'It's a building that draws up mixed emotions for me.': Learnings from mobile interviews with teacher leaders in Scotland

A home office and a new housing development, a suburban park and a village football pitch, online sites for networking and the physical site where three bridges span an estuary, four cities on four continents, and a ruined chapel perched on the side of an extinct volcano. All these are places I explored between February and October 2022 at the invitation of the educators participating in my EdD study.​

In this symposium session, I explain how and why – in the wake of the Covid19 pandemic, an enforced period of immobility, and mindful of equitable access – my interviewees and I undertook interviews in and/or about the places and spaces that were meaningful to them in relation to their lived experience of teacher leadership. ​

Five of the eight semi-structured interviews were ‘go-alongs’ (Kusenbach, 2003). We met in person and data were generated as we moved through the environment – natural or built - experiencing it together. Three interviews were virtual tours. One followed a route plotted on a digital map. Two comprised photographs of two or three places, most though not all outdoors. These interviews can be characterised as being mobile due to the explicit focus on place/space, and the use of technology to share (move) this information across space and time (Brooks & Waters, 2018).​

In closing, I share some preliminary insights about the meanings of the chosen locations, the overall contribution of mobile methods to this study and implications for their use in future empirical educational research.​