WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

My Pre-understandings Interview
Everything I have written in this chapter reveals my biases, my assumptions, my
presuppositions, my beliefs, my understandings and my theories. Van Manen (1990)
writes “the problem of phenomenological enquiry is not always that we know too little
about the phenomenon we wish to investigate, rather we know too much” (p.46). Crotty
(1998) reinforces this and writes “layers of interpretation get placed one upon the other
like levels of mineral deposit in the formation of rock” (p.59). I needed to dig beneath my
layers of interpretations.
In keeping with my methodology, I was interviewed by my supervisors with the
interview tape recorded so I could subsequently interpret my pre-understandings. I
needed to discover the influences which have come into play in my life that have
influenced who I am, why I chose this study and how I have approached the subject. Van
Manen (1990) reminds me that we “come to terms with our assumptions, not in order to
forget them again, but rather to hold them deliberately at bay and even turn them into
knowledge itself, as it were, thereby concealing its shallow or concealing nature” (p.47).
Standing back and looking in
I have not worked as a coordinator so this interview helped me understand I have been
the outsider looking in at a world I am integrally part of yet in most instances I am on the
sidelines, standing back, quietly watching, questionning and wondering what colleagues
are really thinking and feeling.
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