160 teacher educators were divided into two groups with as many different departments represented per group as possible. In total, four women and three men were involved. Data collection in the individual interviews study Each participant was interviewed twice. The interviews were semi-structured with open questions. The interview guide was mainly based upon the conclusions of the theoretical exploration (Chapter 3) and composed using questions other researchers had previously used. The draft of the interview guide was piloted and discussed several times. Almost all interviews were located at the participants’ schools. Participants were interviewed for 173 minutes on average over both interviews. Several incidents related to radical Islam and the refugee crisis that occurred near the time of the interviews resonated in what was said. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data collection in the focus group study In conducting the focus groups, a second researcher was involved who primarily focused on facilitating the group and recording the data through notes and recordings. A less structured approach was deliberately chosen, but to ensure that similar themes were covered in the different focus groups, a conversation guide was used. The semi-structured conversation guides with open questions were designed based on the results and experiences from the individual interviews study. A key component in the conversation guide for alumni was a real-life case from the interview with Daniël, to which alumni were asked to react. For the teacher educators, a visualisation of the estimated entry levels and the desired exit levels of the trainee teachers was used. The focus groups with alumni lasted 75 and 90 minutes, while those with teacher educators both lasted over 100 minutes. All focus groups were audio-recorded and afterwards a report was created, based on both the audio recordings and the assistant’s notes. Data analysis For the individual interviews study, the general framework for descriptive/interpretative qualitative research (Elliott & Timulak, 2005) was broadly followed to structure the analysis. After transcription and editing of the data, the data were uploaded to Atlas.ti86, the software programme used for coding. The data were divided into distinctive units of meaning and, guided by the overall research question, it was decided which themes should be central in the various sub-studies. For each sub-study, the relevant meaning 86 www.atlasti.com (initially version 7, later on version 8)
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