Using Prospective and Retrospective Interviews to Understand Girls’ Educational Aspirations, Subjectivities and Social Change

This chapter reflects on how prospective and retrospective longitudinal methods were utilized in two studies to understand girls’ aspirations, subjectivities and social change in relation to schooling in India. The retrospective interviews were conducted with girls who had completed secondary schooling while the prospective interviews occurred over the final years of primary school. In this re-analysis of the data from these two different methods using conversation analysis techniques such as turn-taking patterns and repair strategies, we consider how temporality and memory work figured into both girls’ narratives and our own interactions and analysis to illustrate personal and/or social change. This analysis shows how social historical and biological time affects our re-telling of girls’ subjectivities and change. These different methods illustrate how temporality is constituted within their lives in non-linear and emergent ways, making personal and social change both mundane and dramatic. Analysing prospective and retrospective interviews together yields insights into how girls are making their social worlds—acting in relation to changing social and material conditions and changing them at the same time through their aspirations and subjectivities.