4.7 Production of data 59
4.7.1 Document review 60
4.7.2.1 Advantages of observation 63
McKernan (1996:61) consider observation to have the following advantages as a research technique:
Naturalistic enquiry: The study takes place in the natural environment of the participants rather than an artificial or contrived laboratory reconstruction.
Time sampling: Unlike the survey researcher, the observer can take as much time as is required to gain a representative sample of behaviour – ensuring that trends and behaviours are representative. The advantage is that unlikely as well as likely occurrences will probably be sampled.
Non-verbal behaviour: The observer can make notes on non-verbal behaviour, like facial and body movement and gestures, which are not available to the sample survey.
Through observation the researcher get information in depth rather than reported data.
Observation is important because it gives all the information about the classroom interaction between the learners and their teachers. Cohen et al (2007) indicates that observation involves a well planned examination of everything that will be taking place.
The schedule for the observation in this study is in such a way that this schedule will assist me to selects aspects to focus on. Observation will also include the assessment strategies given to learners as well as the teachers‟ practice of outcomes in their Integrated Form Three classroom. Observation schedule which directs the researcher throughout the data production is given in Appendix E.
4.7.2.2 Disadvantages of Observation
Even though observation gives first hand information however, it has disadvantages like the ones stated by McKernan (1996:62):
Reactivity: With an observer present, unnatural behaviour of the teacher and the learners can occur and therefore produces unnatural results. That is, with a researcher present, respondents may behave uncharacteristically.
Small size of population observed: The fact that a group or individual is the focus of the observation may permit discussion of results only in relation to the case studied.
Generalisability: This is related to the above point; since cases studied are small, it is impossible to generalise the results to larger populations.
Data difficult to quantify: Unstructured modes of observation rely heavily on description rather than measurement and counting procedures. It is often difficult to impose a coding frame on massive amounts of qualitative data.
4.7.3 Semi-structured Interview
A meeting between two or more people is called interview and in an interview the interviewer collect information from the interviewee by asking questions and recording the answers by tape or through notes. According to Cohen et al (2007) interview
involves collection of data from direct verbal interaction between the researcher and the participants. Interview, if well designed and well conducted it provides in-depth information about what people do and belief. In this case interview helped the researcher to answer research question one and two, which are: what are the experiences and practices of Form Three Integrated Science teachers with regards to outcomes and assessment strategies? Why do the Form Three Integrated Science teachers experience and practice outcomes and assessment strategies the way they do?
The interview makes it easy to get insight of what a person (teacher) knows, likes or dislikes and what he or she thinks. (Sarantakos, 2005). According to De Vos, Strydom, Fouché and Delport (2002) in the interpretive research, the interview is used extensively.
This is because interpretive research explores and describes people‟s understanding and beliefs so interview works towards achieving that goal. Cohen et al (2007) indicates that interview is a useful tool of data collection or data production because it allows the researcher to ask probing and clarifying questions and discuss with participants about their understanding.
Interview is different from everyday conversation in the sense that the researcher has in mind particular information that he or she wants from the participant. There are two types of interviews namely: semi-structured interview and unstructured interview. In a semi-structured interview the questions may require close responses or open-ended responses which are different expressions or opinions given by different respondents (Cohen et al 2007). In order for the participants to understand more about the topic observation or informal interview may come before the semi-structured interview (Rice
& Ezzy, 2000). On the other hand unstructured interview is defined by Patton (2002) as a natural extension of participant observation, because they so often occur as part of ongoing participant observation fieldwork. He argued that they rely entirely on the spontaneous generation of questions in the natural flow of an interaction. In this research a semi-structured interview will be used.
Semi-structured interviews was used with the main aim of establishing the teachers‟
understanding of outcomes and assessment strategies because they enable researchers to gain a detailed picture of the participants‟ views on a particular topic (De Vos, et al, 2002). Semi-structured interview schedule where inductive and deductive questions
may be used (Rice & Ezzy, 2000), but researchers are only guided by the schedule, rather than dictated by it (De Vos et al, 2002). They further indicate that semi-structured interviews are more flexible, an interview guide, usually including both closed-ended and open-ended questions, is prepared; but in the course of the interview, the interviewer has a certain amount of room to adjust the sequence of the questions to be asked and to add questions based on the context of the participants‟ responses. This implies that the researcher was therefore able to probe if needs be and ask clarifying questions when necessary.