Research roles

In this section I consider my role as a didactician in sessions with teach- ers. This is a follow-up on concerns for influences on what I observed already raised in Section 4.1. Later, in Section 4.5 I describe the data gathered in these different sessions with teachers while my methods of data collection are considered in Sections 4.6. When I present conclu- sions and suggest implications in Chapter 7, concerns for my role as di- dactician and influence on findings are discussed.

In the coming subsections I argue that my role in most sessions with teachers was a combination of being a participant and observer. In con- versation with teachers at their schools and in group sessions at work- shops, I was usually a quite active participant which, with reference to Gold below, I describe as participant-as-observer role. He describes such kind of role as the typical role within a community:

Probably the most frequent use of this role is in community studies, where an ob- server develops relationships with informants through time, and where he is apt to spend more time and energy participating than observing (Gold, 1958, p. 220). During classroom and computer lab visits my role was less active than in conversations. I mainly observed the lesson but was also active either when students asked me for assistance or the teachers came and talked to me during the lessons discussing the teaching and students work. Thus, I will describe my role in these sessions as an observer-as-participant. The two mentioned roles above are the roles marked as 2 and 3 below. This list with four roles builds on a categorisation of the participant observer roles made by Gold (1958):

1. Complete participant 2. Participant-as-observer 3. Observer-as-participant 4. Complete observer

Gold argues that in order to be a complete observer, my identity could not be known to the people I observed. Since this was not true, it is not a good description of my role. The only situations where I interpret that I behaved close to being a complete observer, occurred when I joined gen- eral staff instruction meetings which happened two times when I sat with teachers in their staff room. The co-learning agreement (see Section 1.2, p. 21), on which the projects were based, could be interpreted as aiming to have both teachers and didacticians as complete participants, particu- larly in sessions designed by the projects where didacticians and teachers

were together discussing mathematics teaching. However, I believe be- cause of the two groups’ different backgrounds, interests and expertise, it is reasonable to describe my role on a scale from observer-as-participant to participant-as-observer and in some sessions also a complete partici- pant. In the coming subsections I give more details to the different ses- sions and my role within these.

4.3.1 Informal conversations at the school and in workshops As part of my visits to the schools, I usually talked with the teachers some minutes before the lessons and some minutes after the lessons de- pendent on whether or not the teacher had time for this. In conversations ahead of the lesson, I usually asked the teachers to say a little bit about the lesson and after a few times the teacher told me this without being asked. The conversations were often very brief, typically on the way to or from the computer lab or in the staff room if the teachers had avail- able time. In these brief conversations, the teachers often asked for feed- back to his/her lesson plan with questions such as “What do you think (of the lesson)” and “I do not think my students worked well today. Do you agree”? Thus these conversations involved me as an active partici- pant but after a while more as a participant-as-observer since the teach- ers started to talk about their lessons without waiting for my comments or questions.

In the workshops in the two projects, in total sixteen and twelve workshops respectively in the LCM and ICTML projects, part of the time was reserved for group sessions. In the LCM project, these group sessions included 3-4 teachers and 1-2 didacticians while in the ICTML project with fewer participants usually everyone gathered around a big table. The group sessions lasted for approximately 45 minutes and were in the LCM project usually followed by a plenary with presentations from group members. All the participants in the groups were supposed to contribute and be active. Didacticians were supposed to give support to the teachers during the group session by offering questions and asking the teachers to offer their contributions. In some of the group sessions in the workshops, the teachers reported from their teaching and were given feedback and asked for further elaboration by didacticians and some- times other teachers. Thus, both during the informal conversations with teachers in schools and group sessions in workshops, my role was typi- cally that of a participant-as-observer in Gold’s terms.

4.3.2 Classroom and computer lab observations

In my first visits to teachers’ classes, I briefly introduced myself and in- dicated my role as mainly wanting to observe the teaching. Thus, the teachers and the students knew who I was and had got some information about my role and what I wanted to achieve. In my first visits to a class, I used to walk around in order to get to know the students and vice versa.

As my observations went on, I gradually got a more passive role usually operating a video camera and talking with students if they encouraged me to do so. The latter indicates why I classify my role in the classroom and computer lab as typically being an observer-as-participant. I ob- served the lessons and participated only to a limited degree mainly if the teacher or students called on me. Classrooms and computer labs were vital arenas for my collection of data in order to observe how teachers orchestrated students’ work with Cabri in their mathematics lessons. 4.3.3 Plenary sessions in workshops and at a conference

Workshops in the two projects also included working sessions at com- puter labs and plenary sessions where all the participants in the projects were present and both didacticians and teachers contributed. In these ses- sions, one or two didacticians orchestrated the plenary and were active participants. During teachers’ work at the computer lab and teachers’ presentations in plenaries, didacticians mainly had the role of an ob- server-as-participant except for some short parts where didacticians were more active and contributed as participant-as-observer. In a confer- ence for teachers, arranged as part of the last year of the developmental projects, teachers at each school in the project made a school conference presentation emphasising school development issues. In these sessions, didacticians were supposed to be passive only introducing and thanking the teachers and in some of the sessions responding with a couple of questions during and after their presentation. Thus, in these plenaries di- dacticians’ role best can be described as an observer-as-participant. 4.3.4 School team meetings with teachers

In this section I pay attention to school team meetings with teachers. The establishment of school teams had been proposed by didacticians in the developmental projects and in the contract for schools’ participation in the LCM project. The team at each school was supposed to include the teachers who participated in one or both of the developmental projects; if suitable, the principal or vice principal at the school and a few didacti- cians given special responsibility for follow up on each school.

The nature of the school meetings affected whether or not my role (and the other didacticians’ roles) could be seen as a participant-as- observer or observer-as-participant. Some school meetings were re- quested by didacticians partly with didacticians’ agenda. An overall aim for didacticians with such meetings in teams was to stimulate and get involved in the work and community building at each of the schools. Di- dacticians wanted to be informed about teachers’ work in school related to the projects in order to support teachers in their development in teach- ing. Thus, in school team meetings didacticians’ roles varied from a par- ticipant-as-observer to an observer-as-participant role. The role was of- ten quite active proposing support and specific actions in schools such as

presenting an approach to use of computer software. 4.3.5 Interviews

According to Gold, interview is the typical method involving an ob- server-as-participant role of the researcher. I only accomplished inter- views four times in my research study; once with a didactician and three times with teachers.

All the interviews were semi-structured. I had planned the interviews and had some questions I carefully considered if were addressed by the teachers or not during the interview. I also wanted the teachers to talk about their experience from teaching and potentially to raise issues based on their teaching which included use of computer software in mathemat- ics teaching and other kinds of approaches to mathematics teaching.

The interviews with the teachers were arranged as focus group inter- views. The participants discussed a specific issue or theme like their im- plementation and teaching with Cabri and development and participation in the projects. The arrangement of focus groups made it possible to fo- cus on the ways teachers discussed issues as a group and responded to each other’s view. In fact, I argue that such discussion was in accordance with and part of the development of a co-learning community of teachers and didacticians utilised by didacticians in arrangement of workshop ses- sions. In workshops, teachers were grouped working with mathematics and discussing implementation of ideas to their mathematics teaching. These different arguments indicate that to interview the teachers sepa- rately would be to deny much of the desired community development where teachers talked and discussed efforts and issues in teaching and also assumed to be more unnatural for the teachers. Bryman (2004) pre- sents implications of focus group interviews which share my aim and arguments above for conducting the interviews in this way, some of them cited below:

In the context of a focus group, individuals will often argue with each other and challenge each other’s views. This process of arguing means that the researcher may stand a chance of ending up with more realistic accounts of what people think, because they are forced to think about and possibly revise their views. ….. The focus group offers the researcher the opportunity to study the ways in which individuals make sense of a phenomenon and construct meanings around it. …., focus groups reflect the processes through which meaning is constructed in eve- ryday life and to that extent can be regarded as more naturalistic (Bryman, 2004, p. 348).

Bryman’s implications of focus group interviews indicate advantages of focus group interviews which helped me to have a more realistic account of issues related to teaching mathematics. On the other hand I also see possible problems in this way of conducting interviews. One problem could be to involve all the teachers and make sure that every teacher con- tributed. During the interviews I sometimes explored views coming up

from the group sometimes directing questions to individual teachers in order to take care that different views came up. My way of collecting data during interviews indicated in this section is discussed more exten- sively in Section 4.6.

To summarise, I argue that the interview I conducted in my study only partly supported Gold’s claim of interviews as involving an ob- server-as-participant role of the researcher. I do believe that I also had a participant-as-observer role, especially when formulating questions and at some points during the interviews. The very nature of the develop- mental projects, where the teachers were used to discuss teaching and issues related to development in teaching with didacticians, made it rea- sonable not to conduct interviews as a number of questions supposed to be answered. It was rather conversations where the teachers also raised questions and issues and I as the interviewer contributed to the discus- sion.