supporting tiriti-based curriculum delivery in mainstream early ...

approached a local centre that had indicated an interest in the study but they had
also noted that they needed permission to be granted from the Auckland Area
Manager, who in turn, told me that she needed to get permission from the overseas
corporate office. Three months later I was informed that due to staffing
difficulties, research with this group would not be viable at this time. In hindsight,
approaching either the Auckland or the overseas manager first may have made a
difference. This is consistent with what Anderson (1998) argues when he asserts
that understanding the hierarchy of an organisation may be helpful in gaining
access.
As a consequence of the refusal of access, I approached a friend and
former colleague who was employed with another large group of centres. She was
interested in participating in the study but also indicated that she needed to gain
approval from her head office. Eventually, 7 weeks later, the reply came back that
this was not a suitable time for their organisation to be involved in research. There
are not many chains and corporate centres in Auckland – and there were no others
with whom I already had a relationship.
As Wellington (2000) explains, “The business of access can therefore
seriously affect the design, planning, sampling and carrying out of educational
research” (p. 63) and compromise is always involved. Given these two instances of
not being able to gain access, I determined that a compromise would be needed.
This compromise had two dimensions: first, I decided that I had little choice but to
jettison the idea of investigating a setting from an early childhood education chain
of centres or a corporate body because there was clearly a barrier of access to
overcome. Further, and as a second dimension, I realised that some of the elements
I wished to study had already been explored within Case Study One. As noted
already, Case Study One was a member of a cluster of four individual centres
managed by the two owners. Although this is not the same as a large corporation,
there was another level of management above that of the centre. Hence, some of
the kinds of questions I had intended to ask within a chain or corporate setting had
actually already been posed, and the emergent data will be outlined in chapter 5.
Nevertheless, the posing of these questions was within a smaller group rather than
within a large corporate chain.
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