Introduction to Phase 1: construct elicitation

In section 2.3.1. construct elicitation is described as a method with its theoretical underpinnings and some examples from the literature. In the later sections of section 2.3. the method, procedures, participants used in this pilot study are described and the results given.

2,3,1. Construct elicitation

Kelly described constructs as predictors of what will occur and as having polar opposites. Kelly proposed that each person worked with a limited number of constructs in defining his/her world but that these constructs were capable of being defined by polar adjectives for example good-bad. Kelly’s method of eliciting personal constructs required the participant to complete a number of cards each showing the name of a person in his/her life. The phenomena (people,

elements. The subject is then asked if there is an important way in which two of these differ from a third.

Kelly assumed that construction was a personal affair and doubted that two people could possibly ever put their construction systems together in terms of the same logical relationships. His “Individual Corollary” stated that persons differ from each other in their construction of events. Ryle (1975) criticised Kelly’s lack of attention to developmental and social processes and felt that the corollary could be strengthened by the statement, “Persons resemble each other in their construction of events” (p. 9). Kelly also described a “Sociality Corollary” which stated that, " to the extent that one person construes the construction processes of another, he may play a role in the social process involving the other person" (Ryle 1975, p. 12). KeUy believed eliciting constructs allowed the pathways along which the client is free to move to be revealed. Bipolar constructs reveal the subject’s choice in the subject’s terms. For example a teacher might distinguish three children by describing two as restless and one as calm whereas another teacher might select hyperactive versus passive as bipolar opposites. The collection of constructs also allows:

1. hypotheses to be tested and put to use; 2. the concepts of the client to be revealed.

Aspects of the theory and its applications that are in doubt in the minds of some of those who write about the uses of Kelly’s conceptualisations are twofold:-

l.To what extent can individual constructs reveal how people manage their lives in a social setting?

Kelly defines a ‘Commonality Corollary’ as follows:- “To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another, his psychological processes are similar to the other person” (1991, p.72). He defined commonality as similarity in construing but also in how the individual anticipates what others wiU do and “in turn what he thinks they are expecting him to do” (p.72). There is therefore a justification for exploring any commonalities uncovered between teachers interviewed using construct methodology.

There have been few experiments using personal construct psychology with groups of teachers. Wood and Napthali (1975) used repertory grid technique to study the constructs of 16 secondary teachers in a London comprehensive school and discovered that there was some commonality in the construing of the teachers. The teachers differentiated the students on the basis of six criteria but the study was restricted to the teachers of Geography and Mathematics.

The criteria were as foUows:- -the overall ability of the pupil;

-the ability of the pupü in the particular subject;

-the involvement of the student in the learning situation; -the interest displayed by the student in the subject; -the quality and the tidiness of the work presented; -and the behaviour of the pupil

How much these findings could be generalised to a wider group of teachers was not investigated.

There are dangers attached to offering supplied constructs which include the assumption that the experimenter knows best which constructs to supply, that the word meaning is understood in the same way between the experimenters and their subjects and that they have the same importance. However not all researchers agree and there have been contradictory results. Fransella and Bannister (1977) describe a way of overcoming this problem:-

If you are in doubt about what kind of constructs are applicable to a certain group of people, it is a common practice to collect from a comparable group itself. You are then fairly safe in assuming that the most commonly used constructs for that group will remain meaningful to the individual. But as they have been selected from a common elicited pool they are not, in any simple sense, either ‘provided’ or ‘elicited’ (p. 19). Bannister and Mair (1968) support the use of supplied constructs in experiments where hypotheses have been decided and where group comparisons are to be made.

2,3,2, Method

The first phase involved eliciting constructs and strategies from four teachers in two separate interviews. An outline interview script for each of these interviews is shown as Appendices 2 and 3. Essentially phase one has a qualitative, descriptive purpose in terms of construct elicitation.

How reliable and valid is this method? Reliability is concerned with two issues; the ability of a measure to produce consistent results and its replicability. The first aspect of reliability, consistency of results, has resulted in a fierce debate amongst the users of Personal Construct methodology, especially the use of the Repertory Grid Test, as to the relevance of this type of reliability in relation to this type of

methodology. This is because the very method is looking to uncover not only individual differences but also the effectiveness of interventions and therefore change over time. In relation to the Repertory Grid Test, Bannister and Mair (op cit.) have questioned the stability of the constructs and their sensitivity to change. Various research studies have shown that the constructs can be both stable over time but can also be the subject of change. It has depended as much on the conceptualisation of the researchers as the features of the person. With material of this content type reliability is open to question. The detail given in this chapter about participants, methods and procedures is an attempt to allow this study to be replicated.

Bannister (1970) discussed validity in relation to Repertory grid technique. He argued that because grid technique is not a single test and has no specific content, its validity can only be discussed in terms of whether it effectively reveals patterns and relationships in certain kinds of data. For Kelly himself validity was the capacity of a test to tell us what we already know, equating it with usefulness.

The rationale for using Personal Construct methodology in this study was an attempt to reveal patterns and relationships between teachers’ constructs and their use of strategies in relation to the students’ attainment levels and SEN and EAL levels.

2,3.3, Procedures

A letter was sent to four headteachers requesting the permission and time to interview one teacher in each of their junior departments (see Appendix 1 for a copy of the letter). Each teacher was known to the psychologist and was named in the letter so a sample of one teacher per year group could be guaranteed and the information the teacher required for the first interview was listed. A follow up brief and informal meeting was made with each teacher to set up two dates for an hour’s interview each time. The teacher was reminded to bring the following information about their class:-

The class register, the Literacy Hour Groupings, and the levels of EAL and stages of SEN of the children. This was in order to have some kind of assessment information about the child’s academic status and needs.

The following question was asked in the first interview, “ How are two children in the class similar in the manner in which they leam and different from a third?” Constructs continued to be elicited by working through the class register systematically until the teacher could not think of any more constructs. When a polar opposite was not given the “difference method” (after Epting, Suchman and Nickeson 1971, p.513) was used to elicit this. Epting et al. (1971) evaluated the merits of the “opposition method (OM)” versus “difference method (DM)” for eliciting personal constructs. For these methods the likeness end of the constructs are both elicited in the same way but the contrast end of the constructs are elicited differently. In OM the participant is asked to give the opposite characteristic of the one he/she listed at the likeness end but in DM he/she is asked to “give the

word or phrase that describes how the third person is different from the other two.” (Epting et aL op cit. p.513). They found that OM produced the greater number of bipolar constructs but in a study that was incomplete.

In Interview 1 (see Appendix 2) the four teachers were asked to go through their class register and describe how the manner in which two children leamt was different from a third child. Bipolar constructs were drawn out until no new ones were forthcoming. Each teacher was asked to ensure that aU the children were included in at least one of the trios discussed using the method described above. It was decided to include aU the children to gain as big a picture of each teacher’s construct system across aU attainment groups and to include any children at the various EAL and SEN stages This is not to suggest that the whole construct system of the individual was sampled because this is not possible.

In the second interview the teachers were shown a summary of aU the elicited constructs that they had articulated during the first interview with the children’s names attached and asked, “How can these children be helped to leam?” (see Appendix 3). A list of strategies was invited from the teachers about each individual child but they were not forthcoming for every child. As comprehensive a Ust as possible was eUcited from the teachers.

2,3,4. Participants,

The four teachers were selected from junior classrooms only one was taken from each year group and each was from a different school to try and avoid school culture effects and year group effects. A primary population was decided on due to the need to try and elicit constructs about pupils from a teacher who knew them well and who taught them for most lessons. The idea behind this was to ensure that attainment levels or perceived ability was something that the teacher could make a judgement on. This was less likely in secondary schools due to the fact that most students are streamed or set for several subjects from Year 8. The children in infant departments wiU be working towards early competency in many areas and perhaps due to the varying developmental maturity of the children, teachers may not feel ready to make definitive statements about the children. The author felt that this might not be an appropriate instrument for the teachers of younger children as a result. The potential for attributions is perhaps highest in junior classrooms. Due to the potential differences between teachers of different

year groups each year was represented in this sample.

One part of the first phase was a replication of the case study of one teacher by Parsons et al. (1983) but with four teachers, conducted individually. These were semi-structured interviews. This was a purposive or convenience sample, in other words this sample was achieved because these teachers were easily available. The teachers invited to participate were ones the author knew well with several years’ experience who were respected practitioners. They were selected to represent

each year of the junior school in terms of their current class responsibility, as shown in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1. Information about the four teachers in this pilot Nationality/Gender Year j2;roup Years of teaching Experience/ Designation

Welsh/ female 3 7 3rd post

Deputy Head for 2 years

Welsh/ female 4 6 2"^ post

History Co-ordinator

Australian/ female 5 7 2"^ post

On supply

English/male 6 25+ 2"^ post

DT

Co-ordinator

This sample of teachers is representative only in the sense that they taught in each year in the junior phase within an inner city LEA. The obvious bias effects of this sample are that they are not balanced by gender or ethnic origin. Two of them were teaching the same class for the second year running. Three out of four of them had posts of additional responsibility and were on permanent contracts. The fourth teacher had no post of responsibility and was on supply. One of them spent most of her time teaching average and low attainers in a team teaching situation. There may be additional biases built in to this selection of teachers that have not been uncovered but the first priority of the author was to select staff who

demonstrated effective classroom management of learning and behaviour and had developed trusting relationships with their students. Teachers were not selected from the same school in order to avoid school culture effects.

2,3.5,Results o f Phase 1: construct elicitation

The overall patterns of constructs and strategies are shown in Tables 2.2.

Table 2.2. Number of constructs (counting each bipolar construct end separately) and s t r a t^ e s assigned by the teachers to children of different attainment levels

High attainers Average attainers

Low attainers Totals 33 constructs including 9EA L& OSEN 25 constructs including 12 EAL & 2 SEN 36 constructs including 22 EAL & 16 SEN 94 constructs including 42 EAL& 18 SEN 15 strategies including 8 EAL & OSEN 18 strategies including 5 EAL & 2 SEN 52 strategies including 28 EAL& 20 SEN 85 strategies including 41 EAL& 24 SEN

In this study higher numbers of constructs were used to describe low attainers and high attainers. Either ends of the bipolar constructs were counted separately and not as one and there was a lot of repetition of constructs on similar if not identical themes. The average achievers attracted only 25 constructs. The relatively higher number of constructs created for low and high achievers, compared to the average attainers, is perhaps not surprising as they may make greater demands on the teachers’ resources. The low achievers also attracted the greatest strategy use and included the highest number of children identified on EAL levels and SEN stages.

As with the constructs there was repetition and overlap of identical strategies and ones on similar themes.