environments.
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