Multiple roles within the setting

Different types of data can be forthcoming depending on the wider role the researcher is perceived as having within a setting.

Another area of tension during the research process was the multiple roles attributed to me as I engaged with different institutions within the research setting. Whilst in the setting, I was combining data collection with work-related activities such as organising and running workshops for teachers, and attending and presenting at conferences, which meant I was perceived in different ways in different parts of the setting at different points in time. During the study, I was variously perceived as a researcher, lecturer, teacher trainer, teacher, doctoral student, visiting academic, presenter at a conference, e pe t o la guage tea hi g pedagog ho had o e alo g to e plai ho thi gs should e do e, e pe t i a u spe ified academic sense, friend (of whoever had brought me) and simply visitor from overseas. Further, the delineation

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between these roles was never clear and there was often a tension between the role I perceived myself as having at a particular time and the role I was seen as having within the setting.

As my data collection progressed, I became aware that how I was being perceived might be effecting the kinds of conversation that I was having and therefore the data I was collecting. For example, when I was seen in the role of a teacher trainer, the discussion within interviews would tend to centre around problems with the way teachers were trained or the formalised but ineffective in-service professional development in the setting. As I was most often seen in this role within the setting, this may perhaps explain why there is a relatively high volume of data, and a whole chapter (Chapter 8), dedicated to the topic of second language teacher education.

As a consequence of having different roles within the setting, I realised the importance of clarifying my own position before starting each interview in terms of, at that moment, being a researcher, as several interviewees would have seen me a short time before in another role, such as facilitating a workshop or presenting at a conference.

One role I had a particular problem with was being des i ed as a e pe t i the setti g. As I noted:

At [“ hool A] toda I as i t odu ed i the tea he s oo as a isiti g e pe t from the U.K. This made me feel uncomfortable and also seemed to make the teachers uncomfortable with me. [Field notes, August 2010]

Although I had never considered self as pa ti ula l e pe t i ge e al, dis o fo t was increased in the research setting because, whilst I may know something about teacher education or language teaching pedagogy in my own setting, I knew relatively little about it in the research setting. Indeed, I was already firmly of the view that it was those working in and with detailed knowledge about the setting who were the experts in the setting.

This ispla ed ie , positio i g e as a e pe t , to ha e an impact on my data collection as I felt, for example, that I had not got the kind of in-depth answers I was

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hoping for from the open-ended questionnaires I was giving to teachers working in schools, particularly those working at primary level. Further, some teachers appeared reluctant to complete the questionnaire as, I believe, they did not want to show any lack of la guage p ofi ie o pedagogi k o ledge i f o t of a isiti g e pe t .

As I noted, concerning the teachers working in schools that I was meeting:

I a t see to get past thei ie of e as a e pe t a d that I ha e eithe come to help them or to check what the know. I feel a kind of teacher-student relationship with them, perhaps not helped by the fact that I am older than most of them. They seem to feel the same, at least when I try to engage them in discussion about teaching, either individually after observing their classes or as a g oup, I do t feel I getti g e o d supe fi ial espo ses. [Field otes, August 2010]

By contrast, I did believe that I was getting what I considered as more perceptive responses from those in more senior or more academic positions, such as school principals, teacher trainers, le tu e s a d ollege tea he s those teaching English to undergraduate students), noting that:

I egi ning to realise that I getti g o e in-depth responses from higher- level ELT professionals and am less likely to get useful information from school teachers, particularly primary school teachers. [Field notes, August 2010] These highe -le el ELT p ofessio als perhaps saw me in some sense as a fellow academic with whom they were more than happy to discuss what they saw as the key issues in the setting, and indeed to educate me on them.

Because of this, I tended to interview these types of people, though, with hindsight, I ould pe haps ha e fou d a a to a ess the ie s of those o ki g o e at the chalk face in primary and secondary schools.

I was also conscious of the risk of favouring informants who said things that I agreed with. As I noted after meeting [17] for the first time:

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Met a sessional lecturer, whos recently completed a PhD on pair/group work. She had some very interesting thoughts on ELT methodology here [in Kerala]. Perhaps the most enlightened/enlighte i g pe so I e et o this isit. Could be a key informant. [Field notes, January 2012]

‘eadi g this a k late , I ealised that I a e e uati g e lighte ed ith oadl sharing opinions and views that I had, a d ith those ho e e usi g the de elop e t dis ou se efe ed to i Chapte a d dis ussed i o e depth i “e tio 7.2.

On a professional level, I began to question the extent to which supposed e pe t knowledge could be transferred from one setting to another. As the study progressed, and as I spent more time in the setting, often facilitating workshops as part of the visits I was making to the setting, I began to make connections between what I was finding through the research and my own experiences as a teacher and teacher trainer, as the following incident, taken from my field notes, exemplifies:

Questioning the project: I ot su e what we can really achieve by coming over for a week or two here and there, quite apart from the question of whether we e appropriate people to be developing teachers here, without the in-depth familiarity with and experience of working here. Our work needs to focus on what value we can add, sharing and comparing rather than importing and prescribing ideas and methods. [Field notes, August 2010]

This kind of questioning of my professional role seems to go hand-in-hand with the way in which I was developing my understanding of the setting through this study. In particular, observing classes and beginning to interpret these observations in different ways influenced how I saw my professional role, as the following incident illustrates:

Questioning my own approach/methodology: My workshop Maki g Coursebooks Co u i ati e seemed to go down well with two of the three groups, but not so well with group of the primary teachers. This seemed to be largely due to the fact that they had a lower level of English and so the session was perhaps too demanding for many of them in terms of language proficiency.

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In any case, I again find myself questioning the value of this kind of one-off or o asio al de elop e t he e as t ai e s ha e little/ o e perience in this setting, be it in teaching large classes or, in the case of primary teachers, of teaching that age group. Our strategy seems to be to offer general ideas based on a notion of communicative teaching, but perhaps we should place more emphasis on adapting the ideas to local conditions. [Field notes, August 2010]

The first point I was making above expresses doubt as to whether the ideas I was suggesting, based around o u i ati e teaching, would be possible, particularly at p i a le el, due to the ge e all lo le el of the tea he s E glish, a issue also aised by Graddol (2010). Graddol also notes that they are unfamiliar with more o u i ati e approaches to teaching English (ibid., p.112). The second point made above suggests that, as outside e pe ts , e should pay more attention to the local setting, and adapt outside ideas to local conditions, and more specifically perhaps encourage movement towards a localised version of o u i ati e teaching. Reflecting on this further since writing the above field notes, I would now be advocating a local approach to teaching as a starting point, without the o u i ati e ele e t necessarily being there at all.

6.4. Appreciating complexity

As has been suggested throughout this chapter, as the study progressed I began to ette u de sta d the i flue e of oth Weste TE“OL a kg ou d a d pa tial insider/ partial outsider positioning within the setting on the way I was interpreting different events in and different perspectives on the setting. Because of this, I began to think in less simplistic ways about a number of different issues relevant to the setting. This helped me to uncover the independent and unrecognised professionalism that exists within the setting.

Section 6.4.1 explores further my growing understanding of the complexity of the setting over the course of the study. Section 6.4.2 then goes on to discuss how I initially tended to get caught up in binary opposites in trying to understand ELT in the setting. For example, I was initially considering the classes I observed as either tea he - e t ed

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or stude t- e t ed , whereas as the study progressed I was more conscious and accepting of the complexities of what was happening in a particular class.