Data Types

Before I embarked upon the data collection I made a carefully constructed list of steps which I intended to take in order to gain the insights I felt would best lead me to a better understanding of the central puzzle around which I was framing this inquiry. This was a list

of ‘snapshots’ that I intended to collect by eliciting reflective data from myself and the

students on given topics as they appeared in the syllabus. However, the research developed rather organically and independently of my intentions as the students became part of the

research, following Li’s (2006) call for balanced research and the principles of EP that promote learner-centeredness and flexibility.

What happened when I actually came to collect the first snapshots (related to Global English)

was that I found the data I collected to be ‘blurry’ rather like a photograph taken from a

moving vehicle – not only was the panorama reduced to something which can only capture a small part of the subject matter from a single perspective, but also the picture that developed was out of focus and unclear. I soon abandoned the map of snapshots. Throughout the course the teaching and research were symbiotic, until the end of the semester when assessments became the main focus of the class and I was unable to even record detailed reflections in my journal.

At first I was undecided which classes I would select for my research so I initially started by attempting to record every lesson I was teaching and keep journals on all of them. However, within a few days the size of this task led me to quickly narrow down my options and select just two (Writing Skills and CLERAC), which was further reduced to one near the end of the first semester. The reasons behind this choice will be the subject of another article in the future.

Due to my large teaching bank, the work I was doing on my monograph and other constraints on my time, I soon found it very hard to keep detailed notes and make in-depth written journal entries. This was especially true on Thursday, where I teach three classes in the day. Writing Skills is the third class I teach that day, and usually when it came time to write my journal entry I was so tired that I was literally drifting off to sleep as I typed. I decided to narrate my journal entries instead, which became a reflexive self-interview and contributed

a large component to both data and analysis. In this way the teaching journal became an audio journal and I found that my ability to be reflexive on my teaching actually deepened as well. The quality of the journal entries was much increased, but of course the actual amount of work in processing all that data had also increased.

Another important development was in the way I structured journal entries. At first I had only a very basic structure focusing on moment-by-moment reflections as I felt this would be best as part of the inductive approach. However, as I looked back over entries they already began to make less sense to me, even after a period of a few weeks since the class. Therefore, I decided to structure entries around a format in which I would first explain the steps and procedure of the entire class and use this as a kind of stimulated recall for classroom observations and reflections. This system became even more developed in the autumn semester, when I began making chronologically structured field-notes during lessons which

I would ‘unpack’ later into the audio journal. This was specifically a response to my own

perceived over-reliance on technology, particularly audio files, which created a ‘needles in a haystack’ issue for me in terms of locating pieces of data such as Ad-Hoc interviews and reflections that got lost in hours and hours of recordings. There were further issues when I came to listen back to certain classes in order to identify Ad-Hoc interviews only to find that

the students’ responses were virtually inaudible amongst the background of other students’

activity. For this reason, I later began employing CALL room headset chats which recorded

the students’ group conversations with great clarity.

The data centres around myself as the teacher and my students as fellow participants in the act of socially authenticating the learning and creating positive motivational synergy. I am trying to triangulate the data by looking at different types of classroom data; pedagogic data from the students, journal data from myself and observational data which is produced when I interact with the students.

Figure 3:10 Three types of classroom data

Each type of data has strengths and limitations, but all of them are natural products of the teaching and therefore nothing is intervening with the progress of the class. On the contrary, data collection should actually enhance the class experience and allow a better understanding between us, which it is hoped would lead to an improvement in the quality of classroom life. During the narratives I will refer mainly to the final written journal, which also incorporated the audio journal after summary-transcription, as the TRJournal. Entries are provided along with the date for reference unless this is already clear from context. Other data sources are made clear in the context and provided with a date for reference. Each lesson is also coded to show the semester, week number and lesson (e.g. 101A, 208B).