Miles and Huberman (1994, p.10) state “qualitative data provide thick descriptions that are vivid, nested in a real context, and have a ring of truth that has strong impact on the reader”.
I have developed ‘thick descriptions’ of the ways in which teachers’ teach the manner in which they perceive their teaching and how the Omani tertiary students perceive their learning of English in their colleges.
The data for this study arise from five different sources
1. Policy documents and government reports containing statistical and other data about teachers in Oman and professional development for teachers,
2. Classroom observations, 3. Interviews with teachers, 4. Interviews with students, and,
5. A reflection on my own ‘journey’ and practice as a bilingual English teacher. I gathered the empirical data as follows:
1. I conducted five classroom observations with Arabic-speaking bilingual teachers and five classroom observations with non-Arabic-speaking ‘monolingual’ teachers.
2. I interviewed six monolingual and five bilingual teachers (not the same people as those whom I observed).
3. I interviewed 15 students from five different colleges (nominated by their teachers, whom I also observed and/or interviewed).
4. I kept detailed notes of my teaching over a period of six weeks. In all, I conducted twenty-six interviews: five with bilingual Arabic-speaking teachers, six with monolingual English-speaking teachers and fifteen with students from five different higher institutions, (students’ interviews took place right after the classroom observations in the same day but teachers’ interviews were conducted at different times in five colleges and an additional teacher interview took place in a sixth college).
All interviews and classroom observations took place at the informants’ institutions. Each teacher was interviewed separately and the interview took about 45 minutes, while the classroom observation lasted for 60 minutes. Student interviewees were nominated by their teachers. It was the teacher’s choice to nominate any three
students from those classes I observed. They were over 18 years of age, each signed a consent form and each was informed that s/he could withdraw at any point during the data collection phase. I also explained to the students that participation was optional
and that they could withdraw before the interview took place. The teachers interviewed were different of those I observed. In addition, I needed to interview different teachers from different college in order to get a broader spread of viewpoints and a sense of the field as a whole. As a researcher, it was a good opportunity to meet and interview a number of teachers from different institutions in order to interrelate and compare the bits of data.
4.6.1 Classroom Observation
The first phase of data collection was classroom observations, although I commenced interviewing before completing the observations. In this I was guided largely by Sapsford and Jupp (1996, p.58), who point out that observation may be employed in the preliminary stages of a research project to explore an area which can then be studied more fully utilizing other methods. In my case, the observations were carried out at roughly the same time as the interviews. As I went along, the observations helped to raise my awareness of the issues I needed to explore further, and in
particular, helped to shift the focus away from a narrow focus on L1/L2 usage (which I began with) to a broader focus on other issues in relation to monolingual versus bilingual teaching and EFL pedagogy.
There are a number of approaches to observational research. Gall and Borg (1993) explain the difference between more structured or (systematic) observation and less- structured or (ethnographic or unstructured) observation. These two approaches originate in different academic traditions, and have different aims, purposes and procedures. For classroom observations, I chose to use relatively less-structured observation. Gall and Borg (1993) said that the origins of less-structured observation lie in the anthropology tradition, which aims to explore the social meanings that underpin behavior in natural social settings.
The data are usually combined with information from conversations, interviews and, where appropriate, documentary sources, to produce an in-depth and rounded picture of the culture of the group being studied. Another aim of less-structured observation is to develop theory, which according to Glaser (1998) will be generated from or
In my case, however, I imposed a degree of structure through my use of an
observation checklist alongside my own hand-written field notes. Nevertheless, my analysis of the observation data, combined with the other data, was mainly in the tradition of ‘grounded theory’.
I designed my own checklist, based partly on the research questions and partly on my understanding of the key elements of EFL pedagogy, by drawing on my experience as an inspector of EFL teachers for the Ministry of Education. I also adapted material from a checklist developed by a Thai doctoral student at Victoria University (Soontornwipast 2004). Whilst I filled out the check list for each teacher, the
classroom vignettes recorded below are based mainly on my personal responses to the teaching style of each teacher overall and my own informal notes. I used the
observation checklist as a way of noting in summary form the gaps and strengths of each style of teaching and referred back to it as I was writing up.
I adapted this list with the permission of Mr. Soontornwipast for the particular purposes of documenting and analyzing similarities and differences that may exist between ‘monolingual’ language pedagogies and ‘bilingual’ language pedagogies. Besides taking notes to enable me register the teachers and students’ behaviors and interaction in the classroom, I noted how the students and the teachers responded to each other in both monolingual and bilingual environments (see Appendix A). 4.6.2 Recruitment of Teachers for Observations
I observed the teachers at five different higher institutions, which took part in the research study. Four were located in or near Muscat, the capital city of Oman. The fifth college is about 100km away.
The participating colleges were officially invited by the Ministry of Higher Education to take part in my work. I was also given a letter for the principals or deans explaining the purpose of the study and the confidentiality protocols. I asked the head of the English department at each college to select teachers to include a mix of bilinguals, monolinguals and nationalities. The department heads also took into account whether or not the teachers would be in the classrooms when I was there. The observations therefore included a range of teachers with a variety of teaching approaches,
backgrounds and cultures of origin teaching groups of students at a variety levels; weak, average and advanced.
Each departmental head nominated the bilingual teachers and the monolingual teachers. All of the classes were at Foundation or 2nd year level. The nomination of teachers for both classroom observations and interviews was based on the fact that I asked to observe a variety of teachers from different countries and different linguistic backgrounds. This would add a variety of expertise and different educational, variety of English and cultural backgrounds. Every teacher was informed about me visiting his or her classroom a few days before I attended. After I was introduced to them, the bilingual teachers showed a willingness to have me observing their classes without any hesitation, although some were surprised when I asked them to sign the consent form.
The non- native monolingual teachers (or NNESTs) also showed no objection and were quite happy for me to watch their English lessons. On the other hand, the native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) seemed to be quite concerned about me attending their classrooms and wanted more information about my thesis topic before they allowed me to observe their teaching. They also read the consent sheet much more thoroughly before they signed it.
This I think reflected a cultural difference between the monolingual and the bilingual teachers: The Western teachers perhaps had a greater awareness of their rights, a preparedness to question authority and a sense of their teaching as an individual endeavor. The non-Western teachers did not seem to have the same awareness of rights and seemed to have a more collectivist approach than the Western teachers. I was received quite well by all of the teachers and the students in the actual lessons. All teachers introduced me to the students and explained that I was a research student, who had come to observe the classroom interaction and that I was by no means
interested in evaluating them.
4.6.3 Carrying Out the Observations
I used an observation sheet besides taking notes of any interesting events to complement the observation sheet.
My prime interest was to see:
• How do bilingual teachers actually teach?
• Do they use Arabic language in the English lesson and, if so, how often they use it and for what purposes?
• How do non-Arabic speaking monolingual teachers teach?
• How do the students survive English language lessons without any Arabic language input?
• What teaching methodologies do each group of teachers use? (See chapter five for more details)
I observed a one-hour lesson with each of the ten classes. It was a good experience to watch a variety of different teachers and students at different learning levels. Each one of the teachers presented a different activity or lesson from the school syllabus. Each class I attended was different to all the others. The degree and quality of engagement with students varied from one situation to another. Following the observations I had some informal discussion with most of the teachers and I have included some of their comments in the vignettes alongside my own observations.