Exploratory questionnaire

4.7.1 Exploratory questionnaire

For the development of this first questionnaire for teachers, the interview data of institutional heads was revisited to pick up some themes and issues within. The criterion for selection of issues was their relevance to teachers. The whole analysis of the interview data was considered thoroughly and a set of broader themes was identified initially. These themes were then further refined into sub-themes or issues in the light of research literature on teachers’

role in the management of educational change. The themes, which emerged from the analysis of interview data in the backdrop of relevant research literature, were:

1. The process of initiation of change especially within the institutions and teachers’ reaction to it

2. The barriers and supporting factors for teachers to take the change forward in their classrooms and their strategies for it

3. Teachers’ perceptions and ideas on issues related to the impact of change on students

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4. Suggestions for improvement and speculations on a better reform endeavour in the future from teachers’ perspectives

These issues provided the focus and sequence in the questionnaire items, but the instrument remained semi-structured, as questions were open-ended to provide the flexibility of response

‘enabling respondents to reply in their own terms’. While it was important to draw from both previous data collected and the research literature, it was equally important to ensure this did not limit the responses of teachers and so open-ended questions were included. This design of the questionnaire was in keeping with the purpose of this instrument: ‘open questions may be useful for generating items that will subsequently become the stuff of closed questions in a subsequent questionnaire’ (Cohen et al, 2007, p 321). It was intended that open-ended questions would generate extended data and give the participants the space and freedom to articulate their real experience without any fixed structure to frame their responses into. The data would then be used to frame the second questionnaire.

The main themes and sequence of these in the exploratory questionnaire were:

Teachers’ initial reaction to the reform and change in their attitude later as they implemented the reform in their classrooms

Their experience of implementing the change reflected through the implementation strategies employed by the institutions and teachers and the provision of support in the process

Benefits and challenges in the reform for the students and difficulties for the teachers in its implementation

Suggestions for improvement in the current reform initiative and for any similar future endeavour

Exploratory questions were developed to cover these themes. The layout of the questionnaire provided a space of between 4-7 lines for responses depending upon the number of questions in a theme and the type of response expected. At the end, a space of seven lines was given to add any comments in order to generate other issues that would be pertinent to teachers’

experiences including any aspect of the change management, which might have not been

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included but was relevant for the context of the participants (see appendix 8). This proved to be a very useful space as participants used it to not only emphasize, confirm and elaborate some of the points raised in their responses to other questions but also make some worthwhile additions. These additions and validations were very helpful, as this questionnaire had aimed to generate items for a subsequent questionnaire. The table below gives an idea of the contents of the instrument, though appendix 8 can be seen for details on its layout.

Table 4.1 The contents of the exploratory questionnaire

3. What steps were taken in your institution to introduce this change in the classrooms?

6. What kinds of support did you receive from your

institution in the process? Do you think this support was enough?

7. Were there any difficulties in adopting this change in your classroom and what was the nature of these?

Impact of the change on students

8. What benefits do you think this change has brought for the students?

9. What are some of the challenges for students in the new system?

Additional comments 12. Any other comments relating to this initiative that you would like to add?

The questionnaire along with the plain language statement and consent form was translated into Urdu language with the help of the same colleague who had assisted in the translation

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process of the interview scripts. Feedback on the clarity and layout of the questionnaire and its translation was sought from colleagues from Pakistan working on PhD projects in the University of Glasgow’s School of Education, where the researcher is based. A set of bilingual questionnaires, plain language statements and consent forms was posted to two colleagues working in an institution similar to the ones included in the study, who were also teaching one of the target subjects at the target level. They filled the questionnaire and gave feedback and some minor changes were made to enhance the clarity of the questions.

They filled the questionnaire and gave feedback and some minor changes were made to enhance the clarity of the questions.

Recruitment of the sample: From the already identified 20 institutions, 10 institutions were selected to involve 20 teachers in the study. Ten institutions were selected to represent five types of institutions identified for the selection of institutions at the first phase and to balance boys and girls institutions. The head of the institutions had already been asked to allow the school staff to participate in the next phase of data collection and the next step was to ask them to identify six teachers, three more experienced (ten years or more) and three less experienced (less than five years). These broad parameters were partly to limit the influence of the head teachers on the selection of what they saw as ‘suitable’ candidates from their respective institutions and partly to balance the representation of both more experienced and less experienced teachers. A personal contact with the heads was made to get this list and then from every list, two teachers were randomly selected: one from each category.

Administration: The selected teachers were sent the plain language statement and consent form to seek their willingness to participate. A local proxy (an ex-student of the researcher) delivered and collected the consent forms. When teachers agreed to participate, they were delivered individually packed packs containing the questionnaires in both languages and a sealable envelope. One of the initially identified teachers declined to participate and so another participant was selected from the list of teachers from the respective institution.

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The participants were requested to fill in the questionnaire in either of the languages of their choice and seal it in a provided envelope, which was picked up again by the same local proxy. She collected all the envelopes from participants and mailed them as a collection to the researcher in Glasgow. The local proxy had a limited role of facilitation only, with no involvement in data collection and no access to completed forms.

The analysis of the data from the exploratory questionnaire: The analysis of the questionnaire started with the translation of those questionnaires, which were answered in Urdu. There were only two such questionnaires as the majority of the participants themselves chose to respond in English language. It could have been that some of the participants were teachers of English language and some were teaching Pakistan Studies, in which students may opt for either Urdu or English as the medium of instruction and assessment. Even some Urdu language teachers chose to respond in English, which was not unexpected given that firstly, teachers have studied English language as a compulsory subject up to graduate level and secondly, the participating institutions were located in urban areas where exposure to English language in social and academic settings is quite frequent and extensive. At the next stage, question-by-question content analysis was carried out. The views of every participant were analysed and then clustered around the common ideas. These emerging issues were used to present data in chapter 6 along with illustrative quotes from responses with an allocated identity number for every respondent (T). These codes presented the issues generated within each theme explored in the questionnaire.