CHALLENGING METHODOLOGIES
4.2. THE RESEARCH STRANDS UNDERPINNING THE CHRONICLES CHRONICLES
4.2.1. Description of the individual research strands
The initial research strand (on which Chronicle One72 was based) was implemented in the first semester of 2004. I designed the research as a qualitative study and worked within the interpretive paradigm to explore the perceptions of a group of 11 educators on the concept of teacher leadership for the South African schooling context. The educators were all tutors involved in a professional development initiative which I coordinated and which ran parallel to a Bachelor of Education Honours module they were teaching at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The study was designed as a tutor self-reflective journaling process over a six month period. The primary data source was the 11 tutor journals while a focus group interview offered a further data collection method. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data and the
72 Section 5.2, pp. 104 - 125
categorizations of the data gave rise to the beginnings of a model of teacher leadership (see Chronicle 1, p. 52573), in essence a grounded theory approach.
The second research strand (on which Chronicle Two74 was based) emerged out of the findings of the first study. I was concerned that “while the findings of the first study contributed to knowledge production on teacher leadership in South Africa, there was almost no mention of teacher leadership as it related to issues of gender” (Chronicle 2, p. 4675). This silence in the research motivated me to explore, in the first semester of 2005, the relationship between gender and teacher leadership. This second study which was also qualitative in design explored the gendered nature of the distribution of school leadership. It did this through a focus group interview process with 18 KZN educators and used thematic content analysis to analyse data.
The third research strand (on which both Chronicles Three76 and Four77 were based) was located within a larger National Research Foundation (NRF) Project78 which aimed at mapping barriers to education experienced by children and adults in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in a small country town in KwaZulu-Natal. I was involved in the research project during the second semester of 2005 and the first semester of 2006. Working with my colleague, Pete Jugmohan, we designed a study which aimed to examine the voices of the SMT members and the District Official on their views regarding HIV/AIDS as one of the major barriers to basic education for learners in schools. We utilised a qualitative research design and worked within the interpretive paradigm to obtain rich, detailed accounts of the SMT’s perspectives and experiences of leading and managing schools in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Data were gathered using open-ended questionnaires and interviews with SMT members and the District Official. The qualitative analysis programme, NVIVO, was utilised in the organisation and categorisation of the data into themes and a number of findings emerged in relation to understanding education leadership and teacher leadership in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
73 Section 5.2, p. 118
74 Section 6.2, pp. 186 - 199
75 Section 6.2, p. 188
76 Section 6.3, pp. 200 - 213
77 Section 7.2, pp. 215 - 227
78 Grant No. 2054168
The fourth research strand (on which Chronicle Five79 was based) was also located within a larger research project. This project arose from a partnership established between the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts in the United States. The goal of the project was “to develop and research a replicable and effective school-based model of professional development for teachers in KwaZulu-Natal” (Chronicle 5, p. 90)80. The first phase of the study involved the design and implementation of a school-based professional development initiative for educators from a cluster of four schools in Sobantu, just outside Pietermaritzburg, KZN during the first semester of 2006. I was invited to join the project during its second phase (second semester of 2006 and first semester of 2007) and was tasked with the responsibility of exploring the take-up of the pedagogical learning by educators in the four schools eight months after the professional development initiative.
Through the lens of distributed leadership theory, I explored the leadership role that educators played in the take-up of the new learning in their classrooms and schools and the particular leadership challenges they faced in implementing this new pedagogic learning. My research was qualitative in nature and took the form of a case study of the four schools involved in the professional development initiative. The participants were educators (SMT members and teachers) from each of the four schools who had attended the initial initiative as well as the project leaders (two UKZN academics). The research design involved collecting data using a multi- method approach in an attempt to obtain rich and detailed data. Data were gathered through semi-structured questionnaires, semi-structured focus group interviews with SMT members, semi-structured focus group interviews with teachers, semi-structured individual interviews with the project leaders as well as project documentation and reports. Content analysis was used to analyse data. Working inductively and deductively, I developed my own tool for analysis (see Chronicle 5, pp. 92 – 93)81 and adopted this in the analysis and presentation phases of the chronicle.
79 Section 5.3, pp. 126 - 148
80 Section 5.3, p. 131
81 Section 5.3, pp. 133 - 134
The fifth research strand (on which Chronicle Six82 was based) was designed as a small qualitative study and implemented in two previously disadvantaged urban primary schools in Pietermaritzburg in 2006. It aimed to explore notions of distributed leadership within the two schools in order to determine whether the SMT either promoted or posed a barrier to the development of teacher leadership. At each of the two schools, the participants included members of the SMT and post level one teachers. Data were gathered through questionnaires and interviews; both focus group and individual, in an attempt to gain a rich picture of the different perceptions on teacher leadership from the different participants. The inductive method was initially used to analyse the data in a grounded theory process. Once the concepts and themes were developed, a second level of analysis was done using the model of teacher leadership developed in the fifth chronicle (p. 93)83 and discussed in the previous paragraph.
The sixth research strand (on which Chronicle Seven84 was based), the only quantitative strand, was designed as a post-graduate student group research project under my coordination and leadership in 2008. It aimed to teach and support Bachelor of Education Honours students in doing research using quantitative methods. It involved survey research into teachers’ perceptions and experiences of teacher leadership. Quantitative data in the form of self-administered, closed questionnaires were gathered, through purposive and convenience sampling, from 1055 post level one teachers across three districts in KZN. The data were first analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and then analysed using the zones and roles model of teacher leadership (Chronicle 5, p. 93)85.
From the discussion, it can be seen that these six research strands form the context of the study because they describe and detail how the chronicles emerged and evolved.
Having introduced the strands which underpin this study, I move on to sketch a picture of the schools and participants involved across the research strands and the sampling procedures I adopted.
82 Section 5.4, pp. 149 - 161
83 Section 5.3, p. 134
84 Section 5.5, pp. 162 - 184
85 Section 5.3, p. 134
4.2.2. Schools, participants and sampling across the individual research