5.6 DATA COLLECTION STRATEGIES
5.6.3 Lesson Observation
179 The interview was conducted at a time mutually agreed upon by the researcher and the participant teachers. In all cases, these were held on a school day but in the afternoon and in the absence of learners. In all cases the venues where the interviews took place was quiet so that little or no outside noise / interference affected the quality of the recording of the interview. In addition, the venues were private and therefore the participants did not have to worry about being overheard. The interview with teacher one (T1) was held in the office of one of the Heads of Department at the school.
Interview with teacher two (T2) took place in her anteroom that is attached to her laboratory. Teacher three (T3) was interviewed in his office, while teacher four (T4) was interviewed in his classroom. Being familiar with the settings at each school by virtue of the researchers’ professional activities helped to understand what the participant teachers said in their own terms.
Each interview lasted for about one and a half hours.
180 school science practical work have provided insights into the views of teachers and learners. These studies did not, however, compare expressed views on practical work with observations during actual practice. These studies might therefore be seen as studies of the rhetoric of practical work, rather than the reality (Abrahams and Millar, 2008).
Furthermore, questionnaire–based surveys are unlikely to provide accurate insights into the reality of teaching within its natural setting but may be more likely to produce current rhetoric (Crossley & Vulliamy, 1984) or popular views. Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2000) and Hammersley and Atkinson (1983) criticise an interview study for the same reason. The present study explored the relationship between teachers’
knowledge and beliefs about science education on the implementation of IPW in the classroom critically through the analysis of a variety of data. This therefore required a strategy to bring the researcher into close contact with the teaching and learning environments and the activities with which the learners engage. Hence, the researcher decided that the most suitable strategy to obtain the maximum information was to observe the lessons.
(b) Observation of Lesson
By prior arrangements with the participant teachers, a maximum of two lessons were observed in each teacher’s class. The first lesson served merely to get familiar with the classroom environment, and especially establish rapport with the learners and allow the teacher to be free and relaxed in the researcher’s presence. Also this first lesson observed was not necessarily a practical lesson of the IPW type. For this first lesson no feedback was given to the teacher by the researcher since this observation was not for the purposes of providing support, as is the case during the researcher’s normal professional duties. This was in keeping with the purpose of the study as indicated verbally as well as in the letter seeking permission for the teacher to participate in this study. However, this visit to the school was also utilised to provide the teacher with the relevant information with respect to the tasks that were required for the study (Appendix H). The second lesson to be observed by the researcher had to be a practical lesson and more especially, an investigative practical lesson. This investigative practical is the type referred to as the ‘hypothesis testing’ type as described in the SAG (DoE, 2005b).
During the observation of the formal practical lessons as arranged with the teachers, the researcher was a non-participant observer. As a non-participant observer the researcher
181 ensured that his presence in the classroom did not influence and / or affect the lessons.
The researcher was mindful that one of the reasons to use observation as a method of data collection was to validate information from the questionnaire and the interviews. In this regard, he occupied a strategic position, such that he was able to video record the entire lesson without missing out on any activities and any interactions between the teacher and learners and between the learners themselves and at the same time not interfere in the teaching and learning process. To ensure that the lesson was followed very closely without missing out on any aspect, the researcher concentrated on personally recording the lesson. Due to the technicality of the process of video recording the researcher was unable to keep any field notes. However, the detailed recording of every aspect of the lessons compensated for the lack of field notes.
The decision to video record the lessons was to ensure that all the activities, actions and interactions during the lessons could be viewed many times over, allowing the researcher to go back and forth in order to get a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. If the lesson was not recorded, completing an observation schedule could result in erroneous understanding if the opportunity did not exist for a review and / or reflection of the lessons.
At the end of the lessons a post-lesson interview was held with each of the teachers.
This was to clarify issues that the researcher identified during the lessons. Each lesson yielded a video recording of approximately one and a half hours. Thus a total of six hours of recording was observed in order to process the data. In processing the data from the video recording the researcher as well as the research assistants had to play–
stop-replay the video recording of each lesson several times in order to ensure that the transformation of the data mirrored the reality of the occurrence in the classroom. To enhance the credibility of the findings of this study the researcher sought to improve the reliability and trustworthiness of the data. In this respect the video recorded lessons were also examined and assessed by two colleagues who acted as research assistants.
One of the assessors, a senior Life Sciences teacher is a PhD student, who also evaluated the draft questionnaire, while the other assessor is a Senior Curriculum specialist in another province as well as an external Umalusi moderator. An adapted version of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) of Piburn and Sawada (2000) was used as a tool to appraise the lessons. The RTOP was created by the Evaluation Facilitation Group (EFG) of the Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the
182 Preparation of Teachers (ACEPT). The development of this protocol was also aimed at addressing the existence of the artificial dichotomy that exists between academic departments and colleges of education in the preparation of teachers.
The RTOP is an observational instrument designed to measure “reformed” teaching. It was designed to capture the reform movement and especially those characteristics that define “reformed teaching” (Piburn & Sawada, 2000). To this end, the theoretical and philosophical rationale of constructivism, which is regarded as the modern reform movement was used in the construction of the protocol. The researcher discussed each criterion of this tool with the assessors in detail in order to achieve a common understanding of the criteria before they could implement it in the appraisal of each lesson. Extensive discussion was intended to achieve a high degree of inter-rater reliability. In addition, the tool was designed in a way that also included the description of each criterion. Data processing for each type of data that was collected will be discussed in section 5.7 of this study.