Phase 4: Research methods

1.3.7.1 Research context

The selection of the research setting, as implied by Holliday (2007), involves ensuring that it meets certain criteria, such as: providing a variety of relevant data; having opulence in the sense of heterogeneity; being of manageable size for the researcher; and providing the opportunity for the researcher to assume the necessary role/s. With the primary goal of this research being to look at improving my teaching practice, by employing different metacognitive teaching procedures into my Natural Sciences teaching, it only seems logical to use my own teaching environment as the context for the research. Therefore, this inquiry will take place in the all-girls government high school, where I currently teach, situated in the Winelands region of Western Cape Province, one of the nine provinces of South Africa. I chose to work with my Grade 9 Natural Sciences class as the target population for this study. Holliday's (2007) criteria for selecting a research setting, mentioned above, have played a role in this decision, as well as the fact that there is a general need to improve science education and many learners' metacognition (mentioned in previous sections). Other reasons for this being the selected target population are mentioned in Chapter 3 but, essentially, at a Grade 9 level, there are many benefits for employing such a study to enhance metacognition in science education. For example, this research setting and population group are most appropriate as it is at a Grade 9 level that learners need to make the decision as to whether to continue with scientific learning areas in future grades, and after school (Department of Education, 2002a). This offers an opportune time to engage with learners so that they can experience the positive effects of science, which will hopefully encourage them to pursue careers in the science field (Sjøberg & Schreiner, 2010). In addition to this, the context and sample population of this study are particularly relevant, as it has been said that the capacity for effective metacognition develops during an individual's adolescent (high school) years (Fox & Riconscente, 2008; Goos, Galbraith & Renshaw, 2002; Hartman, 2002a; Manning & Glasner, 1996), making a high school setting most appropriate.

1.3.7.2 Selection of 'informants'

Needing to address ethical issues and consideration of the individuals involved in the study, it was decided that, in order for all of my Grade 9 learners to benefit from the potential opportunity to enhance their metacognition, the data collection would occur in two phases.

During the first phase, in which my adapted teaching strategies are implemented, my entire Natural Sciences Grade 9 class will have the opportunity to form part of the lessons (with their informed assent) and reflect on their development. In the second phase of data collection, a sample population will be selected from the class group, to act as informants for the research process.

Using criterion-based, purposeful sampling, a sample of nine learners (a third of the class) will be selected from the target population (my Grade 9 Natural Sciences class) to act as informants to the research process. To mirror the heterogeneity of this target population, the criteria that will be used to select the sample, include the learners' academic achievements, as well as their cultural-language grouping, so that the diversity of the class will also be reflected in the sample. The purpose of this selection is to include individuals in the sample that are able to give rich information to the study (Patton, 2002). I have decided to borrow the term 'informants' from ethnographic research to describe my participants (Delamont, 2002, in Oswald, 2010) as it seems well suited for this particular study. It highlights the agency of the learners as participants who will help to inform my research (Oswald, 2010).

The selected informants will be asked to participate in the study on a purely voluntary basis (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001), with the assurance that their identity will remain protected and that they can at any stage withdraw from the study. The learners and their parents will be informed of these ethical considerations, and other relevant information, before assenting (learners) and consenting (parents/guardians) to participate (Allan, 2008; Health Professions Council of South Africa, 2007a). The details of this selection and sampling process will be discussed in detail in Section 3.6.2.

1.3.7.3 Method of data collection

When the time comes for data collection in the research process, the intervention plan will be ready to implement, but as the researcher, I will need to know what is happening as I conduct the research. I will also need to know whether my research goals are being accomplished and how the different parts of the research plan are contributing to the accomplishments (or lack thereof) (Sagor, 2005). In order to facilitate the above, I will need to select methods for collecting adequate data, to inform the research process, but also take into account the research design and methodology, as well as my role as teacher-researcher (Borgia & Schuler, 1996, in Adendorff, 2007).

The main aim of this research inquiry is for me to adapt and analyse my teaching in such a way that I may improve it. For this reason, I will need to critically reflect on my teaching process, as well as use the other aim of this study, as an indicator of the process. This other aim of this research requires me to determine how my learners' metacognition is developing and how they internalise the different metacognitive teaching strategies that I employ. In other words, it is through the change in the learners' metacognition that I will gain an idea of the effectiveness of my adapted teaching procedures. However, with metacognition being an internalised higher order cognitive skill (Woolfolk, 2010), it makes it a difficult entity to observe (Hofer & Sinatra, 2010; Yore & Treagust, 2006). Therefore, I will need to collect data in such a way that I can directly and indirectly gain an idea of what they have internalised in terms of metacognition. (Internalisation and externalisation are looked at in more detail in Section 3.6.3). The methods of data collection will therefore need to look at how the informants think about their thinking, and this will be done in the form of learner reflections (Baumfield et al., 2008; Connerly, 2006; Shamir et al., 2009), an open-ended questionnaire (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001), and a focus-group interview (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). In order to further validate the data about my teaching, I will also keep a research journal in which I can reflect on all interactions, observations and significant events that occur throughout the research process. These four data collection methods are described in detail in Section 3.6.3.