BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY
5.2 Qualitative Research Approach underpinning this study
This study was conducted using the qualitative approach in a single study. The qualitative approach yields data that assist mainly to “understand social life and the meaning that people attach to everyday life” (McRoy, 1995: 2009). Given the fact that literacy in this study is understood to be a social practice (Street, 1984; Gee, 1990); and considering that the purpose of qualitative research is to understand a specific social situation, it is logical that the qualitative approach was to be chosen. In the context of this study, the use of the qualitative approach within the interpretivist paradigm made it possible from the RPs’
accounts to elicit meanings, experiences or perceptions that were fundamental and central to the broader purposes of this study. The broader purposes being the discipline-specific literacies that the academic literacy specialists and disciplinary specialists who teach in the foundation programme believe are required by the foundation students to learn science.
Qualitative research methodology enables the study of a phenomenon within its natural setting and, in the context of this study, the issue of discipline-specific literacies in science
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in the FP is investigated in the research site, UKZN.45 This enabled data collection by means of close interaction with the RPs within the natural context. It is for this reason that the behaviour of the RPs was “context-related, context-dependent and context-rich” (Cohen et al. 2011: 219), leading to the formation of patterns or theories that helped me to explain the research issue in this study.
In adhering to the characteristics of qualitative approach, I served the role of the key researcher and collected multiple data from multiple sources by means of semi-structured interviews, documentary evidence and observation in order to construct a holistic account of the phenomenon under study. Maxwell (2005) argues that qualitative research should have both practical and intellectual goals. My goal in this study was “to generate results and theories that are credible and that can be understood by both participants and other readers” (Maxwell 2005, 21). The following intellectual goals of qualitative research are especially relevant to, and reflective of, this study:
● to understand particular contexts in which participants are located and;
● to develop causal explanations of phenomena (Maxwell, 2005: 21).
This study involved the collection of multiple sources of data, a characteristic of qualitative research. Data was gathered through the use of the following research instruments:
● semi-structured interviews with the academic literacy specialists and the
disciplinary specialists teaching one of the foundation modules (biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics and academic literacy) offered in the BSc4 (Foundation) programme;
● documentary evidence such as course manuals and laboratory practical manuals used in the foundation modules; the BSc4 (Foundation) students’ laboratory practical workbooks, laboratory reports, field reports, and tests; and
monthly/semester foundation module reports; and,
● observation of lectures, tutorials, laboratory practicals and field trips.
As indicated by the choice of research instruments used in this study, data obtained from multiple sources served to give a more holistic understanding of the phenomenon under study. One of the reasons for including documentary evidence and observation as research instruments was to corroborate the data obtained through verbal responses by the RPs.
Their responses were mainly in respect of discipline-specific literacies in science. There was the need to correlate these with the findings from the documentary evidence. This
45 Chapter 1 offered a comprehensive discussion on the nature of the FP at UKZN and the institutional merger that lead to the creation of UKZN, a HE institution.
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included the issue of module changes in respect of the research focus of discipline-specific literacies in science. The research issue required me to access documentary evidence such as students’ laboratory practical tasks, laboratory reports, field reports, and tests pertinent to the foundation modules in science, i.e. biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics.
This was undertaken to further my understanding of whether or not there were any perceived challenges by the students in the FP with regard to the use of language in science and the discipline-specific literacies in science.
With the foci of this study being on the discipline-specific literacies required by the FP students for science discourse, it was necessary to field the views of the RPs in respect of the discipline-specific literacies required for the foundation modules of biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics offered in the FP. I was able to do so by using semi-structured interviews to conduct interviews with all the RPs. I also used the observation of lectures, tutorials, laboratory practicals and field trips to engage further with the phenomenon under study. A combination of interviews and observation enabled me to integrate two types of data (verbal and practical), but also enabled space for corroborating verbal data. In an attempt to explore the presence of perceived challenges experienced by students in the FP in respect of the use of the language of science and the discipline-specific literacies in the foundation modules in the FP, I relied on the analysis of the documentary evidence in the form of the course manuals used in modules offered in the FP; the FP students’ laboratory practical workbooks, their laboratory reports, field reports, as well as their test scripts. To gain richer and more detailed data in this respect, I included the observation of lectures, tutorials, laboratory practicals and field trips as a means of acquiring a firmer interpretation of data. In an attempt to explore the ways in which the disciplinary specialists assisted the FP students with the acquisition of discipline-specific literacies for science discourse, I interpreted the data obtained through the use of semi-structured interviews, observation and documentary evidence.
Triangulating data gave me a clearer understanding of the research focus in this study. It enabled me to increase the accuracy of the data collected for this study. One such example from my study in respect of the accuracy of the data was the claim by some of the disciplinary specialists that I had interviewed that they have made specific changes to their teaching practices where they incorporated strategies to improve FP students’ reading and reading comprehension in science. I used observation to locate instances where there was
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engagement with reading and reading comprehension strategies in science. Therein lies the benefit of triangulating data. In terms of its use in research, the concept of triangulation implies that a researcher can approach research from many different perspectives and angles to gain multidimensional understandings of the phenomenon under study.
Triangulation enables “cross-checking and verifying sources of information” (Heck, 2006:
380). It can be used to “build a coherent justification of themes” (Creswell, 2009: 191), thus contributing to validity of the study. Through triangulation, I was able to obtain
“different but complementary data on the same topic” (Morse, 1991: 122) so that I could get a richer understanding of the research issue. Thus, triangulation not only assisted with the consistency and accuracy of the data collected, but it allowed me to acquire a holistic picture and understanding of the research focus in this study.
The challenge of relying on gathering data from multiple sources was that it was a rigorous and time-consuming process. I had undertaken the data collection single-handedly, i.e.
conducting, transcribing and analysing interviews; engaging with documentary evidence;
and observing lessons, tutorials and laboratory practicals in each of the science modules offered in the FP. This included field research on the campus site (UKZN) and a field trip to the rocky shores and the Ushaka Marine World46 undertaken in the discipline of the foundation biology module offered in the FP. I now turn to the discussion of case study as a research strategy used this study.