perceptions of the miscommunication” (Boxer, 2002, p. 152). In line with this, the primary data of the study were collected via recording real and natural discourse from the interaction among FETs and LETs, which was supplemented by ethnographic-type interviews to elicit team teachers’ comments about the recorded conversations.
3.2 Sites and Participants
Four different schools with EFL team teaching programs were chosen for the present study. Six FETs and fourteen LETs in total were the participants. The sites and the participants are detailed in the following sections.
3.2.1 Sites
Among the four public schools chosen for the study, schools A and B were primary schools with English Villages, and schools C and D were junior high schools where the participants team-taught in regular classes. The alphabets A, B, C, and D suggest the order in which the schools joined the study. They were selected as the research site for the whole semester. All of the FETs and LETs in the same school were considered as in the same team, since they all had to cooperate with one another in different degree. As the goal of the study was to understand the communication between team teachers, a large amount of time was invested on the same group of participants in order to gather sufficient data. The four selected teams met the prerequisite that there was a lot of communication between the teachers. In other words, schools where FETs and LETs do their jobs independently or do not really collaborate on teaching were not chosen. In order to solicit authentic data with natural interaction of team teachers, the researcher built rapport with the participants by
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constantly visiting the classes and meetings for a complete semester.
To secure these four teams of participants, the researcher adopted the following procedure. First, the researcher familiarized herself with the various team teaching projects in Taiwan by searching for information online and participating in four training sessions for FETs or team teaching in four different cities. Second, the researcher contacted the administrators from Educational Bureaus in two different cities, who were in charge of the EFL team teaching projects. In addition to explaining the research and getting initial permission from the administrators, the researcher inquired the administrators’ advice on which schools were ideal for the study. The findings of this study would also help improve the team teaching projects in these cities. Third, after knowing which schools had EFL team teaching programs, the researcher contacted the academic directors of some of these schools to gain a basic idea about the backgrounds of these FETs and LETs, and sought for a permission to visit the team teachers in person, in order to understand their job allocation and whether there was actual collaboration between them or not (see Appendix A for the letter to school academic directors). Fourth, after potential targets had emerged, the researcher explained the purpose of the study and how the research would be
conducted in hope of obtaining the schools’ administrators and team teachers consent for participating in the study. To avoid possible interference resulted from the
teachers’ full knowledge of the inquiries of the study, the researcher left out such technical terms as sociopragmatic failure, miscommunication, or cultural norms, when describing the goal of the research (see Appendix B). Once the team teachers and schools agreed to take part in this study, they had to sign a consent form on which both their and the researcher’s rights and duties regarding the study were specified (see Appendix C).
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3.2.2 Participants
The number of team teachers in these four sites varies. For school A and B, in each school, there were both two FETs and two LETs. In School C, there were one FET and five LETs in the team. In School D, there were one FET and fifteen LETs, among which only five of the LETs were the focus of this study because they were in the same office with the FET and thus had more interaction.
Among the six FETs, the first two are both from the United States and has stayed in Taiwan for around two to four years. The third one is also from the United States, but he had taught in Korea for a few years and has stayed in Taiwan for only half a year. The fourth one is from South Africa, and he had lived in New Zealand for thirteen years and has stayed in Taiwan for around three years. The fifth one is from Canada and had also lived and taught in Australia before, and he has lived in Taiwan for 15 years and has a Taiwanese wife. The last one is from Australia and had lived in Japan for one or two years, and he has stayed in Taiwan for around two years. All of the fourteen LETs were born and raised in Taiwan, and three of them have studied abroad in English speaking countries for approximately one year. For both groups, the length of teaching experiences ranges from three to twenty years. As for their gender, one FET is female while the rest are all male; one LET is male and all the other LETs are female.
To protect the privacy of the schools and participants, pseudo names are used when the data are reported. Also, any quoted passages were first confirmed with the participants to ensure their accurate representation.
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