Classroom observation

In this study, classroom observations were carried out in classrooms in naturally occurring lessons. As Nunan (1992) points out, “the context in which behaviour occurs has a significant influence on that behaviour. It follows that if we want to find out about behaviour, we need to investigate it in the natural contexts in which it occurs...” (p.53). Furthermore, classroom observations allow ‘live’ accounts from ‘live’ settings (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007). The observational data also laid ground for behaviour to be explained. In Punch’s (2006, p.34) words, “a good first step in explaining why something happens is to describe exactly what happens.” In the current study, the descriptions of actual practices were obtained through classroom observations in normally scheduled lessons supplemented by video and audio recordings, field notes and classroom materials. These supplementary sources of data acted both as a triangulation and a

further tool (for interviews) to understand the teachers’ practice and student perceptions.

4.4.1.1 Multiple case studies

This Phase 1 study adopted a multiple case study approach (Stake, 2005), involving classroom observations of nine teachers, three from each grade level (10, 11, 12), teaching the same textbook units. Stake argues that by illustrating “how a phenomenon occurs in the circumstances of several exemplars”, this approach “can provide valued and trustworthy knowledge” (pp.458-459).

Each of the nine teachers and their classes were observed across the five lessons that make up a textbook unit, namely Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus. The main data collection included the Grade 10 teachers teaching Unit 6, An

Excursion, Grade 11 teachers teaching Unit 7, World Population and Grade 12 teachers

Unit 6, Future Jobs (See Table 4.2) (see Appendix 3 for a copy of the textbook units).

TABLE 4.2: Classroom observation scheme

Teacher Textbook unit Lesson

Grade 10 110A 210B 310C Unit 6: An Excursion 1 Reading 2 Speaking 3 Listening 4 Writing 5 Language focus Grade 11 411D 511E

611F Unit 7: World Population

1 Reading 2 Speaking 3 Listening 4 Writing 5 Language focus Grade 12 712G 812H 912I

Unit 6: Future Jobs

1 Reading 2 Speaking 3 Listening 4 Writing

In total, data were collected from 45 lessons. Although the focus of the research was on the oral tasks, the complete unit was observed to obtain a fuller picture of task-based teaching in these classes, as Samuda and Bygate (2008) argue

The interrelationships between a task, its position in a teaching sequence, the pedagogic role it plays within that sequence, and the purpose motivating its use are complex, and … from a pedagogic perspective it is necessary to focus on understanding tasks in light of those relationships. (p.218)

During classroom observations, I took the role of a non-participant observer. I informed the teachers of my general research area, that is, how task-based language teaching was used in the classroom. However, to avoid the danger that the teachers would teach towards the data, the precise focus (oral tasks) of the research was not specified. The observation procedures were the same as described in the piloting section (see 4.5.2).

4.4.1.2 Video recordings

The lessons were video recorded because “film preserves activity and change in its original form” (Marshall & Rossman, 2006, p.121), thus allowing for repeated viewing of the lessons, and discovery and re-discovery of the phenomenon being researched. The videos allowed me to move back and forth between the recorded lessons to check the emergence of themes in the teachers’ use of textbook tasks and their task

implementation against other data sources (e.g., teacher interviews, student interviews, student task talk).

The video recordings of the observed lessons were also later used in stimulated recall sessions with the teachers and students. The recordings were important because it was not always possible to conduct these sessions right after the observations as the

teachers often had consecutive classroom hours with different classes on their teaching days, and the students also had consecutive classes in different disciplines. Also, since teachers (and students) might unavoidably re-construct their descriptions if reliant exclusively on memory (Breen, Hird, Milton, Oliver, & Thwait, 2001), video recorded lessons provided a reliable and practical context to probe the teachers’ rationales for their practice. In addition, in order to examine the teachers’ thinking which “is very

much concerned with teachers’ personal and ‘situated’ approaches to teaching” (Richards, 2008, p.167, italics added), video recorded lessons provided the necessary

visually situated contexts. However, to mitigate the danger of video recorders having an

intrusive effect on the context and observed events (Marshall & Rossman, 2006), I carried out a pilot prior to the main data collection using the recording equipment, in order to familiarise the teachers and students with it (see 4.5.2).

4.4.1.3 Audio recordings

The teachers were also audio-recorded throughout the observations, along with four student groups who were randomly chosen and participated on a voluntary basis. In order to minimise ‘halo effects’, as with the video recordings, a pilot was conducted (see 4.5.2).

4.4.1.4 Field notes and classroom materials

During the observations, I took unstructured field notes of what was going on in the classroom. This unstructured format allowed the phenomenon under investigation, that is, how the teachers used textbook tasks, to emerge without being constrained by pre- determined categories (Nunan, 1992; Nunan & Bailey, 2009). In addition to field notes, I also collected textbook unit documents and other classroom materials such as

worksheets, pictures, powerpoint slides of the lessons, and so forth, to provide further contextual data. Since the study focussed on how teachers used textbook tasks in their classrooms and the rationales behind their task pedagogy, understanding of the process of what the teachers did with textbook tasks or of ‘what was going on there?’ allowed for a data-driven process in which the data guided the analysis (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p.179). In sum, the methodology allowed me to make sense of how teachers “theorize from their practice and practise what they theorize” (Kumaravadivelu, 2006a, p.173).