Where it was necessary to gain access to institutions and informants, I did as Silverman (2010, p.204) suggests and made use of existing relationships and local contacts to simplify the process. Having said that, as commented on by Hammersley and Atkinson (2007, p.41), the act of gaining access itself p o ided insights into the social organisation of the setti g a d i po ta t k o ledge a out the field . Fo e a ple, although
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initial access to particular schools, teacher training colleges and higher education institutions within the setting tended to be through local teachers and trainers rather than the management staff in the institutions, there was, in almost every case, still a requirement for official approval from, along with a courtesy visit to, the head of the institution, usually the principal or manager.
Nevertheless, the overall process of gaining access to institutions was generally made easier when existing local contacts acted as informal facilitators of the process. At the same time, they provided suppo t a d alidatio fo ide tit as a esea he . I deed, gi e that people ill seek to pla e o lo ate the eth og aphe ithi the so ial la ds ape defi ed thei e pe ie e Ha e sle a d Atki so , , p. , ith researchers often treated suspiciously, particularly at the start, the involvement and often physical presence of local contacts in all likelihood made this initial period of transition from complete outsider to known and accepted outsider a much smoother process.
Having said that, as described in Chapter 1, I was introduced to the setting through my involvement in a project aiming, among other things, to develop English language teaching and teachers, and needed to fit my research and data collection around this, hence I was having to act in different roles at different times, and in addition I realised I was being perceived in different ways by different people. For example, I was doing some professional development work with some of the participants in the study both prior to starting and during the study, so they tended to see me as a fellow teacher or teacher trainer, while for those who knew only that I worked for a university in the U.K., I te ded to e o side ed as a isiti g fo eig e pe t , a d fo those ho k e only that I was researching something, I tended to be viewed purely as a visiting researcher or research scholar. This fluctuation between roles created a tension at some points et ee pa ti ipa ts e pe tatio s of e a d e pe tatio s of the . Fo i stance, when I was observing classes, the teachers being observed tended to see me as an e pe t figu e ho had o e eithe to judge the o to sol e thei p o le s, hile I was seeing these teachers as experts in their own setting who could help to shed light on the pertinent issues for me. As a result, it was sometimes difficult to position myself
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as a so iall a epta le i o pete t Lofla d a d Lofla d, , p. ), given this tendency of participants to assume some kind of expertise on my part, regardless of whether it existed or not, and even though my understanding of the setting, particularly when setting out on the study, was limited.
There is also a o e tio he e to the eed fo i p essio a age e t Silverman 2010, p.206) when working in the field. Indeed, as Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) discuss, I did feel the need to constantly manage the impression I was giving to people in the setting, constructing, subconsciously at times, what I perceived an acceptable identity, through dressing more conservatively and smartly than I would in my usual work setting, minimising any differences between my views a d pa ti ipa ts ie s, sho i g so e le el of e pe tise a d k o ledge, o si pl ei g so ia le a d ei g o e of the g oup , i.e. the g oup of fellow educators and/or researchers in this case.
On a positive note, being perceived in different ways in the setting did, as Hammersley and Atkinson (2007, p.86) suggest, provide access to different types of data. For example, by playing the role of fellow teacher trainer and establishing common ground when interviewing teacher trainers, I believe I was able to access richer responses that would have been the case had I, for instance, been interviewing in the role of a researcher who was assumed to have no background in teacher training.
2.2. Data collection
Data was collected over the course of 7 visits to the setting during the study, with the study also informed by the visit to the setting shortly before the study formally began. The data was collected through open-ended questionnaires, classroom observations, interviews and field notes. More specifically, a total of 31 open-ended questionnaires were completed by practicing teachers, 28 observations took place in ten different educational institutions, and 21 interviews were carried out, 19 of which were recorded. Field notes were written during 6 of the 7 visits to the setting during the study, with these field notes including descriptions of critical incidents that occurred over the course of the study.
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All of these data collection instruments are discussed below, where I move from open- ended questionnaires to observations to interviews and finally field notes, to reflect, very broadly speaking, the trajectory of the data collection which focused more on the open-ended questionnaires at the start, with observation and interview data becoming more prevalent as the study progressed, and the field notes becoming more important towards the end as I reflected back on what I had written during the earlier parts of the study. A breakdown of the data collected at different points during the study is given in Appendix 1.
However, I should add that, by providing this neat breakdown, I would not characterise the data collection process as anything other than a messy one, concurring with Dö ei s , p. ie that:
Qualitative research is by definition less systematic and standardized in its data collection approach than quantitative research … [and] the messiness of the rich data we are aiming for is often merely a reflection of the complex real-life situations that the data concerns.
Further, I would recognise that, rather than data collection happening and then data analysis happening as separate and distinct stages in the research process, what happened i ealit as a li al p o ess of o i g a k a d fo th et ee data
olle tio a d a al sis Dörnyei, 2007, p.126). 2.2.1. Questionnaires
Open-ended questionnaires were used in the early part of the study as a means of getting the views of a number of different teachers in a relatively short time about how English was taught in the setting. This use of such questionnaires is in line with Brown (2009, p.201, ho suggests that the a e est suited to e plo ato esea h, he e, at the beginning, the researcher may not know what the central issues are on a pa ti ula topi .
In constructing the questionnaire, I tried to follow guidelines set out in Brown (1997, 2009) with respect to, for example, avoiding overly long questions, avoiding questions
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covering more than one issue, avoiding negative sentences, avoiding leading questions, a d a oidi g p estige uestio s he e o e a of a s e i g akes the espo de t look ette . I also took B o s ad i e i te s of g oupi g uestio s o a si ila topi together, grouping the questions about ELT methods together in the second half of the questionnaire.
The questions themselves were based on my initial research questions and some initial hunches I had about what might be important, based on my initial foray into the setting and what I had already learnt from those working in the setting.
The questionnaire was piloted with two potential respondents and, as a result, two questions were removed as they were deemed superfluous and one question was reworded in order to make its intended meaning clearer. The final version contained ten questions plus space at the end for participants to make any further comments if they wished. The questionnaire is given in Appendix 2.
The questionnaire was given to teachers in eight schools visited as part of the project I was working on during the early part of the study. A total of 31 questionnaires were completed. The sampling of respondents was therefore opportunistic in the sense of taking advantage of opportunities to identify potential respondents as they arose, reflecting, as Cohen et al (2011, p.231) note, that sampling in ethnographic work can often be ad hoc rather than fixed from the outset. Given that the questionnaires were primarily to be used for exploratory purposes, combined with practical constraints of having a limited time in the field and only having access to particular institutions, I felt this to be the most suitable approach to take.
Before the teachers completed the questionnaire, I explained that I was carrying out a research study, that they did not have to take part in the study if they did not want to and that, if they did take part, all answers would be treated as confidential and, if they were used in the write up of the study, then they would be anonymised. A message to this effect was also written at the top of the questionnaires.
39 2.2.2. Classroom observations
My rationale for carrying out classroom observations was to try to stimulate reflection on what was happening within ELT classrooms in the setting and from that to develop my understanding of ELT in the setting more generally.
According to Gebhard and Oprandy (1999, p. , lass oo o se atio i ol es the non-judgemental description of classroom events that can be analysed and given i te p etatio . Although this as ai , ith hi dsight I ould uestio the deg ee to hi h I su eeded i ei g o -judg e tal , as is discussed in Chapter 6.
Nevertheless, my strategy for observation was to enter classrooms and observe without having preconceived notions of what I was looking for and without basing the observation on particular structured categories. Instead, I was aiming to look broadly at the way English language was being taught and at communication in English within the classroom, without wishing to be tied to assigning actions to categories. Indeed, as Harbon and Shen (2010, pp.277-278) note, critics of:
structured systems [of observation] claim, among other things, that the communicative language classroom is far too complex for all the notions to be labelled and captured in this manner, and that the essential communicative nature of the language classroom is lost.
28 classroom observations took place in 10 educational institutions: 8 schools, 1 higher education college and 1 teacher training college. They were carried out during five different visits to the setting, with the number of observations on each of these visits given in Table 2.2 below.
Visit number Number of observations
0 4
1 5
2 6
3 9
6 4
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Of the 28 observations, 26 took place in the schools, one in the higher education college, and one in the teacher training college. Of the 26 observations in schools, 11 took place in one school, School A. The focus on School A was in part planned and in part convenience. It was planned in the sense that I had initially, in proposing the study, been considering focusing the whole study on a very small number of locations within the setting, and this school would have been one of those locations, hence in two of the earlier visits to the setting I focused my observations on this school. The convenience element of carrying out observations at School A was that, because it was one of the schools involved in the wider project that I was involved in, issues of access were minimised.
As noted earlier, in Section 2.1.3, there were three broad types of school involved in the study: state government schools, government-aided schools and private schools. A breakdown of the type of school where each the classroom observation took place is given in Appendix 3.
The higher education college, where one observation took place, is affiliated to the University of Kerala. Students at the college are typically aged 18 to 21 and are studying undergraduate programmes. As part of their undergraduate studies, all students, irrespective of what subject they are studying, must sit and pass three examinations in English: prose and essay summary; grammar and comprehension; and poetry, Shakespeare and modern drama.
The teacher training college, where one observation took place, trains teachers to work in secondary schools. It has five areas of specialism including English. However, teachers trained in other specialisms often end up teaching English due to the currently high demand for English teachers. In addition, those trained as English teachers often look for higher-paid jobs outside education because of their language skills.
In the classes observed, the selection of particular teachers to observe was opportunistic in the sense that I was directed towards particular classes, generally by the principal of the school or college concerned, as part of the project I was involved in within the setting. These observations were not arranged in advance, but depended on which
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classes were being taught at the times I was there. As Richards (2003, p.125) notes with espe t to o se atio data, as ontact with different aspects of the field unfolds esea he s ill take oppo tu ities to olle t data as the a ise .
During observations, I would try to sit at the back of the room, but was often directed by the teacher to sit at the front in one corner. My observation notes were initially handwritten, using a brief notes technique (Delamont, 2002, p.61), with notes taken using short phrases or sentences that would later serve as prompts when I came to write full accounts. As far as was possible, I tried to type up these full accounts on the same day.
Finally, I should note that I was aware that my presence, whether as a researcher or in whatever role I was perceived as having, had the potential to and on a small number of occasions did encourage those being observed to seek to a age i p essio s of the sel es a d of setti gs (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007, p.176). For example, in one school I visited, I sensed that the class I was taken to observe had been especially set up for my benefit, to show the school in what it thought was the best possible light, for example by using technological resources that did not seem to be present in other schools I was visiting.
Further details of the classroom observations carried out - in terms of location, school year or age of the students, number of students in the class, length of the observation and precise date of the observation - is given in Appendix 3, with an example of my typed-up observation notes given in Appendix 4.