Decoding interview

Three educators conducting a Decoding Interview

The Decoding Interview is the second step within the seven steps of Decoding the Disciplines. The purpose of this step is to uncover the mental operations students must master to get past the Bottleneck. Since many of these operations are so automatic to instructors that they have become invisible, a systematic process of deconstructing disciplinary practice is necessary. The most powerful method for becoming clear about the steps that students must master to overcome specific bottlenecks is an interview process in which two interviewers work with instructors to explore how they themselves accomplish the task with which many students have trouble . By interviewing the lecturer as an expert in the field (s)he teaches those mental operations of the expert are revealed.

Generally speaking, a Decoding Interview assumes the following pattern:

1. Define and describe the bottleneck in question.
2. Articulate the mental operations required to overcome the bottleneck. This step requires that the person conducting the interview probe the subject expert being interviewed in order to push them to clearly outline the operational steps taken to move past the bottleneck. The point of this step is to make the implicit explicit.
3. Summarize and reflect on the outlined operations to ensure the steps have been adequately captured. This step may also identify other bottlenecks that need to be addressed in order for a learner to be able to be able to work through the bottleneck being addressed in the interview.

The interview should follow an conversational, exploratory format. An example of a Decoding Interview can be found by clicking on this link.

Detailed descriptions of the process may be found in these resources:

• David Pace, The Decoding the Disciplines Paradigm (pp.39-47, 123-125)
• Joan Middendorf and Leah Shopkow, Overcoming Student Learning Bottlenecks (pp.48-59)
• Peter Riegler, “The Decoding interview – an exemplary insight”. in Decoding the Disciplines ​

Outcomes of the interview

The outcome of the Decoding interview should be a phrase that summarizes the mental moves of the interviewed expert.

How to do interviews

Decoding interviews follow the TEACH structural model. TEACH stands for:

• Team-up - where the lecturer and the interviewers come together and develop a positive, collaborative basis for the interview.
• Elucidate - where the bottleneck is named and explored by the lecturer and the interviewers for suitability within the context of a Decoding Interview.
• Analysis - where the interviews ask questions of the lecturer to help them make their knowledge of the bottleneck explicit and explore potential challenges to understanding.
• Change- where the lecturer and interviewers discuss potential changes to the lecturer's teaching practice that may addresses the bottleneck with students.
• Harbour - where all interview participants reflect on their discussion and identify next steps and goals.

A more thorough description of the TEACH structural model can be found in Decoding Interviews führen mit dem Strukturmodell TEACH.

Interview participants

A Decoding Interview is usually comprised of three participants:

• The lecturer who is trying to decode their bottleneck
• An interviewer who engages the educator in questions
• A second interviewer to support the process

When selecting potential interview partners, the lecturer should consider the knowledge level of the interviewers. If the interviewers are too familiar with the bottleneck and its related discipline, there is the possibility that their shared knowledge will impede them from interrogated the lecturer in a way that challenges them to break down the topic at hand. Likewise, if the interviewers have too little subject knowledge the lecturer may have to spend too much time ensuring they have enough background knowledge to approach the bottleneck. Ideally, the interviewers' knowledge of the bottleneck should approximate the level of the students whom the lecturer usually encounters when teaching the bottleneck. Other configurations may be appropriate for specifics topics and circumstances.

Interview process

Decoding Interviews begin by having the lecturer name the bottleneck being explored and describing a situation in which students got stuck in the bottleneck (i.e. Team-Up). As the lecturer describes how they understand the bottleneck, the interviewers should probe with questions that push them to describe the bottleneck in as much detail as possible (i.e. Elucidate and Analysis). Important questions include, but are not limited to:

• How exactly do you do that?
• What is the next step?
• What would happen if you didn't do exactly that?

If the interviewers ask a question the lecturer cannot immediately answer, this may indicate that the question relates to an unconscious aspect of the expertise they possess and that impedes students from proceeding through the bottleneck. Interviewers should support the lecturer to make this knowledge explicit in the interview.

Interviewers should make note of any metaphors or physical gestures used by the lecturer when explaining concepts. Metaphors or gestures may need to be unpacked in order to ensure the bottleneck has been explained in such a way that does not rely on interpretations or assumed shared culture or disciplinary knowledge. Creating a video and/or audio recording of the interview may assist in capturing physical elements of a lecturers descriptions.

Disrupting the Disciplines

Disrupting the Disciplines is an approach to a Decoding Interview that approaches decoding from a critical, post-colonial and/or Indigenous lens. This approach challenges whether disciplinary knowledges and assumptions are neutral and unbiassed or based within oppressive structures. An example of interview question from the Disrupting the Disciplines approach is to follow-up a question the lecturer cannot answer by pursuing a more imaginative approach: "What can I imagine doing differently?"

In-person versus online interviews

Conducting interviews in-person may help facilitate a more dynamic discussion and better allow interviewers to identify physical gestures used by the lecturer in descriptions of the bottleneck. Online interviews, on the other hand, may support participation and accessibility by allowing participants to join from different physical locations. Online communication platforms (e.g. MS Teams, Zoom) may also assist with recording and transcription processes.

Post-interview activities

Once a lecturer and interviewers have reflected on the discussion and identified the lecturer's next steps and goals (i.e. Harbour), the lecturer moves on the Question 3 of the Decoding Wheel, where they begin planning how to model the mental moves associated with overcoming the bottleneck discussed in the interview.

Examples of Decoding Interviews

• The Questions in a Decoding the Disciplines Interview