T
his chapter concerns the methodology used in conducting the research reported in this book. Best and Kahn (1993:26-27) describes four types of educational research: historical, quantitative descriptive, qualitative descriptive and experimental:1. Historical research describes what was. The process involves investigating, recording, analyzing and interpreting the events of the past for the purpose of discovering generalizations that are helpful in understanding the past and the present, and, to a limited extent, in anticipating the future.
2. Quantitative descriptive research uses quantitative methods to describe tempts to discover relationships between existing non-manipulated variables. Some form of statistical analysis is used to describe the results of the study.
3. Qualitative descriptive research uses non-quantitative methods to describe what is. Qualitative descriptive research uses systematic procedures to discover non-quantifiable relationships between existing variables.
4. Experimental research describes what will be when certain variables are carefully controlled or manipulated. The focus
C h a p t e r 3
Methodology
is on variable relationships. As defined here, deliberate manipulation is always a part of the experimental method”.
This study can be categorised as part historical and part qualitative descriptive research. It is historical because it involves the examination of language policy, its implications of classroom practice and its implementation. It is qualitative descriptive because it involves the description and analysis of present classroom practices. It looks at the implications of policy in classroom practices which can be considered as cause-effect relationships.
The research in this study is qualitative research. I have chosen this qualitative approach because it is appropriate to this study. As I will discuss later in this chapter, the data collected for this study are in the form of language policy documents, interviews and classroom observations. There will be no experiment conducted which required experimental and control groups.
Grotjahn (1987) argues that the qualitative-quantitative distinction is oversimplified and he provides an insightful analysis of research traditions in applied linguistics. His provision emphasises that research studies should be analysed based on the method of data collection (whether the data have been collected experimentally or non-experimentally), the type of data yielded by the investigation (qualitative or quantitative), and the type of analysis conducted on the data (whether statistical or interpretive). This study, based on Grotjahn’s, falls into the category of non-experimental method of data collection because no experiments were conducted, the data are in the form of documents, interviews and classroom transcription, and they are analysed interpretively.
There are several methods of collecting data in non-experimental research (Nunan 1992). Interviews are appropriate to obtain information related to language policy and how it is meant to be implemented from the authorities. They are also useful to get information from teachers
about classroom practices. Classroom observation is important to look at the relationships between the policy expectations and what happens in reality.
Policy documents about foreign languages are categorised as secondary data by McNeill in Nunan (1992): “secondary data is data available from some other sources and comes in various forms … for example: statistics, personal document, public document, etc”. Best (1970) categorises “primary data (sources) as eyewitness accounts which are reported by an actual observer or participant in an event, such as documents, remains or relics and oral testimony”. He then goes on to say that some types of material may be secondary sources for some purposes and primary sources for others.
Interviews are described as “the elicitation of data by one person from another through person-to-person encounters” (Johnston 1985) are the chosen method to get information about the implementation of policies. They have been “widely used as a research tool in applied linguistics” (Johnston 1985).
In terms of the degree of formality, interviews can be categorised as unstructured, semi-structured and structured. The semi-structured interview is used in this study, as Dowsett cited in Nunan (1992:149) states that
“the semi-structured interview is quite extraordinary - the interactions are incredibly rich and data indicate that you can produce extraordinary evidence about life that you don’t get in structured interviews or questionnaires methodology - no matter how open ended and qualitative you think questionnaires are attempting to be. It’s not the only qualitative research technique that will produce rich information about social relationships but it does give you access to social relationships in a quite profound way.”
To obtain information about the practice of teaching English in primary schools, the semi-structured interview was chosen for its flexibility, and giving more access to the information needed.
According to Cohen and Manion in Research Methods in Education, the semi-structured interview is a “less formal interview in which the interviewer is free to modify the sequence of questions, change the wording, explain them or add to them” (1985). The interviewees are both teachers and administrative personnel in the Department of Education. The interview is conducted in
“a two-person conversation initiated by the interviewer for the specific purpose of obtaining research-relevant information, and focused on content specified by research objectives of systematic description, prediction, or explanation” (Cohen and Manion 1985).
It is used in conjunction with other methods as explained later in this chapter.
In addition to the interview, in order to assess whether language policy affects the practice of foreign language teaching, classroom observation is applied. To observe the classroom, there are four well-known methods, namely: formal experiment, stimulated recall, observation schemes, and interaction analysis. Those methods can be defined as follows:
Experiment is a procedure for testing an hypothesis by setting up a situation in which the strength of the relationship between variables can be tested. Stimulated recall is a technique in which the researcher records and transcribes parts of a lesson and then gets the teacher (and, where possible, the students) to comment on what was happening at the time the teaching and learning took place. Observation schemes are numerous schemes which have been developed for documenting classroom interaction. Interaction analysis involves the discursive analysis of classroom talk (adapted from Nunan 1992:91-98)
Observation schemes and interaction analysis are the principal research methods used in this study. These methods have been chosen because they are particularly useful techniques in obtaining information of what is going on in the classroom.
Having decided on the observation methods, it is important now to clarify the instruments used in order to get information in the classroom. There is a list of various instruments used in observing the classroom as discussed by Cohen and Manion (1985). They also include the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques in their discussion. The strength and weaknesses of the instruments used in this study as well as other instruments for classroom observation can be seen in detail in Cohen and Manion (1985). In my study, tape recording and note-taking were used. Several interviews were tape-recorded, whilst in others only notes were taken because of the request of the interviewees. Several classroom interactions were tape-recorded when it is permitted by classroom teacher. If permission is not given, note-taking is the choice. Again, these approaches are chosen basically for the convenience of classroom being observed since they are considered less disturbing the learning process as well as less distracting the concentration although it is admitted that not every classroom movement can be recorded properly.
As far as classroom observation is concerned, this study can be categorised as a case study since it discusses the implications of language policy for the practice of TEFL in primary schools.
Why? Although many experts define ‘case study’ in various ways sometimes, Nunan (1994) defines quite clearly that “the researcher in case study typically observes the characteristics of an individual unit - a child, a clique, a class, a school, or a community”. Cohen and Manion (1985:120) in regard to case study explain further that the purpose of such observations are “to probe deeply and to analyse the intensity of the multifarious phenomena that constitute the life cycle of the unit with a view to establishing generalisations about the wider population to which the unit belongs”. This study, to some extent, is also considered a case study because it analyses the characteristic of classrooms where the process of EFL teaching happens. It also discuss the influence of the society in which the schools are part of
it. On a bigger scale, it looks at the place of EFL classroom practices in wider society.
Stenhouse (1983) develops four types of case study which he describes as follows: neo-ethnographic, the in-depth investigation of a single case by a participant observer; evaluative, an investigation carried out in order to evaluate policy or practice; multi-site, a study carried out by several researchers on more than one site; action, an investigation carried out by a classroom practitioner in his or her professional context. Referring to these types of case studies, this study can be categorised as evaluative type since it is to examine the language policy and its practice in classroom.
Having located the methodology employed in this study, the procedures of my data collection will be discussed in the next section.