translated into “criticise” or “comment” in English. The researcher initially translated the word “pi ping” in Chinese to “criticise” in English in Edwin’s interview transcripts.
But after re-examining the data and reconfirming with Edwin, the researcher realized that “criticise” was not appropriate for it refers to pointing out the faults of someone.
While in the interview, Edwin intended to convey “comment” in that story, so the researcher decided to translate “pi ping” into “communicating feedback” after clarifying the subtle difference. The translated excerpts in English were presented in the data citations, as recommended by Van Nes et al. (2010) to stick to original language as long and as much as possible to avoid potential limitations of translation from source language to target language in qualitative data analysis. Besides, the reflective journals from the participants and the reflexive journals kept by the researcher were also collected to be incorporated into the data analysis. The specific data analysis methods and procedures will be introduced in the next section.
collected. It begins during the process of data collection and interpretation (Roulston, 2014). The process of data analysis is to piece together data, to make the implicit clues explicit, to make decisions on whether it is significant or not, and to connect seemingly unrelated experiences (Josselson, 2010).
To be specific, narrative analysis and thematic analysis were utilized in this study to interpret the data (See Figure 3.5). The four-round interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed narratively and thematically. All the documents (talent training scheme, syllabus, and documents about practicum), artifacts (lesson plans) and journals (from participants and the researcher) were analyzed along with the interview transcripts through thematic analysis.
Figure 3.5 Procedures of data analysis
Narrative analysis is useful to develop an in-depth perspective of participants’
experiences related to a particular issue or phenomenon (Riessman, 2001). The narrative accounts collected in the study need to be analyzed for a chronology of unfolding events and the turning points (Creswell, 2007). Creswell (2007) proposed six-step narrative analysis procedures, which was described in a detailed way and easy to follow to handle the data for novice researchers. Hence, it was adopted to analyze the narrative data in the study. As is indicated by Creswell (2007), the analysis procedures cover six steps. (1) The first step is data managing to create files for data.
(2) The second procedure involves reading and memoing the texts for initial codes.
The interview transcripts will be closely read and re-read by the researcher to be immersed in materials. (3) Then the stories or experiences from the participants will be re-storied and re-arranged according to the chronological order. (4) The fourth step classifies the stories and the contextual factors involved. (5) The fifth deals with the interpretation of the larger meaning of the story elicited from the participants. (6) The final one is to present the narration focusing on issues involved in the research questions.
After the initial analysis of narrative accounts from each participant, the cross-cases analysis was performed to draw similar patterns or themes across the individual narrative account or probe into the differences among the narrative experiences (Josselson, 2010). To this end, the thematic analysis was conducted subsequently.
Thematic analysis is an essential data analysis method in qualitative research, primarily analyzing the patterns and themes repeatedly emerging in the textual data
(Braun & Clarke, 2012). It is “a data reduction and analysis strategy by which data are segmented, categorized, summarised, and reconstructed in a way that captures the important concepts within a data set” (Ayres, 2008, p. 867). That is to say, it is mainly a descriptive strategy in search for patterns of experience in the qualitative data.
Thematic analysis is helpful to theorize across a set of cases and to find thematic elements across participants and the events elicited from the participants (Riessman, 2005; Vaismoradi et al., 2013). Thematic analysis best fits into elucidating the specific nature of the participant’s conceptualization of the phenomenon being studied (Joffe, 2011). It enables the researcher to state the main topics that the interview transcripts turn out to be about. Thus, it is appropriate to analyze the participants’
conceptualization of LAL and the emerging themes in LAL evolvement trajectory across cases. Furthermore, it is suggested to be a flexible research tool to reveal a rich and detailed account of data and to categorize the themes occurring in the documents and artifacts related to the research topic in textual data (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
After its rationale was explained, the thematic analysis was implemented in six steps suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006, 2012) because their method provides a clear and concise step-by-step guideline for the researcher to follow. The thematic analysis, like most qualitative analysis methods, is a non-linear process but iterative and recursive: the researcher moves back and forth among the different phases (Braun &
Clarke, 2006). (1) The first phase is to familiarize with the data set, often beginning
during data collection. The researcher actively engaged in the data by attentively reading the textual data to generate very early and provisional analytic ideas. (2) The second phase aims to generate codes. Coding means identifying relevant data and labeling them with a few words that cover the meaning of the segment. Coding helps the researcher develop an insightful understanding of the data and provides a thorough basis for the analysis. The researcher embraced an open and flexible attitude to coding, refining, and revising codes throughout the entire research process.
(3) The third procedure involves constructing themes. Guided by the research questions, the researcher examined, combined, and clustered the codes together into a possible theme. (4) The fourth procedure is to review the potential themes respectively.
After all candidate themes were developed, the researcher reviewed the network of themes to further shape, clarify, or even reject the theme. (5) The fifth step is to define and name themes. Defining a theme means providing a short summary of the core concept and abstract of each theme. It is concerned about guaranteeing the clarity, cohesion, precision, and quality of developing thematic analysis. (6) The final phase is writing the report to summarise the findings.