RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.6 DATA ANALYSIS PROCESSES
the classroom, and questions that I wished to ask o f the teacher. While I wrote my notes in a note book, each day’s observations were immediately typed and saved once I returned home.
The notes written while in the field were abbreviated and it was necessary for me to expand my notes, confirm the translation o f phrases I had written in isiXhosa, and include comments teachers made during their lessons that I may not have captured sufficiently. W olfinger (2002) maintains that there are three aspects to writing field notes, namely, onsite notes, which are usually an outline o f what is observed, (re)interpreting the on-site notes in order to write coherent descriptions o f what took place in the field, and reflections on the influences that note
taking has on the research story. In typing up my field notes, I kept to the sequence o f the lesson. If there was a worksheet or activity that the children had completed as part o f their independent work, I uploaded a photo o f the activity from my camera or, in the case o f the national workbooks, from the internet. Based on the field notes, I made notes o f points of interest and possible emerging codes and themes. The field notes were useful in providing an overall sense o f the teachers’ mathematics teaching, but they lacked the depth o f data generated through the video-recorded lessons.
To establish trust and allow the teachers to see the non-judgmental nature o f my notes, I always ensured that I left my notebook open for the teachers to see. After having read my notes, Beauty commented to Nomsa that she didn’t know that I could speak and write isiXhosa. Nomsa told me “You know what, Beauty was so impressed by you. She said ‘Lise can understand isiXhosa and she can write what the children are saying’” (Nomsa, PI1, t.142)27. This was based on the fact that I sometimes found it easier to write what the teachers and children were saying in isiXhosa.
and experiences. The third part o f the data analysis involved the processes o f abduction and retroduction. Briefly, abduction involves redescribing what is into something new, and retroduction is the process o f asking transfactual questions (Chapter Three) to establish the SEP, CEP and PEP. I worked with these thought processes in an iterative manner rather than as representative o f fixed stages. I explain this below.
4.6.1 The process o f transcribing and translating the data
Coffrey and Atkinson (as cited in Maxwell, 2008) maintain that data analysis ought to occur in tandem with data generation as the researcher is able to assess emerging themes while still in the field. A table summarising the research opportunities with each teacher is provided in Appendix 4. Transcriptions o f each o f the interviews (i.e. life history, mathematics history and practices) was completed on the day o f the interview. I realised that with the number of interviews that I was doing, plus the daily word-processing o f my field notes, I had to keep up with the process if the data generation and initial analysis were to be iterative. During the processes o f transcribing the interviews and word-processing my field notes, I added soft notes o f my thoughts, ideas, and possible connections in the data.
The transcription o f the video-recorded lessons was less efficient as I was not able to control the process. Given that teaching and learning in these classrooms was in isiXhosa, and that I have limited proficiency in the language, I was reliant on a colleague to transcribe and translate.
This was a slow process. Further complications arose when the colleague left the institution we were working in and was no longer available to transcribe and translate. One o f the data capturers in the EU:SFTE project took over this role, but she had limited experience with transcription and translation, and no experience in teaching. Her transcriptions and translations were erratic and there were significant linguistic differences in her style from that o f the original translator. I considered that the process o f translation posed a ‘validity threat’ to the study and therefore sought a solution. A full two years after the data had been collected, I resolved the quandary by employing an experienced ex-Post Graduate Certificate in Education (Intermediate Phase) student to review all the transcriptions. This student had done transcription work before and had isiXhosa (Mother Tongue) 2 in his undergraduate degree.
He watched all the videos while reading the transcriptions and attempted to ensure they were stylistically the same. In many instances, he had to re-transcribe and re-translate the videos because the translations were unreliable.
I read each interview and lesson observation transcript while listening to and observing the audio and video recordings. W ith the lesson observation transcripts, I first engaged with the isiXhosa transcription before reading the English translation. I have included an excerpt (Exemplar transcript 4.1) from one o f my transcripts below to show the manner in which the two languages are presented. W hile watching the video-recorded lesson I worked with the isiXhosa transcriptions first. It was only by reading the transcriptions in isiXhosa while watching the video-recorded lessons that I was able to add in any actions or gestures o f the teacher. These are in English in square brackets in the example provided below. I then transposed these onto the English translations. Fortunately I can read and understand basic isiXhosa, so I was able to follow what the teacher and children were saying.
Exemplar 4.1: Excerpt o f a transcript o f Veliswa’s second video-recorded lesson (Veliswa, VRL 2, tt.95-97)
95. Veliswa Heke! Phaya siphawula ukuba la manani xa uhamba nje, ngolu hlobo atheni? [The teacher is looking at the chart as she speaks. She points to the first row of numbers at the top of the chart.] Kuwe ashiyana ngoozingaphi?
Ashiyana ngoozingaphi? [She points to a child to answer]
Very well! There we note that these numbers, when you move this way what happens? [The teacher is looking at the chart as she speaks. She points to the first row of numbers at the top of the chart.] What is the difference between the numbers? What is it? [She points to a child to answer]
96. L Ngoo-zintlanu. They are 5s.
97. Veliswa [The teacher is positioned in the class near the board facing the two rows of learners closest to the door.] Ngoo- zintlanu onke! Ithi loo nto la manani onke enza amaqela ka-zintlanu ne?
Ukuba ngaba (na) sinokuthi siwohlula-hlule sofumanisa ukuba onke akhonto iza kusala xa uwahlula- hlule ngamaqela ka-zintlanu, ne?
[The teacher is positioned in the class near the board facing the two rows of learners closest to the door.] All of them are 5s. This means all these numbers are in groups of 5, not so? If we could divide (arrange) them we’d find that there will be no remainder; if you divide (arrange) them in groups of 5, not so?
I elaborate on the referencing conventions that I have used in my thesis later in the chapter.
4.6.2 Initial coding o f the data
I began coding and categorising my interview data before I had the video-recorded lesson transcripts. I initially worked with each teacher’s data set separately to obtain a detailed understanding o f each teacher’s life history and mathematics history. I coded each interview in
accordance with the questions asked during the interview. Bogdan and Biklen (as quoted in Maxwell, 2012) view coding as a “means o f sorting the descriptive data you have collected ...
so that the material bearing a given logic can be physically separated from other data” (p. 111).
Two analytic strategies were used: categorising and connecting strategies (Maxwell, 2012). I was concerned that the process o f categorising the data through coding, would result in a decontextualized account of the teachers’ identities and teaching practices, as it fractures the data. After initially having worked with the data from each teacher individually, I later shifted to working across the transcribed interviews and observations o f the four teachers in a bid to identify commonalities and differences. I worked, for example, with all the maths history transcripts, looking for themes, patterns and differences. I made tables, as shown below, where I could write the category and enter all the information from the interview data o f all four teachers that pertained to each category. To illustrate this, I provide an extract relating to the mathematics history interviews. In this extract, the code is ‘influence o f the teacher’ and concerns the influence the mathematics teachers had on the participants in my study when they were children at school.