Methodology and research tools used in this study

The previous chapter reviewed various methodological approaches used in past teacher beliefs studies, the limitations of exclusively quantitative or qualitative methods, and several methodological challenges involved in studying beliefs. Keeping these in mind, the present study has been designed as a mixed-methods study of 60 Indian primary teachers, involving Likert-scale surveys, interviews, life narratives, and classroom observations. The study utilises a dominant-less dominant design (Cresswell, 1994; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003), with a predominantly qualitative approach, while the quantitative component helps to corroborate qualitatively-derived hypotheses and to synthesise broader patterns and trends. Using Leech & Onwuegbuzie’s (2009) typology of eight possible designs for mixed-methods studies, mine would be considered a fully-mixed, concurrent, dominant-status design (QUAL+quant): i.e. methods are mixed at various research stages (objectives, data collection, analysis); quantitative and qualitative data collected simultaneously; and the study has a dominant qualitative design.

It is hoped that using multiple data sources has helped mitigate some of the methodological challenges discussed earlier. These include accessing teachers’ ‘true’ beliefs, getting beyond socially desirable responses, balancing a researcher-driven agenda with teachers’ own perspectives, and identifying broader cultural patterns in a larger diverse sample while still capturing the complexity and contextuality of individual teachers’ beliefs.

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Robson (2002) suggests that a mixed-methods approach enables a broader picture of participants and their context, a balance between researcher-driven and participant-driven perspectives, more nuanced explanations, triangulation and increased validity and generalizability. Mixed-methods analysis allows me to use the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques to better understand the phenomenon of interest. My purposes in using mixed-methods research encompass two major rationales outlined by Onwuegbuzie & Teddlie (2003): representation (extracting adequate information from the data), and legitimation (checking validity of data interpretation).

The choice to employ a mixed-method design is grounded also in the critical realism paradigm underlying this study. Traditionally, research has been bifurcated between positivist and interpretivist paradigms, having diverging and incompatible ontological and epistemological assumptions. Christ (2010, 2013), Lipscomb (2008), Sayer (2000), Scott (2007), and Zachariadis et al (2010) propose critical realism as an alternative paradigm in which to ground mixed-methods research, with ‘significant implications for a resolution of the quantitative/qualitative divide’ (Scott, 2007, p.15). Critical realism is unique in its stratified ontology that assumes multiple levels of knowledge, which allows for the legitimate and in fact necessary combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in order to provide a more complete and accurate understanding of social reality. Thus I can employ empirical methods to capture the more objective or quantifiable aspects of teachers’ classroom actions and of their agreement with certain belief statements, and qualitative methods to understand the subjective aspects of teachers’ beliefs and practices, in order to arrive as close as possible to a more accurate representation of their reality. Unlike interpretivism, critical realism does allow venturing causal links and explanatory statements about reality, but unlike positivism, it does not see these relationships as always consistent or predictable, since they are mediated by complex social contexts and are therefore only provisional (Scott, 2007; Zachariadis et al, 2010). Analysis must thus rely on inductive and deductive reasoning, through a spiralling process of postulating various hypotheses and seeking confirmatory and disconfirming evidence, in order to verify the best plausible representations of teachers’ realities, thereby increasing the credibility of findings (Christ, 2010; Lipscomb, 2008).

Research methods and instruments

Specific methods were planned in order to answer each of the study’s research questions (RQs): what beliefs held by Indian teachers conflict with the LCE assumptions of policy documents (RQ1); the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practice (RQ2); what factors shape the formation of teachers’ beliefs and their enactment into practice (RQ3); and what factors within teacher education programmes can contribute to change in these beliefs (RQ4). Firstly, ten belief dimensions were identified for investigation (described above), based on literature review, my own years of working with educational reform in India, and informal

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conversations with Indian educators. Based on these ten broad categories, the beliefs of 60 teachers were explored through a combination of written surveys and semi-structured interviews, along with open-ended life-narrative interviews with 9 of these teachers, based on the methodological recmomendations emerging from the teacher beliefs literature disussed earlier. Semi-structured classroom observations were conducted for these 60 teachers (three lessons per teacher) to explore how teachers’ beliefs relate to their implementation of learner- centred pedagogy.

These primary data sources together informed primarily RQs 1, 2, and 3, based on my main sample of 60 teachers. In addition, interviews were conducted with 30 BRC/CRC trainers and 43 educationists from NGOs or universities. The interviews with trainers were analysed in order to understand their own beliefs and views on LCE, and their views on teachers’ implementation of LCE. The interviews with educationists, which sought to understand their insights and experiences on this topic, were treated more as secondary sources rather than analysed formally as primary data, and were thus not part of the original sampling and piloting process. Rather, they were used to inform my thinking throughout the research design, data analysis and writing processes. Although all research methods generated insights into all four research questions, the analysis for RQ4 is based more indirectly on primary sources, in drawing out implications of my findings for practice. It is based more directly on engagement with secondary sources: interviews with educationists and theoretical literature on beliefs change and transformative learning, to synthesise factors in teacher education programmes that may contribute to change in teachers’ beliefs. The instruments used for each of these methods are described below, and are included in Appendix-4.1.

Survey questionnaires: Based on the hypothesized framework of 10 belief dimensions discussed in the next section, a structured Likert-scale questionnaire of 71 items was designed, comprising of 10 sub-scales with roughly 6-10 items each (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the entire scale based on a pilot with 100 teachers was 0.92). Likert-scale questionnaires allow a degree of sensitivity and differentiation of response, while still enabling comparison across a larger group (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2013). The survey was designed to rate the extent to which teachers agree with the LCE assumptions of NCF 2005/ RTE 2010 for each of these 10 categories (see Table 4.2). Each item consists of a belief statement with which teachers rated the extent of their agreement (ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 5-strongly agree). Items included positive and negative statements, rated as either ‘high-LCE’ (aligning with LCE assumptions) or ‘low-LCE’ (conflicting with LCE assumptions), in order to counter the tendency of teachers to ‘agree’ with what they see as socially desirable answers. I also attempted to counter this tendency by framing statements in a neutral way, avoiding catch-phrases or ‘buzzwords’ that teachers may be tempted to automatically endorse, to make it harder for teachers to guess which may be the ‘correct’ response. In order to further establish the reliability of the survey questionnaire with a wider sample, I distributed the

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survey to 230 additional teachers and 229 additional trainers who happened to be present at the BRC training centres at the time of data collection, and who agreed to fill out the surveys for the purpose of the research. These teachers were not part of the formal sampling and their surveys were not formally analysed, but were only included in the reliability testing for developing the survey scales, as described in Section 6.1.

Teacher interviews: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the 60 teachers to further explore the 10 belief dimensions, along with other beliefs about their role and experiences as teachers, past schooling experiences, favourite teachers, personal and professional motivations, desires for their own children, daily lives, working conditions, challenges, and views about children, learning, parents, learner-centred pedagogy, and training programmes. Questions were used as prompts but there was flexibility for further probing and elaboration where needed. Semi-structured interviews allowed me to explore specific themes of interest with standardised questions which enabled comparison across teachers. However it also allowed teachers freedom to divert or focus on what was important to them, enabling me to uncover their conscious and sub-conscious beliefs.

Life Narratives: In addition, 9 teachers out of the 60 were selected for open-ended life- narrative interviews (3 per state). These were teachers who, based on classroom observations, appreared more extreme in high and low learner-centred practice respectively. These were also teachers who were particularly expressive and had shared rich insights in their first interview, warranting a second longer interview. The life-narratives probed deeper into themes such as teachers’ childhood, life history, family relationships, aspirations, self- image, interests, reflections on their life, sources of inspiration, joys and frustrations, life dreams and purpose, views about teaching and what shaped these views, views about their work, school, social issues and discrimination. The use of life narratives for understanding teachers’ beliefs is recommended by Fang (1996), who argued that typical methods like surveys, interviews or stimulated recall do not adequately capture the influence of teachers’ personal experiences in shaping their beliefs and practice. I felt that life narrative interviews would provide me deeper insights into the various factors that have contributed to shaping teachers’ beliefs and practice.

Classroom observations: Based on ten indicators of learner-centred pedagogy described in the following section, a structured classroom observation tool was designed. This included a time-tracking component capturing time spent on various types of activities, narrative descriptions of what was happening at each 5-minute interval, and a rating component used to assign each teacher a score for each of the ten pedagogy categories, along with narrative decriptions justifying each rating assigned. Structured observation is most appropriate to enable the reseacher to chart the incidence and frequency of specific pre-identified features – i.e. ten indicators of LCE pedagogy – and to compare these across different teachers (Cohen,

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Manion and Morrison, 2013). Each teacher was observed for three lessons each of 35-40 minutes duration18, based on which they were assigned a ‘pedagogy score’ reflecting their extent of learner-centred practice. I could potentially have obtained further insights into teachers’ pedagogy if I had spoken to students, but decided against it due to practical constraints of time and resources, and since my focus was on studying primary teachers which would have presented greater challenges for engaging in meaningful discussions on specific topics with young learners.

Interviews with teacher trainers: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 government BRC/CRC trainers (10 from each state), at the BRC nearest to the urban schools visited. These individuals are responsible for providing regular training and on-site support to nearby schools, including those in this study. The interviews explored trainers’ work profile, their views about teachers’ strengths, challenges, motivation, their understanding of LCE, teachers’ reaction to and implementation of LCE, obstacles to LCE, factors that shape and/or can help change teachers’ beliefs, and recommendations for improving training programmes. These 30 trainers were asked to fill out the same survey questionnaires as teachers, in order to compare the beliefs of trainers and teachers.

Interviews with educationists: Additionally, unstructured interviews were conducted with 43 educationists working with universities or NGOs in different parts of India (listed in Appendix- 4.2). Their purpose was to inform RQ4, as well as to triangulate and deepen the findings for RQs 1, 2, and 3. The interviews focused on broad themes to explore educationists’ experiences and insights related to the research questions, and their feedback on the research categories, tools and/or initial findings. They were unstructured, with freedom to alter the content, sequence and wording of questions (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007), depending on individuals’ unique experience and insights on the topic. These interviews were conducted at various stages of the research process, from initial conceptualisation and tool development, through to the final analysis.