The approach adopted in this study

The multi-level analysis in this study was informed by the work of researchers in different disciplinary traditions including Hornberger and Johnson (2007), Gerwitz, Ball and Bowe (1995) and also Hoyle (1986). I gathered data, initially by focusing on elements of school life that resonated with my concerns. I was building on the experience I gathered during events at two rural secondary schools where I worked as a mathematics teacher over a ten-year period. This experience had also begun to broaden to include events at other similar secondary schools, as well as meetings between teachers at LEA level and an all Wales level.

The integrated multi-level nature of the research meant that my classroom and school-wide observations of organisation and management practices were coupled with an analysis of texts such as:

• LEA education schemes, related to mainly Welsh medium development and accepted by the Welsh Language Board.

• An inspection report relating to a Welsh Education Scheme. • An LEA mathematics policy document

• A higher tier mathematics scheme for teaching a series of lessons on fractions, decimals and percentages.

Taking account of these and other texts meant I was better prepared to interpret data obtained from interviews undertaken in the schools with mathematics teachers. My method ensured that I remained aware of the wider policy context in which these accounts were framed, but it also ensured that my interpretations were grounded in real life events. As Wodak and Meyer (2001) state: “ All discourses are historical and can therefore only be understood with reference to their context.” (P15).

This study also drew on textual material produced by other visitors to the classrooms. This was another important source of data. These visitors were often people such as inspectors working within the system so they were monitoring teachers’ practices and seeing these practices through particular eyes so they were not ‘neutral’ observers.

Drawing on my own experience as a practitioner, in association with data from other sources helped me to fit together the pieces of the jigsaw, and allowed a more complete analysis and understanding of language education policy I was concerned with and its impact.

In this study I adopted a primarily qualitative interpretive approach. Romaine (1984, cited in Edwards & Westgate 1994:60), equates the appropriateness of research methodology to the nature of the research questions asked. Edwards and Westgate (1994) also argue for an eclectic approach, as can be seen in this next passage:

“It does not mean attempting to include the incompatible within the same study, but bringing together concepts and methods which can yield complementary insights into the same phenomena, or can bring into view different aspects of classroom talk and its organization.”

Edwards & Westgate, (1994:60) Others in Wood and Kroger (2000) go into greater detail, listing four main types of data needed in detailed interpretive research: members’ generalizations, ‘neutral’ objective observations, individual members’ experience and observers’ interactions with members. All of these kinds of data were gathered during the first stage of the research.

There were a number of challenges that arose for me as a practitioner-researcher during the research process. One of the main challenges lay in the fact that I had been working in a field, Welsh-medium and bilingual education, which had projected on to it a strong ideology. In fulfilling my roles at different stages as a Welsh medium, English medium and bilingual teacher, I was expected to adopt arguments in favour of each form of provision. Doing the research, however, allowed me to disentangle myself from the ideologies that had governed my work as a practitioner, and allowed me to adopt a more considered perspective.

The next stage of the research involved choosing my approach to data analysis. Once I had gathered sufficient in-depth knowledge about rural schools and the local political and administrative procedures that regulated them, I was in a better position to undertake a discourse analysis of documents and literature associated with bilingual education in Wales. There had been an increased level of text production about Welsh Language Planning and policy developments since the turn of the millennium, including

the reminiscences of retired rural education officers about Welsh medium development from the beginning of the reforms to the mid 1990s; a media debate on education in which different discourses circulated; and texts linked to the politics of language standardization. This meant that a discourse analysis approach of some of those texts and discussions was likely to yield interesting results. I relied on the methods demonstrated and recommended by Wood & Kroger (2000) and Wodak & Meyer (2001) drawing extensively from the field of critical discourse analysis, especially Fairclough (1995), (2001) and Van Dijk (2001).

This concentration on discourse fitted neatly with another research paradigm that had come to my attention earlier in my studies. Through extensive reading during the first stage of the study, I had become aware of Post-structuralism, (e.g. Ball, 1994). Post- structuralist analyses involve careful consideration of the discourses that institutions and the stakeholders within them adopt; these discourses are the mechanisms by which power and authority are maintained within institutions. They are often to be found in official documents created by schools and LEAs, but also in discussions at meetings between teachers. Those who are quite familiar with the nuances of day to day life in organisations will be conscious that such institutional discourses can overwhelm alternative perspectives and often subsume versions of them. In practical terms, this exercise of discursive power can result in particular social actors being edged further from the mainstream, as occurred in some parts of Wales. Sometimes it involved simply deleting less conducive wording from national policies that no longer fitted local priorities.

There have, of course, been criticisms of the discourse analysis approach. Attention has been drawn to the unevenness of interpretations due to the differing backgrounds and experience of analysts and their relative positions of power. Even when criticism of the discourse analysis approach is factored in (see Wodak and Meyer (2001)), discourse analysis is still a powerful tool. Discourse analysis allows members of the research community and others who are familiar with the method to examine the meaning of words within text and the role of words and their manipulation in serving the interests of the different groups in society. To new members of the research community, discourse analysis represents a practical route to unmasking the techniques of management. Its appeal lies in its ability to lay bare the ideological stances of text producers.