Anindita Roy received her Sylff fellowship from Jadavpur University in India in 2012 and conducted research in the United Kingdom using a Sylff Research Abroad grant from April to June 2013. In this article, she writes of children’s psychological development under adverse conditions in India, based on an analysis conducted in the UK of the field data she gathered over a year of research in Kolkata, India.

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Interests drive passion. Sometimes, they also help to shape paths that lead one to journeys of exploration. In my case, an interest in children and their development have led me into landscapes of the mind and how it constructs meaning. Specifically, mine has been an academic endeavor to understand the meaning-making process and its relation to identity formation, especially in children living in adverse environments. My research was carried out in two red-light districts of Southern Kolkata, and its participants were girls and boys aged between 8 and 14. During this year-long research, I was often asked about my choice of research site: “But, why the red-light district?”

Empowering Children in Economically Deprived Areas

Through a community involvement project I undertook at Jadavpur University, I had the opportunity to access the red-light neighborhoods of Kalighat and Khidderpore (which are the sites I chose in my research for a master of philosophy degree). The project was designed to empower children in economically and socially deprived areas whose needs and concerns, it was felt, were largely under-represented and often misrepresented. The participants of this project were trained to become radio reporters so they could express themselves on the platform of a community radio station located on the Jadavpur University campus.

There was one young and promising participant from Kalighat who suddenly stopped attending the training sessions after an enthusiastic involvement over half a year. We were informed by the institution that introduced us to the children in this sensitive area that the participant had left the city and returned to the village and would no longer be able to join the project. It was some weeks later that this participant was seen (by several members of our project) standing with a couple of young girls on the lanes of Kalighat, trying to get clients. We assumed from what we saw that the child, who was still a minor, had become part of the flesh trade. Over the course of the project, a few more children left to “go back to their villages.” (This is not to suggest, though, that they, too, entered the same profession, for unlike the first participant, they were never seen again.) I was less troubled about the truth of what we were told and why than about the kinds of thoughts that must have run through the children’s minds as they made their choices.

How did they make their choices? This was my chief concern: How do these children perceive their lives and the environments in which they live, as well as the meaning and consequences of the choices they make? The current research is part of an organic work in progress—an attempt to understand some of the questions that had seized my mind a long time ago.

Narratives of Abuse, Violence, and Suffering

Coming back to this work, made possible when my proposal was selected for a Sylff Research Abroad award, gave me an opportunity to carry out advanced research in the United Kingdom, where I was guided by scientists and teachers in the fields of psychology and childhood studies. A significant objective of my SRA project was to identify patterns from narratives created by children to understand their psychological development. For my fieldwork, participants were asked to take part in semi-structured interviews and story-telling sessions based on pictures that were presented to them.

Whether in reconstructing narratives from memories of lived experiences or in creating new tales for characters in their stories, the participants selected and conveyed narratives that were indicative of abuse, violence, and suffering. This repetition of certain information emanating from the participants’ memories defined and described their narratives. Understanding such field texts required a co-construction process based on familiarity with the field of research. Understanding violence starts from reading between the lines of what appears on tape in interviews and stories. The facts that are explicitly stated, though, helped me to categorize various expressions of violence. These categories may help lend meaning to the violence the participants recreate for their characters and elucidate the way they understand it in their own experiences.

Violence renders characters helpless. They protest but without support often succumb to the adversities in their environment. It entraps them:

“He started to hit his son, saying that he should work. The son protested, since his sister was studying, and said that he wanted to study too. He did not want to go to work. But the father hits him again and forces him to work. The son is frustrated and sad. He isn’t being allowed to do what he likes. He is not being allowed to gain an education or obtain a sense of security. The parents are forcing the son to do what they want. The boy weeps and cannot communicate.” (Participant A, story, excerpt)

The voice of the protestor surfaces but is silenced by authority—the father in this case. The “son is frustrated and sad” but has no resources that might extend support to him. In another story, the narrator finds his character equally distressed.

“One day, the boy was sent home from school for not being able to pay the fees. He went to his father and requested that he pay the fees. The father said that he had no money and that all the money was gone. The boy had to leave school. The boy requested that the father take up a job and help support the family. The father slapped the boy and said, “Why should I work? You will work.” And he sent the boy to a brick factory. The boy got 1000 or 2000 rupees a month. The father would snatch all the money from the boy and not even let him eat properly. The father would eat first and then give the leftovers to the son. The son was falling ill from not eating.” (Participant B, story, excerpt)

Death of Aspirations

In the face of discouragement, constant pressure, and abuse, the protestor’s voice is silenced. There is not only a metaphorical annihilation in terms of communication but also a physical extinction in certain cases. This reiterates the sense of seclusion, isolation, and neglect that the participants often mention in the process of their interviews, too. Not many are willing to listen or interact, and possibly the protestor may stop protesting altogether.

In the case of the first example, the narrator ends the story by saying, “He cries and declares finally that he will work, for his sister’s sake. He goes to work.” (Participant A, interview, excerpt). The voice of the character of the child in the story—the protestor—is dead. Their voice is possibly just as dead as their aspirations to study. The lack of voice eventually becomes the loss of voice.

“My parents have a fight between themselves. My mother works even in the night. My father comes in the morning and fights with her for money. He gambles and is unemployed. He comes home, eats, gambles, snatches money from my mother, and goes away. He does not let my mother sleep and hits her. I have tried so much to explain to him, but he will only beat me up. When I was seven, he hit my mother so badly that her skull cracked and was bleeding. I tried to stop him, but he slapped me so hard that I fear him from that day.” (Participant B, interview, excerpt)

Reconstructing the experience, the participant mentions the atrocities and the efforts made to check them by trying to convince the father against torturing the mother but is beaten up in response. It seems that there is no one to whom the participant can reach out for support, none that is consciously available in the participant’s mind at least. In the lack of support and a sense of helplessness, there arises the emotion of fear, which eventually swallows the participant’s voice in expression.

Perpetuation of Violence

Children celebrating Durga Puja, the biggest festival of West Bengal, where the author conducted interviews for her research

In some cases, the expression of violence as a ‘should’ is also prevalent. This norm is in keeping with a social code of disciplining the child, for example: “If I were to choose between the father and the son, I would want to play the role of the father. I will have to become a father once I get married. I am hitting the boy because he doesn’t listen to me. I asked him to get a bucket from the market but he ran away.” (Participant C, story, excerpt)

It is as if, just like the character who feels he “will have to become a father” once he gets married, he will “have to” hit his children to help them learn. Another participant tells in a story, “If I were to play the role of the father, I would hit my son, too. I would hit him, if there is a need, to get things done. Sometimes it is important to hit, or else children become disobedient.”

Very few cases look at violence through the lens of characters that resort to violence for the sake of it or for the fun of it. “There are some people who only need a trivial reason to pick up fights. They are always ready to fight.” (Participant D, interview, excerpt) The readiness to fight seems to be reason enough for a fight as well. Another participant says in a story, “And this older boy is now hitting the younger boy. The older boy just feels like it. The reason could be anything—he just feels like beating up this boy, or he may just feel like creating trouble. If he creates trouble, he will have fun.” Few in number, but qualitatively significant, is the concept of characters deriving pleasure from the troubles they create (usually for others). “We might wonder why the man should hit the boy at all; but the man might be enjoying this act of hitting a boy.” (Participant E, story, excerpt).

Succumbing to violence, whether as oppressor or oppressed, is the dominant pattern in most plots. The characters suffer physically through beatings, psychologically through trauma, and emotionally through frustration and anxiety. The characters’ sufferings could be reflective of the participants’ own suffering, including from the inability to choose more positive alternatives, even in the realm of imagination. I do not present these patterns as predictions about individual development or social adaptation. I only propose that these constructions be regarded as voices that demand understanding and keen attention. There must be an attempt to understand what the narratives mean to the ones making them. In the case of my research, an attempt has been made to understand the meaning of violence as a first step in understanding the environments within which these children live and grow.

Is Schooling Synonymous with Learning?

In the recent past, the field of child development has been focusing on approaches to promote sustainable growth. While social theories and large-scale data have been constructively prevalent in India, so far, very little attention has been paid to children’s development from the perspective of understanding the child’s mind, emotions, and imagination. Well-meaning programs and policies have been formulated to accelerate growth in adverse conditions. In education, for example, programs have been introduced aimed at improving learning, such as a mid-day meal and free schooling until a certain age to promote education, especially for families in economically deprived conditions.

However, children may not necessarily equate schooling with learning. For example, in the course of data collection, some of my participants said that they would like to go to school, knowing that education is important, but also admitted that they are more interested in either the mid-day meal or in playing on the large school grounds from a lack of space in their own homes or their neighborhoods. The mid-day meal might thus help improve attendance at school but may not help improve learning. If school for these children means food and a place to play, then education will not be their first synonym for school. This is the dimension I hope to elucidate.

Such meanings will become clearer and more audible when the children are allowed to express and speak their minds. But sometimes, their realities are too difficult to share, even if they want to share them. In other parts of my research I have, therefore, analyzed the techniques of narrative construction as a means of expression and as clues to the understanding of the child. Henceforth, it would be interesting to explore and analyze the realm of the imagination and the use of it by children to renegotiate with their realities (or, maybe, to chance upon a completely new understanding).

Paulina Berrios, a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York, Albany, and a Sylff fellowship recipient at the University of Chile, shares the experiences of her field research (conducted with a Sylff Research Abroad award), during which she interviewed a number of part-time professors at Chilean universities to understand what they do inside and outside the classroom.

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Qualitative Research as a Collaborative Enterprise:How I Learned from Other People’s Experience and Developed as an Interviewer

The research process is itself a learning process. You discover new facts, identify new relationships among variables, and realize the many implications that the focus of your study can have on reality. On the other hand, you also come to master research skills that will be long lasting. As a research project usually involves many people and often multiple institutions, you also have an opportunity to network, which is an important skill to develop over time. My experience researching abroad fits this learning process too.

Paulina at the library of the State University of New York, Albany.

Currently pursuing my PhD in educational administration and policy studies with a concentration in higher education at the State University of New York at Albany, I went to Chile—my native country—to collect data for my dissertation. This research project deals with the academic work of part-time professors at universities in Santiago, Chile, and how institutions treat, value, and regulate their academic work.

The purpose of my research abroad was to conduct in-depth interviews with both part-time professors and university administrators. Having to conduct at least 60 interviews taught me many lessons. Among the most important were that qualitative research is a collaborative enterprise and that the skill of interviewing develops during the research process.

Focus of My Research

The research for my dissertation pays special attention to what part-timers do inside and outside the classroom in Chile, a country where part-time professors have a predominant presence at both public and private institutions of higher education. In addition, my study asks the question: What is the academic work of part-time professors? Because this is conditioned by many variables, an exploration of the academic work of part-time professors needs to be seen through multiple perspectives. By bringing together sociological, historical, and organizational perspectives into the analysis of part-time professors, research can be conducted that will help elucidate how institutions, organizational arrangements, national contexts of higher education, and individual dimensions like gender and age condition the academic work of part-time professors.

Research Hypothesis

Researchers have found that US part-time professors engage mostly in teaching activities (NCES 2002; Kezar 2012) and that they teach an average of 1.6 undergraduate classes and 0.2 graduate courses (NCES, 2002). So, I started by assuming that even though the data is for the United States, the Chilean case will not be dramatically different. In other words, I hypothesized that teaching, and more specifically, undergraduate teaching, would represent the main chunk of the academic work of the part-time professors at sampled Chilean universities. However, given the literature on differentiation in higher education, I expected that patterns would vary by both system factors, such as academic discipline and professional field, and individual factors like gender and age.

Selection of Cases

Regarding the selection of institutions for the fieldwork, geographical location and range of academic programs were the two main criteria. As a result, nine academic programs at five universities were selected. Specifically, these five universities were of three different types: research universities (Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Santiago, and Pontificia Universidad Catolica), a selective, large private university (Universidad Nacional Andres Bello), and a nonselective, large private university (Universidad San Sebastian). The nine academic and professional programs selected were mathematics, chemistry, sociology, history, education, engineering, nursing, odontology, and architecture.

Andrés Bello National University

Preliminary Findings

As for the major findings, to a certain degree, the academic work of part-time professors in Chilean universities matched the literature on this topic worldwide: Generally, part-time professors focused on teaching, but the teaching was executed differently, depending on the academic or professional program. Their work was also treated very differently by the various academic departments and schools. One manifestation of this differential treatment was the salaries offered to part-time professors; another was the institutional mechanisms introduced as incentives to retain part-time professors.

My research at Chilean universities revealed that some academic departments and professional schools were highly dependent on their part-time professors. Although their employment was not secured, part-time professors at these universities were offered very good salaries and incentives for their teaching services. As this study was not intended to be representative of the Chilean higher education system as a whole, these findings pertain only to the types of institution that were selected for this study, namely, public research universities and both elite and serious private universities.

The Researcher and the Fieldwork

In a qualitative study such as mine, collaboration proved to be critical. This is not to say that other types of research (e.g., quantitative) do not engage in collaboration, but in my case I could not have achieved all I did in the field without having both institutional support and good advice from relevant actors.

Good Advice Makes a Difference

Reality is not always what you expect. When engaged in the field, I found that what I learned about my research topic—that part-time professors are invisible to many—had a practical manifestation: When trying to contact part-time professors for interviews, I realized that they were hard to reach, since their contact information was not easily available. Information for full-time professors could be found by just navigating a university’s or department’s website, but this was not always the case for part-time professors. While I had some initial success in making connections with part-time professors, I realized that I would not reach my goal if I continued trying to contact them on my own.

Paulina attended a higher education seminar at the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice

So I asked a Chilean professor, who is a member of my dissertation committee, for advice. He suggested that in order to deal with the logistics issue, I should change my strategy and consider a top-down approach. I thus decided to establish contacts first with department chairs and deans at the selected universities and academic programs to not only learn how institutions manage, evaluate, and monitor the academic work of part-time professors but also obtain a list of potential interviewees. This turned out to be very good advice, as I was able to interview department chairs and deans for my study and, at the same time, gain their trust. This also enabled me to receive additional information, such as institutional documents that facilitated access to additional participants. The good advice made a big difference, turning potentially discouraging and unsuccessful fieldwork into a very positive experience. In the end, I was able to conduct not 60 but 70 interviews!

Support Is Critical

Carrying out qualitative research is costly in terms of time and economic resources. As the process of collecting data is time consuming, and in my case, I had to travel to another country in which meant I had to invest significant resources and get support from others. Thanks to the Tokyo foundation’s SRA program that provides support for academic research related to doctoral dissertation in a foreign country, I was able to plan a 13-weeks stay to conduct my fieldwork in Chile.

However, after engaging in my fieldwork, it became obvious that the original allotted time of 13 weeks was too ambitious, which led me to extend my time in the field to 35 weeks. Because of this unexpected turn, I had to talk with the many people who were supporting my research and get from them not only their consent but also their support to keep moving forward in my research despite the hardships encountered along the way. Fortunately, at the end of the process, I was able to achieve successfully my field work’s goals thanks to the institutional support given by the SRA program, my sponsor and fieldwork supervisor –Dr. Rosa Deves- at Universidad de Chile, my committee member professor –Dr. Andres Bernasconi- at Pontificia Universidad Catolica, my institutional liaison at Universidad San Sebastian –Vicerector Gonzalo Puentes-, and my academic advisor –Dr. Daniel Levy- from the State University of New York at Albany.

San Sebastian University

The Interviewing Experience

Learning from others can be a priceless and unforgettable experience. As I traveled far to explore what Chilean part-time professors do inside and outside the university classroom, I gained a deeper understanding of what these professors do and what motivates them to work part-time in higher education. And while interviewing university administrators, it became clear why they were employing these part-time professors and how much they relied on them. In some cases, part-time professors were regarded with such high esteem that I wondered if this was the case in other countries as well.

My research also helped me to master the skill of interviewing. Can you imagine trying to interview someone who does not know anything about you but just the topic of your research? Even more, how would it feel when your interviewee sits down in front of his or her computer and does not pay any attention to you? It can be very hard to get started indeed! During my first interviews, it was difficult to deal with people I did not know, not to mention how nervous I was! But as I kept interviewing, I learned how to grab the attention of the interviewee from the outset and, more importantly, how to gain their trust about the seriousness of my research.

People are often very busy, and they want to know immediately how they were chosen for the interview; sometimes it is hard to break the ice. So, in some ways an interview is a performance from the very first moment you greet your interviewee to the minute you end the conversation. Moreover, the performance needs to be executed in a transparent manner so that you gain the trust of your interviewee and makes him or her willing to collaborate with your research and respond with valuable information to your questions. People are curious about you, so sometimes you have to talk about yourself as well. It is a two-way exchange, and as an interviewer you have to be open to the needs of the participants too.

Finally, the fieldwork evolved from being almost impossible to achieve and highly exhausting to execute (interviewing 70 people meant I had to contact many more people!) to a completely satisfying endeavor with a strong sense of accomplishment. Without doubt, it was an experience that I would recommend to anyone planning to conduct qualitative research. If you are one of them, good luck with your future endeavors! As for me, I now have to start writing and analyzing all the rich data I have managed to collect in the field.

Of the approximately 3.65 million students of the Japanese language outside Japan, the highest numbers are in South Korea (960,000) and China (830,000). China, though, claims more students at the tertiary level, at 530,000. How are Chinese university students learning the Japanese language and gaining an understanding of the country’s culture?

Yusuke Tanaka, a 2009 recipient of a Sylff fellowship as a student at the Waseda University Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics and a research fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, conducted a detailed study and analysis of Japanese language education at Chinese universities. He examined textbooks and curricula and interviewed both teachers and students. His research revealed features quite distinct from those seen in South Korea and Taiwan.

The following are excerpts from his report:

Japanese Language Students at Institutions of Higher Education in Each Country as a Percentage of the Total

Of the 1,170 universities in China, there are 466 that offer majors in the Japanese language. The figure is a threefold jump from 1999, when the Chinese government introduced a policy to expand the number of university students in the country.

The aim of this report is to examine how students of the Japanese language at Chinese institutions of higher learning—which today enjoy a growing global presence—are learning the language. Specifically, the analysis focuses on classes in jingdu (Comprehensive Japanese), the chief course taken by Japanese majors at universities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Dalian, examining and analyzing the Japanese text found in course textbooks.

The examination revealed three major characteristics. (1) The jingdu textbooks widely used today frequently quote the same passages and authors as those appearing in kokugo (Japanese language) textbooks used at schools in Japan. An extremely high percentage of Chinese students are thus exposed to the same materials as Japanese schoolchildren. (2) When creating Japanese language textbooks in China, kokugo textbooks are considered one of most reliable sources for quoting passages. (3) Inasmuch as teachers, students, textbook publishers, and researchers, as well as the instruction guidelines all concur that the aim of Japanese language instruction is be to gain an “accurate understanding of the Japanese language, Japanese culture, and the Japanese mind,” many believe it is only natural and logical for materials appearing in Japanese high school kokugo textbooks to overlap with textbooks for Chinese learners of the Japanese language.

The study revealed that the teaching materials and methods used in Japan had a definite influence on the way Japanese was taught to Chinese university students, suggesting that domestic teaching methods have a role in Japanese language education abroad. Both learners and instructors pointed to biases and deficiencies in Japanese textbooks, however; one researcher noted that the grammatical system adopted in the textbooks was designed for native speakers of Japanese, making it unsuitable for Chinese students of the language. Others voiced the need to make a clear distinction between native and foreign learners, adjusting the content and methods of Japanese language instruction accordingly to meet fundamentally contrasting needs and aims.

There was also a perceived need to be vigilant for normative elements and assumptions about universality that, by nature, are part of language instruction for native speakers. And there may be a danger in referencing textbooks that are designed for domestic use and contain—as some claim—biased content as sources for the “accurate understanding of the Japanese language, Japanese culture, and the Japanese mind.”

Nevertheless, making a mechanical distinction between Japanese language instruction for native and foreign speakers and simplistically assuming them to be isolated concerns will only hinder efforts to gain a true grasp of Japanese language teaching in China. Rather, there is a need to broaden our perspective and fully acknowledge the intertwining of the two approaches to language teaching that now exist in China. This, I believe, is an extremely important consideration in understanding the diverse and fluid nature of foreign languages and cultures and in reexamining what Japanese language education in China should seek to achieve and how it should be structured. I thus hope to conduct further research and analysis into this topic.

This study focused on an analysis of textbooks used in Japanese language instruction at Chinese universities. I would be most happy if the findings of this report—that the methods used to teach Japanese to native speakers deeply influence how the language is learned by nonnatives—would become more broadly known to Japanese language educators both in Japan and other countries.

Read the full Japanese report at: www.tkfd.or.jp/fellowship/program/news.php?id=130