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Chapter 3: EMBARKING ON THE RESEARCH JOURNEY
Postmodernism and Knowledge
The study is situated under the postmodern paradigm. I will now address the
epistemological and ontological viewpoints informing this study. Epistemologically, the study emphasizes the subjective and multiple truths (Reeves, 1996). It is assumed that in the postmodern conditions, the substantive centered self is eroded, the objective truth is deteriorated, and authority is questioned (Gergen, 2000), and that each person brings his or her view, or past life experiences to a current situation. Therefore, there is a plurality of knowledge. Ontologically, a researcher’s worldview—the beliefs and attitudes about the world we live in that subsequently frame a person‘s notion of reality (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). Therefore, viewing truth and knowledge as a constructed reality, postmodernism rejects single objective truth (Carson, 1996, in Webster & Mertova, 2007), underscoring the plurality of voices struggling for the right to be heard. In a postmodern framework, I am cognizant that there are no absolute ‘facts,’ and knowledge is thought to be
constructed within the context in which it is generated. This consideration entails an awareness of who the knower is, how the knowledge is obtained, whose voice is
privileged, and how constructed understandings are embedded in the sociocultural setting and time in which the research takes place.
Why Narrative Approach?
It’s “the importance of narratives as an expressive embodiment of our experience, as a mode of communication, and as a form for
understanding the world and ultimately ourselves.”
— (Brockmeier & Carbaugh, 2001, p.1)
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Narrative and Human Complexity
Human experience is recorded and (re)constructed through personal stories. As Riessman (1993) argues, “narratives of personal experience…are ubiquitous in everyday life…telling stories about past events seems to be universal human activity” (pp. 2-3). The use of narrative approach lends itself rightfully to the postmodernism’s emphasis on multiple and subjective construction of meaning and reality. Bringing to the forefront complexity and human centeredness (Webster & Mertova, 2007), narrative approach to experiences reveals ambiguity rather than tidiness by exploring “the complexities and contradictions of real life” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p. 237). Therefore, narrative approach acknowledges that each individual has both histories and intentions. In conceptualizing narrative for this research, narrative is defined as “a kind of organizational scheme expressed in story form” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 13), and “a meaning structure that organizes events and human actions into a whole” (p. 8).
Narrative and Identit(ies)
The stories, the narrative told by people, do not turn up in a vacuum; rather, it constitutes the reality manifesting the interplay between the individual and wider structures, as in Sparkes (2003) words, “illuminat(ing) the social context of individual lives while…allowing space for individual stories to be told” (p. 3). Narrative, in this respect, is particularly powerful in exploring the nuanced interaction between human agency and social structure, through which the enacting and resisting of identity can be illustrated (Bamberg, De Fina, & Schiffrin, 2008; Georgakopoulou, 2007; Hinchman &
Hinchman, 2001), and is “a unique source of information about motivations, experiences, struggles, losses and gains” (Pavlenko, 2001, p.213) by providing spaces and
opportunities for people to enact and forge their identities, and by “giving voice” to the
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marginalized whose lives and histories go unheard, unseen, and undocumented (Dhunpath, 2000). Through narrative approach, I explored Marcel’s peculiar experiences—thoughts, feelings, ideas, examples, and situations.
Acknowledging My Presence
I brought to this research with my personal experiences that prompted me to consider this line of inquiry. I considered the reasons using narrative not only from a theoretical perspective but also on what it could contribute to the accumulation of educational knowledge. In order for the transparency of this narrative research to emerge, I examined my own point of views, values, and my own story of why and how I have come to arrive at where I am. This involved acknowledging, addressing, and considering the researcher’s own contribution to the research project (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Connelly, 2000;
Connelly & Clandinin, 1986). To not exclusively and entirely discussed experiences of others, I constantly interrogated my “self” (Mason, 1994), that is, the researcher self, within the research process. This inquiry was a process of researching, exploring, experiencing, and writing about the experiences of others in order to demonstrate the complexity of interaction between individual experience and context. However, this process also
acknowledged my role as a researcher in the presentation of stories of others. I knew that I was not and could not be entirely objective. Nor did I intend to be, since, as researchers, we are value-laden and biased. Narrative approach acknowledges my own personal biases and conceptual notions. As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) wrote:
We all, novice and experienced researchers alike, come to inquiry with views, attitudes, and ways of thinking about inquiry. These histories, these personal narratives of inquiry, may coincide with or cross a boundary to varying degrees with the actual inquiries that we undertake. Almost all of us—it is almost unimaginable that we could not—come to narrative inquiries with various versions of formalistic and reductionistic histories of inquiry. To the extent that this is true, we are forever struggling with personal tensions as we pursue narrative inquiry.
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(p.46) With this caution in mind, the next section will introduce the methodological choices made with regards to the research site, the participant selection, my connection with the participant, data collection, data analysis, and finally trustworthiness of the research.
Introducing the Research Landscape
Under Introducing the Research Landscape, this section is organized into two different monologues, each of which narrates the context in which this research journey rests. The purpose of the two monologues, one mine and the other Jean’s, a resigned academic chair, is to provide you a contextual understanding of what it is like in this commercialized profit-oriented language center. It was within this context that Marcel was able to narrate his stories by moving back and forth between his past, present, and projected future. My monologue will give you a tour of the center. A narrative monologue voiced by Jean comes next. Jean was an academic chair who resigned few months earlier before I embarked on this research journey. Jean’s monologue, unlike mine, will show you how LLC functions, such as the student body, the teachers’ backgrounds, the criteria for hiring teachers, and how LLC conceptualizes the English teaching enterprise. In presenting the view of Jean, I decided that I use first voice to simply present rather than interpret and analyze what was said. In other words, it is only representative of what Jean saw, heard, felt and knew based on her six years of immersion in this context. Through her words, I invite you to think from the perspective of Jean and hopefully this imaginary engagement will pose a dissonance that helps you relate to the Marcel’s experience in a commercialized profit-oriented language center (henceforth LLC) when you continue his narratives.
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It all started from here. Let me show you around LLC. Walking into LLC, a franchise commercialized language center situated in northern Taiwan, where both Marcel and I work as English teachers, you will find yourself in not so much a language learning environment as in a business corporation. A number of
receptionists dressing in decent uniforms are standing up from behind the reception counter to greet you. You then are poured a glass of water and led to a zone where one of them genuinely asks you about the purpose of your visit. You probably, say, want to improve your overall English competence, or perhaps, you want to know about preparing for TOEFL, TOEIC or IELTS. They turn on the computer screen to show you information about courses, teachers and materials so that you know what to expect. Perhaps if you have financial concerns, hopefully they will offer you a good deal. Luckily, they relate to your problem and start to talk about different course packages, and if you are fortunate enough to meet a caring receptionist, also known as the sales representative in their jargon, he/she may give you a discount. Before you have time to hesitate, your caring sales representative accidentally takes out a calculator to show you how much you have to pay and therefore how much you will have saved. Yes! You are in a place where you learn English. Enjoy your learning!
A Monologue from a Former Academic Chair
I resigned from this company two months before Ravi8 interviewed me. If my recollection is right, LLC has been in market for 17 years. It is a franchised form of business providing English learning service, with 10 branches across Taiwan and with its head office located in Taipei. Recently, the institute opened two branches in Shanghai, China. LLC not only aims at providing learners for life-long English learning such as include grammar, pronunciation, conversation, writing, but also preparing students for TOEFL, TOEIC, and IELTS. When I resigned, there were approximately 2500 students across Taiwan, and most of them were in their twenties to thirties. Nearly 200 teachers (teachers working in China not included), 20 percent of whom is native speakers of English, are employed in different
branches. We enact our own curriculum, design teaching materials and teaching aids like audio materials, on-line interactive resources. Something that I think is beneficial to students is that the organization of our course is flexible, and they can choose which courses to attend at their will, based on their time allocation, and they can go to the same type of class taught by different teachers. Besides, they are free to take different courses at the same time based on the course package they
purchase.
8 Ravi is the researcher’s English name.
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Because LLC is a business and profit-oriented corporation, I think the most important thing is that we really need to attract our students to buy our course packages. In order to appeal to students, and it’s the reality here, when we interview teachers, we care very much about a teacher’s personality. I mean his personal charisma. We have interviewed many teachers and they have training in language teaching, but sometimes students just do not respond to them well. I am not saying that professional teachers are not humorous, but sometimes they get too serious; I personally dealt with lots of issues like this when I was working here. I remember one time when a student filed a complaint on the feedback system, saying that his teacher, a teacher with professional training, was strict and serious and sometimes criticized how students are learning in a wrong way. But a lot of teachers here do not have a relevant degree, but they have this charisma, funny and witty, and they have experiences in teaching English for years. They know how to attract students’ attention, to arouse students’ interests, and they know how to carry out instruction based on their years of experiences, so basically, we don’t care too much about theories as academic circle does. What kind of teachers will survive here in LLC? I think definitely the lively teachers. I mean if we have to choose between professional knowledge and interesting personality, personality is definitely the priority. That being said, we do care about teachers’ performances and their opinions. To understand how teachers are received by students, we have an online feedback system where students can evaluate teachers’ teaching either by giving or deducting points. As for teachers’ opinions, I must say that we
appreciate teachers’ efforts here. They really teach with enthusiasm and they care about students. We really do. We provide language learning, but we are also a company, I mean, I think we are a big business corporation in this industry. We run a business; it is market-driven. We need to boost our image and our popularity, and of course we need to attract more potential customers, I mean, the student. We have our budget concern, time allocation, and marketing to care about. So to be honest, we really need to think from the concept of running a business. If teachers have opinions, we will think about them and maybe to work out a solution, that, however, does not mean every opinion will be taken care of, but we respect teachers’
decisions in the classroom. But of course these decisions cannot compromise the company’s interests. Like I just mentioned, I must admit that we cannot think like teachers or like a TESOL academic.
Introducing the Main Character with Whom I Was Traveling
Organized by four segments, this section introduces Marcel in relation to me as a classmate, a friend, a colleague, and a researcher interested in teacher development in language teacher education.
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How We Met Prior to the Journey
Marcel and I met when we were in university. I could not remember what he was like when we first met, and what has lingered in my mind since we met is his confidence and eloquence, even though at the time I thought he was not an approachable person, to be honest. We were both English majors and took many classes together. We were not quite close in the first place, especially in the first two years of our university life, but we shared many similarities. We both liked English, badminton, tennis, and pop music. Perhaps it was because of these shared pastimes that we gradually started to get to know each other.
We both liked English a lot, and it was one of the reasons that we were English majors. To make more pocket money, we started to teach English. I began with teaching children, and Marcel started with junior high school students. We often went to the bookstore located on the campus, talking about teaching, materials, and what kind of textbooks to use. What and how we did with the students partly came from our learning in the university classroom by imitating the style and format carried out by our professors, and secretly we were satisfied with what and how we taught. Marcel showed strong interests in teaching grammar, and I was amazed at how he could verbalize and explain some of the difficult grammatical points, even though we both knew that we were still in the process of learning to teach. Probably because of his confidence and eloquence, I bought into whatever he said. But perhaps it was because of my more withdrawn and reserved personality that I did not confront him.
Emerging Commitment to English Teaching
After graduating from university, we still maintained this friendship. But our life paths differed. Marcel went on to pursue his master’s degree in TESOL in a private university in Northern Taiwan, but I went to the army to serve my military duty. After
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finishing the army, I successfully and luckily got an offer to an internationally noted university in the U.S. to pursue my master’s degree in TESOL. For some reasons, I turned down the offer and went back to Taiwan. In the meantime, not only was Marcel a graduate student, but he also got a teaching position in a private commercialized language center, LLC. Marcel then introduced me to the same language center. Now we were both teachers in the language school. We once again had the chance to re-experience the fun we had when we were college students. This time, our discussion did not take place only in bookstores; in fact, it happened at any time in any places. He shared with me what he had learned from the graduate-level courses such as TESOL Methodology, Teaching Literacy in English as a Foreign Language, Learning Strategies, Second Language Acquisition, and CALL. This was the time when he started to develop interests in teaching reading and vocabulary acquisition. Whenever I shared with him about what I did in my class, he would ask me why I think this way/method/approach would work. “Students seemed to respond to it well,” I replied. “In SLA, this is called…,” which was the kind of answer I always got after talking to him. “You really need to know this so that you can teach,” he added. To me, Marcel seemed to believe that teaching requires professional training.
Probably because we were not on the same boat, since he was a master student, and I was just a teacher knowing nothing about language teaching and learning, I gradually found myself ignoring him, especially when he brought up some big words that I had no idea about.
We Are Both Sailors on the Same Boat
After four years of teaching in LLC, I thought I needed to fulfill the dream that I did not accomplish years ago in the United States. I decided to take an entrance exam for my master’s degree in TESOL in Taiwan, something that I had always wanted to do. Marcel
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lent me his notes, the textbooks he read and gave me tips on oral interviews. I was later fortunate enough to be admitted to a nationally well-recognized TESOL program in Taiwan, which was the time when Marcel graduated and earned a master’s degree. Now it was me who took on the discourse of TESOL to communicate with him. Now we were on the same boat. It was the knowledge that we acquired in our programs that we started to complain about the textbooks used in LLC, the teachers with no professional credentials, the problems we had about students, the come and go of those who were not committed to teaching, the operating system of LLC, how teachers’ opinions were treated, and how they turned educational service into a commercial enterprise to the detriment of the interests of professional teachers.
However, I did not entirely agree with what Marcel did or say. Marcel was active, like he always did, in making foreign friends. He constantly shared with me his contacts with his foreign friends, such as the activities they did, the topics they had talked about, his traveling experiences to their countries, and how his world had been different after meeting them. I was, to be honest, a bit irritated by what he said to me, since he had to constantly ask for a leave to travel. I gradually got a feeling that he was not taking his teaching profession seriously. “Why don’t you just move to their countries, if you like them so much?” I thought. But that was his decision to make, and I did not say this to him. As his friend, I respected his decision.
Exploring Together
During the years, we have shared so much about our experiences in this center and Marcel has been eloquent and articulate about his uncomfortable teaching experience and has constantly complained, criticized, and lamented on the situation. What we have shared, however, goes beyond what happened to us as language teachers. We have been there with
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each other, witnessing the different phrases of our life, and I wonder what meanings have we assigned to those experiences to make sense of our life. In particular, how Marcel has changed, if he has, in relation to both being a language teacher and a social being as a result of these experiences. I approached him on October 2011 about the research and he instantly expressed his willingness to participate in the study without any hesitation. At the time of
each other, witnessing the different phrases of our life, and I wonder what meanings have we assigned to those experiences to make sense of our life. In particular, how Marcel has changed, if he has, in relation to both being a language teacher and a social being as a result of these experiences. I approached him on October 2011 about the research and he instantly expressed his willingness to participate in the study without any hesitation. At the time of