Development of research design

In this study, the research design is based on the socio-cultural theory which emphasises learning through social interaction. My primary aim was to investigate and develop the implementation of the critical pedagogy in a context that has explicitly put critical thinking as one of its main objectives.

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The following paragraphs explain how I came up with the decision of carrying out a case study.

The initial attempt was to carry out an experimental study and blend the positivist and post-positivist approaches (mixed-approach methodology). Two groups of learners were sought (i.e., experimental and non-experimental groups) to measure the effects of the critical thinking intervention on learners’ attitudes, quality of classroom talk and language complexity as key themes for examination. The reason for adopting a mixed-approach methodology was that I believe in the merits of combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies for studying interventions, as they are complementary. I contacted various language institutes in Saudi Arabia regarding the possibility of conducting a study over one year. Before selecting a particular site for my study, I had to put down my selection criteria. According to Yin (2009), sampling in a case study consists of two stages: screening the context before choosing candidates and then limiting the number of possible candidates through setting out criteria. It should be noted here that language institutes either at private or government universities in Saudi Arabia share educational goals and follow the same criteria for teacher hiring and student admission. Students who join private or government language institutes are graduates of private and public schools and are of mixed abilities. This indicates that research findings from one language institute could be generalised to other institutes. While examining the objectives of Saudi universities, I found that they differ in the degree of their emphasis on critical thinking. Some universities limit the incorporation of critical thinking to their undergraduate programmes, while others incorporate critical thinking into their language courses provided by their language institutes. Therefore, the university familiarity with the concept of critical thinking and the incorporation of critical thinking into its language institute was my criteria for selecting a site. I narrowed down my list of possible institutes to those institutes that have clearly emphasised critical thinking in their language courses and Almanara Language Institute was on the list. Since the accessibility and friendliness of the context is of highly importance to the case study researcher for the success of his study (Stake, 1995), I chose

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Almanara institute because it was the first institute that responded to my proposal within a short time. Another university responded a month later, but I preferred to do my project at Almanara because their immediate response helped me to save my time and start preparing for my pilot study.

Obtaining an approval from a context was not straightforward due to the nature of my project. The research methods I initially planned to adopt were regular interviews with participants, classroom observations and pre- and post-test measures. Also, I was interested in including more than one teacher in some professional training by introducing them to critical thinking pedagogy. This proposal was rejected owing to the long period of time assigned for the intervention, which might cause teachers to fall behind in following the assigned textbooks. Almanara University, which is known for its willingness to support visiting researchers, was the first site that welcomed my research, as explained previously. All Saudi universities follow the same educational policies and are all supervised by the MOHE, a point stated earlier in this section. Based on this fact, the study outcomes could be replicable if the study is conducted in another site. The dean gave her initial approval for the conducting of a pilot study at the language institute for one academic term only (term 2 of 2010). The aim of the pilot study was to get a general sense of the context and the applicability of critical thinking, by performing some thinking activities that could then be re-used in the final study. For a more detailed description of this context and the staff’s understanding of critical thinking during the pilot study, see Chapter 3.

From my visit during the period of the pilot study (April-May 2010), I found that, in accordance with institute policy, learners of a similar level of achievement were grouped into one class. Class A was for high achieving learners, class B for average learners, and class C for weak learners and repeaters of the programme. It was not possible to find a matching group for use in this case. Although the idea of dividing students into mixed groups was negotiated with the institute, it was rejected because

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it was not in tune with the institute’s policy to group similar level learners in one classroom.

The first thing I did after obtaining the initial approval of the dean was to present the aim of my project to all members of staff at a small meeting at the institute. This was in order to let them know why I would be joining them for one month (i.e., the length of the pilot study) and also to inform them that I wanted to try some thinking tasks with the learners and that I needed the teachers to participate. I was looking for teachers who were teaching students who could already communicate in English. I chose students whose English was at a higher level to ensure that they would be able to take part in classroom dialogue. There were three teachers teaching students in their final course at the institute. After the presentation, I asked interested teachers to write their names on a list. Only one of these teachers showed her willingness to participate and the others rejected the idea of being audio recorded. This teacher was teaching only one class. It was arranged with the authorities that I could give the other groups thinking lessons for a few hours and talk to them about their learning.

I introduced myself to the students in the three classrooms and explained the principle of ethical consent to them. All the learners were interested in taking part in the study and signed the consent form. A baseline questionnaire was piloted to collect data. Most of the learners stated that they needed more discussion opportunities, because the lessons based on the textbook did not give them the opportunity to practise speaking. Then we started the lessons, which included mysteries, discussions on various topics and image reading. The students were active participants and most of them liked the mysteries best, and these generated active talk in the classroom. The students were friendly, asking the researcher about recommended books for learning English and about studying for postgraduate degrees in the UK. The atmosphere was positive during the pilot study.

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After the pilot study, I tried to find teachers to participate in the final study, which was supposed to take place between September and December 2010. There was some reluctance among the teachers to take part in this study, although the principle of ethical consent was explained to them. They attributed this reluctance to the overload of teaching hours they usually had. It seemed to me that these teachers thought the project was going to be an evaluation of their teaching, because they asked questions like ‘Who is going to listen to the classroom recordings and interviews? I assured them of the confidential nature of their participation and of the fact that the data would not be shared with the authorities in charge of the language institute. However, the teachers remained silent and the authorities asked me for further time to study the proposal to make a decision regarding final approval. The authorities also explained that they were constantly changing the teachers’ timetables, which meant that teachers who were teaching final semester students this year might not be teaching them next year, and so it was too early to contact the teachers regarding their participation the following year. I returned to the UK burdened with concerns about the possibility and flexibility of doing this study.

The above difficulties in respect of finding matching groups and the reluctance of the teachers put me in a state of confusion regarding the design of my study. I realised that, owing to their reluctance, it would be difficult to include more than one teacher in the study. I therefore had to find an alternative design for the project. I did further reading in order to find a way of modifying the design of the study. During the course of this reading, I came across works by Burden and Williams (1996) and Burden and Nichols (2000), which propose the qualitative approach as an alternative approach to the positivist stance for understanding the effect of classroom interventions. Burden and Williams (1996) and Burden and Nichols (2000) suggest following the SPARE model, which has a spiral framework, as for evaluative studies in natural settings (see Section 4.3).

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Dissatisfaction with such traditional approaches to evaluation led Parlett and others to suggest an alternative, which they termed ‘illuminative’ evaluation (Parlett, 1981). As its title suggests, the aim of this form of evaluation is to illuminate or shed light on issues of importance to implementation and decision-making, as they emerge. The evaluator is thus viewed as an interpreter of complex systems rather than merely someone who measures specific outcomes by trying to hold other variables constants. (Burden and Williams, 1996: 51)

I adapted the SPARE model framework for evaluating the implementation of the critical thinking pedagogy in one classroom. It seemed to me that this framework would be appropriate for in-depth investigations and it was also flexible enough to allow for the combining of qualitative and quantitative methods for analysing results. Full details of how the different stages of this framework were applied in this project are given in sub-section 4.3.5.

Another reason for choosing the SPARE model was that it fitted into the time available for carrying out this study. Nunan (1992) suggests that a single case study consists of 4 phases known as ABAB, a process that aims to study performances under different conditions. The first phase A starts with identifying the behaviour that needs to be treated through observations. In the second phase, the intervention is applied, followed by withdrawal of the treatment in the next phase to measure the continuity of the effects. Finally, the intervention is applied again. This process sounds more appropriate for clinical research, which is about behaviour (Nunan,

ibid.). Adopting the ABAB process for the current study would require a longer time

for application. However, following the SPARE model for this study would be more appropriate for the time frame assigned for the data collection. Each SPARE cycle is called a phase, so I had two phases in the final study: phase1 and phase 2.

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After changing the design of the study from experiment to a single case study, the new proposal was sent to sent to some language institutes at Saudi universities the language institutes that were on the list of institutes that emphasise the infusion of critical thinking into their courses. I received the first response again from Almanara institute. However, the approval came late in October 2010 from the authorities at Almanara University where I carried out the pilot study. They gave me permission to conduct my study in the second term of 2011, which caused a delay in the data collection. Following their approval, I had to devise the research questions and plan the data collection methods to fit in with the time frame assigned for the data collection.

4.3.2Research questions

The primary focus of this study was on investigating the extent to which critical thinking pedagogy is applicable in an EFL context. The study sought to investigate participants’ attitudes towards this pedagogy, the quality of their talk, the development of learners’ language complexity and the issue of the transferability of thinking skills. The following research questions were thus devised:

Thesis question:

 To what extent could critical thinking as language pedagogy be applicable at Almanara language institute?

1. What are the attitudes of the students and their teacher towards the implementation of the critical thinking pedagogy?

a. What are the students’ attitudes towards the implementation of the critical thinking pedagogy?

b. What are the teacher’s attitudes towards the implementation of the critical thinking pedagogy?

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2. To what extent does this pedagogy raise/lower the quality of classroom

dialogue?

a. What are the types and frequencies of the teacher’s utterance in dialogue in the

two phases of the study?

b. What are the types and frequencies of the students’ utterance in dialogue in the

two phases?

c. To what extent could critical thinking lessons take classroom talk beyond the

traditional IRF sequence?

3. What are the effects of the critical thinking lessons on learners’ language

complexity?

a. What are the results regarding the Mean Turn Length (MTL) in the pre- and

post-tests?

b. What are the types and frequencies of utterances devoted to developing the

quality of dialogue in the pre- and post-tests?

c. What are the frequencies of HOTS in the pre- and post-tests?

d. What are the types and frequencies of pragma-linguistic markers in the pre-

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4. What evidence of transfer of critical thinking is there in other lessons?

The table below contains a summary of the methods used to answer each question.

Table 4.1 Research questions and methods

RESEARCH QUESTIONS METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION

1. What are the attitudes of the students and their teacher towards the implementation of the critical thinking pedagogy?

Pre- and post- semi-structured interviews, informal interviews, focus group in week 6, observational field notes and final questionnaire

2. To what extent could this pedagogy raise/lower the quality of classroom dialogue?

Audio-recording of classroom talk and taking of observational field notes

3. What are the effects of the critical thinking lessons on learners' language complexity?

Pre- and post- audio-recorded speaking tests

4. What evidence of transferability of critical thinking is there in other lessons?

Audio-recording and taking of observational field notes

The following sub-section explains why the above methods were selected and how they were designed.