CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
3.5 Data Collection Procedures
3.5 Data Collection Procedures
The data collection procedure of the present study involved three stages. The initial stage was to interview teachers in order to have a preliminary understanding of the two teachers. The second stage was to select classrooms to be observed. The third stage was to do the classroom observations and follow-up interviews.
The data for this study were collected from semi-structure interviews, in-depth
interviews, and non-participant observations from late-August to mid-October 2007.
Before all the interviews and observations, the researcher provided a consent form (Appendix 4) for the teachers in order to get their permission for participating in this study. Both of the teachers gave their permissions for the researcher to do the interviews and observations. The timetables of the two teachers’ interviews and observations are presented in Appendix 1. Moreover, before the formal observations, the researcher provided a consent form (Appendix 5) for all the students and their parents in order to get their confirmation. Table 2 shows the students and their parents’ perceptions about the consent form.
Table 2 Students and Their Parents’ Perception about the Consent Form Teachers’
Classes Agree Disagree Total
Amy’s Class A 29 5 34
Amy’s Class B 34 0 34
Emily’s Class A 26 5 31
Emily’s Class B 30 2 32
Not all the students and their parents agreed to participate in this study. In order to follow research ethic, the researcher wrote a letter (Appendix 6) to the students who were not willing to participate in the study and explained that their data will not be applied in the study. In other words, the dialogues between the teachers and those students were not adopted in this study.
3.5.1 Interviews
Amy’s first interview was two weeks earlier than Emily’s because Emily was more available in mid-September 2007. After the first interviews, the follow-up interviews were conducted with each teacher at the end of one or two observations in order to
clarify the teachers’ scaffolding strategies and to explore their reasons and purposes for using those scaffolding strategies. Both teachers were encouraged to speak anything they thought to be important and were allowed to express topics not covered by the outlines of questions. All the interview data were audio-taped. After the interviews, the researcher transcribed all data and typed them word by word. In order to enhance reliability, transcripts were made by the researcher and then checked against by another transcriber. The number of times and total time of interviews are different between the two teachers as displayed in Table 3.
Table 3 The Number of Times and Total Time of Two Teachers’ Interviews
Times Hours
Amy 10 5.1
Emily 7 1.5
The length of interviews was very different between the two teachers. Both of the teachers were very nice and willing to answer the questions. However, Amy was more experienced and had many thoughts about English education. Emily expressed that she was a young English teacher and still searching for her own ways to teach English.
Due to this fact, Emily often answered questions in short sentences which resulted in a large discrepancy in the length of interviews for the two teachers.
3.5.2 Observations
The researcher started her initial observation of Amy’s all classes from October 7th to 10th 2007. After observing Amy’s eleven classes once, the researcher chose two of the classes to be the participants. However, there were no pre-observations in Emily’s case because of some delays. The researcher chose two classes to be the participants with Emily’s suggestions. After getting the students’ permissions, the researcher
began to observe Amy’s class twice without video-tapes in order to help the students get accustomed to the observer and then observed formally with two digital camcorders and notes. The formal observations in Emily’s classes were without any pre-observations to catch up with Amy’s progress of observation. Fortunately, the students in Emily’s classes were easily adapted to the researcher’s observations in their classes. In the two teachers’ classes, one of the video camcorders was usually set up in the left hand corner at the front; the other camcorder was usually set up in the left hand corner at the back. The purpose of using two video camcorders was to avoid the break down of equipments. The timetables of both teachers’ classroom observations are presented in appendix 1. The number of times and total time of the two teachers’ observations are displayed in Table 4.
Table 4 The Number of Times and Total Time of Two Teachers’ Observations
Classrooms Times Hours
Amy’s Class A 8 5.3
Amy’s Class B 8 5.3
Emily’s Class A 8 5.3
Emily’s Class B 6 4
In order to figure out the two teachers’ patterns of scaffolding strategies, the researcher has planed to observe for one month, with two times of English classes per week in both schools. Due to this fact, there should be eight times of observations in each class. However, Emily’s class B was only observed for six times because of her business trip and the National Day holiday. Amy taught three units (unit one, two, and four) in the two classes within the month because she integrated the similar concepts among the units. However, Emily only finished one unit (unit one) in the two classes within the month because she spent more time doing classroom management. After
the observations, the researcher chose the useful parts (e.g., when the teacher was using a scaffolding strategy), transcribed them, and typed them up word by word. In order to enhance reliability, which refers to the consistency of measurement, transcripts were made by the researcher and then checked against by another transcriber.