In this chapter, the research methods, quantitative and qualitative, applied in this study are discussed. The first section specifies the rationales for research design. The second section describes who the participants were and how they were recruited. In the third section, the format of the questionnaire and interview questions used in this study is presented. The last section presents data analysis procedures.
Research Design
This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods－a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. Questionnaire survey made it possible for researchers to gather a substantial amount of information from a large population in different regions with least time, money, and human recourses (Li, 2009; Lin, 2003).
The information collected from the questionnaires was easier to compare and contract through statistical analysis and helped the researchers to gain a general picture of the issues. However, a questionnaire had its own weaknesses. In order to gain the opinions which were hard to elicit from the questionnaire, interviews were conducted to obtain a more comprehensive view on the “Remedial Instruction Project” from the perspectives of teachers.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire contained three sections, teachers’ background information, their understanding of the “Remedial Instruction Project”, and their perceptions of current implementation of the project (see appendix A). The first section contained ten
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multiple choices aiming at collecting the participants’ background information including gender, level of school they were teaching, years of teaching, highest education, positions in the school, scale of their school, location of their school, years of remedial instruction experiences. Section two contains twenty-three multiple choices to examine the participants’ knowledge about the new remedial project. In the third section, the current implementation of the project was explored with two sets of questions. One set consists of sixteen statements on the participants’ perceptions of administration, teaching, and students’ learning. The participants had to choose their agreement with the statements (ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”) The other set contains five multiple-choice questions which allow the participants to choose more than one answer. The questions explore present English remedial instruction situation such as teacher employment, organization of remedial classes, teaching materials, implementation problems, and school support. In the end, one open-ended question regarding further suggestions for the project is added.
Interview
Questionnaires could collect opinions from a portion of participants in a relatively short time, and help the researchers to gain a general picture of the issues.
However, no matter how thorough a questionnaire was, the data collected from the questionnaire were not able to provide an in-depth understanding due to the limited space of questionnaire pages (Kumar, 2005). In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the English teacher’s view about the project, interviews were conducted since they allowed the interviewees to “use their own words to communicate their attitudes, opinions, and beliefs” (Nielsen & Buchanan, 1991). In this study, the interview questions included two parts. The first part (Qestions 1 to 9) was related to English teachers’ attitudes and opinins on the project, and the second part
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(Qestions 10 to 16) was to explore teachers’ teaching in remedial courses (see Appendix B).
Participants
The subjects were sampled from twenty cities and counties in Taiwan, including schools in offshore islands, as shown in Table 2. However, because of limited time and money, a majority of the participants came from Taipei City (16%), New Taipei City (13%), and Kaohsiung City (10%). Though the data can not represent all the teachers in Taiwan, their opinions can provide us some insights for English Remedial Instruction Project.
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Table 2. (continued)
Distribution of the Participants
Lienchiang County 1 0%
Missing 14 5%
Total 275 100%
The detailed distribution of the questionnaire participants is presented in Table 3.
Two hundred and seventy-five respondents completed the questionnaire, including one hundred and twenty-four elementary school English teachers (45.1%) and one hundred and fifty-one junior high school English teachers (54.9%). These respondents were made up of eighty-nine English subject teachers (32.4%), sixty-four English and homeroom teachers (23.3%), thirty-six English substitute teachers (13.1%), sixty-four English teachers with administrative duties (23.3%), eight English interns (2.9%), seven college students who joined the “Remedial Instruction Project” (2.5%), one retired English teachers (0.4%). The majority of the respondents’ teaching experiences were six to fifteen years (50.2%), followed by five years and below (35.6%), sixteen to twenty-five years (12%), and twenty-six years and above (1.5%).
In terms of educational background, one hundred and fifty-five participants (56.4%) owned a master degree, while one hundred and fifteen of them (41.8%) had a bachelor degree—sixty-three were trained in normal universities and fifty-two in teacher training programs.
Additionally, one hundred and sixty-three respondents’ schools (59.3%) were located in urban areas, sixty-nine respondents’ schools (25.1%), in villages and towns, and thirty-nine respondents’ schools (14.2%), in remote areas. The data also show that twenty-three respondents (8.4%) were from schools with six classes or less, twenty-seven respondents (9.8%), from schools with seven to twelve classes, fifty-four respondents (19.6%), from schools with thirteen to twenty-four classes,
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ninety-three respondents (33.8%), from schools with twenty-five to forty-eight classes, and seventy-seven respondents (28%), from schools with forty-nine classes or above.
As for the frequencies of attending professional development and workshops, one hundred respondents (36.4%) attended English remedial professional development communities, while one hundred and seventy-five of them did not. However, more than 90% of the respondents (n = 250) had remedial instruction workshops experience.
During the data collection period, 48% of the respondents (n = 130) had experience in remedial instruction programs. Note that only valid answers were computed while analyzing the frequency and percentage of the responses. If the participants did not answer the questions, they would be treated as missing data. Therefore, the total number of the responses varied from questions to questions.
Table 3.
Background Information of Questionnaire Participants
Teaching experience (n = 274) Frequency Percentage
5 years and below 98 35.6%
6-15 years 138 50.2%
16-25 years 33 12.0%
26 years and above 5 1.8%
Position (n = 274) Frequency Percentage
English subject teachers 89 32.4%
Homeroom teachers 64 23.3%
English substitute teachers 64 23.3%
English college students 36 13.1%
Administrative staff 8 2.9%
Retired English teachers 7 2.5%
English interns 1 0.4%
School level (n = 275) Frequency Percentage
Elementary school 124 45.1%
Junior High school 151 54.9%
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Table 3. (continued)
Background Information of Questionnaire Participants
School size (n = 274) Frequency Percentage
6 classes or below 23 8.4%
7-12 classes 27 9.8%
13-24 classes 54 19.6%
24-48 classes 93 33.8%
49 classes or above 77 28.0%
School location (n = 271) Frequency Percentage
Cities 163 59.3%
Workshop experience (n = 275) Frequency Percentage
No 25 9.1%
In the present study, in order to know more about how elementary school English teachers and junior high school teachers perceived the remedial instruction program, the researcher recruited eleven elementary school English teachers and eleven junior high school English teachers through the questionnaire and snowball sampling (also called chain sampling). All of them joined in the remedial instruction program, and five of the elementary school teachers and seven of the junior high school teachers took charge of the administrative affairs. The semi-structured interviews were completed on a face-to-face basis or phone call. The interviews were conducted in Chinese, the interviewees’ native language, for the sake of efficiency. The length of
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interviews ranged from forty to sixty minutes. Table 4 summarized twenty-two interviewees’ background information.
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Table 4.
Background Information of Interviewees Teaching
experience Positions at school Area School level School size School location
EST1 16 to 25yrs English teachers with
administrative duty Taoyuan Elementary school 25-48 classes City EST2 6 to 15yrs English teachers with
administrative duty Penghu Elementary school 25-48 classes Remote area EET3 6 to 15yrs English subject teacher Changhua Elementary school 49 classes or above Town EST4 5yrs or less English substitute teacher Changhua Elementary school 49 classes or above Town EST 5 5yrs or less English teachers with
administrative duty Kaohsiung Elementary school 6 classes or below Remote area EST 6 16 to 25yrs English subject teacher Tainan Elementary school 7-12 classes City EST 7 5yrs or less English subject teacher Taipei Elementary school 49 classes or above City EST 8 6 to 15yrs English subject teacher New Taipei Elementary school 49 classes or above City EST 9 5yrs or less English teachers with
administrative duty Taoyuan Elementary school 6 classes or below Remote area EST 10 5yrs or less English teachers with
administrative duty Penghu Elementary school 6 classes or below Remote area EST 11 5yrs or less English subject teacher Taipei Elementary school 25-48 classes City
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Table 4. (continued)
Background Information of Interviewees
JHST1 5yrs or less English subject teacher Taipei Junior high school 13-24 classes City JHST2 6 to 15yrs English teachers with
administrative duty Taipei Junior high school 25-48 classes City JHST3 5yrs or less English teachers with
administrative duty Taipei Junior high school 13-24 classes City JHST4 5yrs or less English substitute teachers Taoyuan Junior high school 25-48 classes City JHST5 6 to 15yrs English subject teacher Tainan Junior high school 49 classes or above City JHST6 16 to 25yrs English teachers with
administrative duty Tainan Junior high school 13-24 classes Town JHST7 16 to 25yrs Director Of Academic Affairs Taitung Junior high school 7-12 classes Remote area JHST8 5yrs or less English teachers with
administrative duty Taitung Junior high school 6 classes or below Remote area JHST9 5yrs or less Teacher on secondment to the
MOE Penghu Junior high school 6 classes or below Remote area
JHST10 5yrs or less Intern teachers Taipei Junior high school 25-48 classes City
JHST11 5yrs or less English subject teachers Hsinchu Junior high school 24-48 classes Town
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Data Analysis Procedures
Regarding the questionnaire data, frequency and percentage distribution were first used to analyze the background information of the participants. For the questions assessing English teachers’ knowledge of the Remedial Instruction Program, the participants gained one point for each question if a correct answer is provided. After total scores of each participant were computed, analyses of mean differences (t-test or ANOVA) were run to examine the effects of background information on English teachers’ knowledge of the Project. In case that the assumption of homogeneity of variances was violated when ANOVA was run, Welch statistics were used to determine if there were significant differences. For section three, the multiple-choice statements related to teachers’ perceptions of the Project were analyzed by Chi-square test, while the multiple-choice questions related to the status quo of English remedial instruction were analyzed with frequency and percentage distribution.
Semi-structured interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. Content analysis was implemented to find out how teachers perceived the Project.
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CHAPTER FOUR