Chapter Four Methodology
4.1. Research Sites, Sampling Criteria and Time for Fieldwork
4.2.1.7. Data Coding and Analysis
There were three stages of analysis for all data. The first stage was doing curriculum and policy document analysis to discuss the vision and missions of the two universities, the constructions of lecturers and students, and the constructions of ELT Methods (methods) and World English(es) (WE). The second stage was analysing the constructions of different subjectivities based on semi-structured interviews, classroom teaching practices, and stimulated recalls. This second stage examined the lecturers’ positioning toward the vision and missions of the universities, the constructions of the lecturers’ multiple subjectivities concerning themselves, students, and ELT Methods (methods) and WE. The third stage was formulating how different constructions of subjects in the first and second stage were integrated into one possible coherent analysis.
The guiding questions and their possible relevance in addressing RQs
I used a list of questions taken from Manathunga (2016) and Barrow et al. (2010) for the initial stage of data analysis and for the constructions of subjects in the study.
Broadly stated questions were:
102 1. What kinds of discourses or categories are created in the text?
2. Who are the subjects created?
3. How are the subjects constructed?
4. What are the relations of power between the subjects?
I developed these questions further in relation to RQ.
RQ1:
How were the subjects of lecturers, students, World Englishes, ELT Methods, Academic Writing and Cross-cultural Understanding constructed by the official policy and curriculum documents?
What regimes of truth emerged from this analysis?
RQ2:
How did the lecturers construct themselves? How did they position themselves in relation to the vision and mission statements of the IU and the MRU?
RQ3:
How did the lecturers’ personal and professional experiences or subjectivities shape their constructions of ELT Methods? What operations of power emerged between lecturers and students as the result of the way lecturers constructed their ELT Methods?
RQ4:
What discourses emerged about WE? How was WE constructed by the lecturers? How did the lecturers’ subjectivities and cultural geographies contribute to shaping their construction of WE?
RQ5:
How were the students constructed? What relations of power were embedded in the ways lecturers constructed the students?
103 I used these questions to do a preliminary close reading of the data in order to:
1. Identify key terms and discourses;
2. Identify key categories;
3. Identify key subject positions;
4. Identify sections of text for more detailed FDA.
This preliminary coding follows the strategies listed by Walshaw (2007) and was discussed and refined with my supervisors. I then, in the second stage, moved on to further investigate these discourses, categories and subject positions in relation to my five research questions and identify any contradictions, ambivalences or tensions in these categories.
To calibrate my analysis, I also used O’Farrell (2005). O’Farrell’s explanation of Foucault’s concepts such as “truth is a historical category” and “knowledge is always shaped by political, social and historical factors – by ‘power’ in human societies” (p.54) has also partly guided my analytical process. Using these concepts, I examined whether the approach to teaching AW courses was constructed by the Western dominant or alternative approach. In the CCU course, I examined whether cross-cultural understanding was contextualised within Inner Circle Englishes or open to any cultures. If in the lecturers’ constructions of ELT Methods, Englishes(es), cultures were set up within Inner Circle Englishes then the political dimension of ELT was clearly in operation. I used these secondary sources to establish or strengthen my understanding on Foucault’s concepts because it was not easy to understand Foucault from the original works.
The third stage was conducting the analysis for a discussion chapter (Chapter Ten). This was done through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA), by adapting Harwood’s (2006) three axes of analysis: truth from curriculum policy documents, power-relations between lecturers and students, and technology of the self. It is worth emphasising here that methodologically,
104 Foucauldian discourse has been conducted by different scholars in many different ways (see Hook, 2005; Kendal & Wickham, 1999). Graham (2010) for example began her Foucauldian discourse by describing, recognising, and classifying the discursive practices of medical criteria used to assess the “misbehaviour” of children (p.670). Grbich (2013) outlined four points of investigation including the political, economic, and social contexts in which discourses emerged (p.249). Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine (2014) suggested the selection of corpus of statement, act of problematisation, examination of technologies of self and power, subject positions, and subjectification (pp.15-16). Bacchi and Goodwin (2016) offered an “analytic strategy” of analysing policy by taking a “What’s the Problem Represented (WPR) to be?” approach (p.13), to examine the often unexamined problem of representation (see also Bacchi, 2009).
My FDA is based on approaches adopted by Walshaw (2007) and O’Farrell (2005) as described above, consolidated using Harwood’s (2006) approach. Harwood’s (2006) approach allowed me to identify the key regimes of truth, explore the relations of power between lecturers and students, and categorise the technologies of self the lecturers displayed. Together these approaches provided a clear analytical framework while at the same time maintaining rigor. In conducting all the stages of analysis I also referred to concepts in Foucault’s original work such as discourse, subjectivity, power relations, power/knowledge, technology of the self, regimes of truth, resistance and other relevant resources. The analysis was an iterative process so that I went back and forth when analysing the data rather than following a rigid and linear process.
Previous scholarship on policy analysis such as Ball (2015a) and Burman (2017) have allowed me to think that the regimes of truth in policy and curriculum documents can either be adopted or contested by lecturers. These require tensions to be discussed in assessing trustworthiness. My data analysis process, my analysis was rigorously discussed with my supervisors. Tensions emerged in the analysis, underscoring the need for the trustworthiness of the analysis to be assessed.
105 4.2.2. Evaluating the Quality of the Study
Methods for assuring the trustworthiness of the study were informed by the notion of
“crystallisation”, as proposed by (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005), rooted in poststructural and postmodern research paradigms:
In postmodernist mixed-genre texts, we do not triangulate, we crystallise … I propose that the central image for “validity” for postmodern texts is not the triangle - a rigid, fixed, two-dimensional object. Rather, the central imaginary is the crystal, which combines symmetry and substance with an infinite variety of shapes, substances, transmutations, multidimensionalities, and angles of approach … Crystallisation provides us with a deepened, complex, thoroughly partial, understanding of the topic. Paradoxically, we know more and doubt what we know. Ingeniously, we know there is always more to know. (p.963)
Following the above concept, trustworthiness was gained through ensuring a variety of angles, a variety of shapes, and a variety of substances. My study has revealed a variety of angles, shapes and substance in the lecturers’ ELT practices under the four regimes of truth: neoliberal, Western, Southern, and Islamic Discourses, all of which may have shaped the lecturers’ subjectivities and discourses.
Methodologically, my use of crystallisation was to ensure the trustworthiness of the case study approach in my context, which was nuanced and complex. These nuances and complexities could not or could only partially be addressed if assessed through the criteria of ‘validity’ and
‘trustworthiness’ of the existing case study approaches such as Yin’s (2003) three forms of validity, construct, internal and external validity, and reliability (pp.33-39), Stake’s (1995; 2005) Triangulation, and Merriam’s (2009) eight strategies for validity and reliability. However, all of these ways of ensuring “validity” and “reliability” missed the issues of power relations and could
106 not capture the “mixed-genre texts” (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005, p.963) or tensions that my respondents might possibly encounter in their teaching and reflected in their discursive practices.
As I crystalised I thought through the different angles, substances, multidimensionalities, and complexities that emerged from my data. Furthermore, my use of FDA also shares similarity with Ellingson’s (2009) crystallisation. These are:
(1) Both Foucault and Ellingson allow contradictions and inconsistencies, therefore, I would treat the lecturers’ contradictions and inconsistencies as ‘normal’ as these might be the product of relations of power and truth in the lecturers’ work place;
(2) Both Foucault and Ellingson discuss power. My data presented rich insights into power relations between lecturers and students, lecturers with the constitution of vision and missions, between lecturers and the authority, between lecturers and me as the researcher;
(3) Both Foucault and Ellingson discuss political implications. The political implications of my study was the claim that the global Northern ideas, e.g., Foucault’s concepts even though important and helpful they were not sufficient. Furthermore, my study politically opened the space for Southern discourses in ELT.