Research ethics

The present study has intended to examine the participants’ current beliefs, knowledge base, and decision-making, and further intended to provide training that would have an impact on the classroom environment as well as on the teacher’s role in the classroom. Therefore, it has been essential for me, as a researcher, to transparently adopt an active identity in the process of examining the participants’ view of corpus tools and providing options for appropriate classroom materials and activities. In other words, my role in the research has played an integral part in the

process that each teacher has gone through. That role, however, is more than simply a researcher examining phenomena in a setting. My interconnected roles of researcher and colleague “echo in the ongoing relations of research participants” (Warren, 2002, p. 97).

I am a peer to Cecilia, Simone and Lorraine, and this collegial relationship bears heavily on the research effort. Having a working knowledge of the institutional and program history as well as the curriculum and the student population allows closer and, I would argue, more authentic collaboration in the exploratory component of the study. Each of the teachers and I worked together to develop class-specific priorities and then created a lesson plan, much like what could occur between any colleagues. This collaboration differs from a typical researcher- subject dichotomy. Such collaboration has a direct effect on teachers’ professional lives; hence, understanding that we share a common goal and maintaining a sense of trust was vital.

However, any qualitative researcher must “systematically reflect on who he or she is in the inquiry and [be] sensitive to his or her personal biography and how it shapes the study” (Creswell, 2003, p. 182). While my relationships with the teachers more closely matched

authentic collaborative professional development in which colleagues work together, boundaries during the observations featured as part of the study had to be clearly addressed. Further, because I worked closely with the teachers in the development of their materials, guidelines had to be clearly established to provide minimal impact during observations; these guidelines included providing several pre-observation reminders to avoid unnecessary interaction during class, encouraging in-class strategies such as avoiding eye contact, and providing reminders about the research aspect of investigator-participant interaction (A. Baker & Lee, 2011).

Drawing upon Creswell’s (2003) classification of field roles in observational research, I took an approach that falls somewhere between “observer as participant” (having only brief,

formal contact with the teacher during the observation), and “participant as observer”

(participating while observing and also developing a relationship with the teacher). I strove to maintain a distance during the first two observations (acting as an “observer as participant”) and did not interact with the teacher or students; however, during the set of third observations, which occurred after our corpus working sessions, on several occasions each teacher used me as a sounding board and/or additional resource during the class (more of a “participant as observer”), which we had discussed and agreed upon prior to the observed class session. My belief is that this would provide the teacher with more confidence during the lesson and would allow her to explore more fully the range of options when dealing with corpus tools.

Similarly, during the corpus working sessions, I developed closer relationships with each teacher as we worked through ways to match corpus tools with each teacher’s unique knowledge base and classroom needs, described in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. As Borg (2006) suggested for observation, these roles were clarified in advance so that there was no confusion or tension regarding my presence within the teacher’s classroom and planning space.

Finally, an important part of any research should be the positive effects it has on the participants (Willis, 2007). For Cecilia, Simone, and Lorraine, my goal was to provide them with opportunities for reflection on their teaching, professional development, and decision-making processes. The process allowed them to develop “richer understanding of the many interrelated factors involved in learning [and] help… see how the ways we organize learning environments can promote or inhibit growth” (D. Johnson, 1992, p. 5). In addition, as members of this participatory research, all three teachers have critically engaged the research as well as worked together to share the results of the study.

3.4.1 Informed consent

All respondents and participants provided informed consent for their roles in the study. For student participants (non-native speakers of English), the consent form was provided in language appropriate for their language proficiency, and time was taken during class to explain the study, the consent form, and the individuals’ rights and protections in language that was accessible. The consent form for teacher participants is in Appendix E.1, the consent form for the student participants is in Appendix E.2, and the consent form for the survey respondents is in Appendix E.3. Obtaining, reviewing, and safekeeping consent forms were all carried out under the authority of the Georgia State University Institutional Review Board (IRB). Protocol Number H12221 was approved by the IRB for this study (See Appendix F for IRB documents).

Through the design, collection, and analysis of the data, as set forth here, I was able to explore the processes that these three teachers- Cecilia, Simone, and Lorraine- went through as they identified their needs for their specific writing classes, considered possible ways to use corpus tools to address one or more of those needs, and then reflected upon the lessons that they had created and how they might (or might not) integrate corpus tools in the future. The next chapters will examine the results of this data collection and analysis. In Chapter 4, the preliminary survey is discussed. In Chapters 5, 6, and 7, we hear Cecilia’s, Simone’s and

Lorraine’s stories, respectively, and each teacher’s views of corpus tools when considering them vis-à-vis their self-identified teacher needs. Chapter 8 presents a summary of themes,

4 PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF TEACHER NEEDS AND EXPERIENCE WITH CORPUS TOOLS

Before beginning to work with the three main participants in the study (Cecilia, Simone, and Lorraine), I conducted a preliminary online survey with teachers from a range of educational settings (the survey instrument is shown in Appendix D). The survey asked language teachers about (i) their self-identified needs as teachers, (ii) knowledge of and experience with corpus tools, and (iii) views on the relevance of corpus tools in their professional lives as teachers. An analysis of the results of this survey allowed me to compile a set of teachers’ needs in the classroom. In addition, the survey provided teachers’ perspectives about the use of corpus tools in their professional lives. I used these teacher-identified needs and perspectives to inform the first set of interviews with Cecilia, Simone, and Lorraine (see the protocol for Interview 1 in Appendix A.1). This chapter examines the survey respondents’ self-identified needs as ESL/EFL teachers as well as their awareness of and interest in corpus linguistics and corpus tools in their own teaching, as reflected in their answers to the survey.

To create the survey, I reviewed existing surveys on teacher needs (Römer, 2006) and teacher views and experience with corpus tools (Römer, 2006; Tribble, 2008). Survey items were created based on the general categories of teacher needs, corpus knowledge, corpus experience, and professional development. The categories and the items were reviewed by six ESL teachers with extensive experience in EAP writing (five from IEPs and one from a community college ESL program); these teachers provided feedback, which served as a basis for modification of the items.

Potential respondents were targeted via professional networks and online discussion groups. Most responses were the result of email requests sent to two professional groups of IEP directors, the American Association of Intensive English Programs (www.aaiep.org) and the University Consortia of Intensive English Programs (www.uciep.org). Other organizations that participated in distributing the survey were national, regional, and state TESOL organizations. One hundred sixteen teachers responded, and one hundred eleven completed the survey.

I used a brief summary of the results of the survey as a way to guide but not restrict Simone’s, Cecilia’s, and Lorraine’s reflections about their own needs for their writing classes. In other words, they were able to reflect upon the general survey results prior to the first interview and were able to review them as they wished throughout the process. Taking a grounded theory approach, the initial set of codes created during the survey process shifted, as they were

evaluated, refined, added to, or deleted (Silverman, 2006). This was done for each participant based on her views on her class and its learning outcomes, as will be explained in Chapters 5, 6, and 7.