In this research context, I considered myself a part of the participant teachers’ world. My role was placed in various positions: a lecturer in a
128
university, trainer, supporter, co-researcher and PhD student conducting the research with teachers from within my university and from schools where I am known by some of my participants. Here, I am already, to some extent, an insider. As a member of the research community, where we shared the same culture and a range of teaching experiences, this gave me an advantage to access the three sets of field work as I possessed some acceptance in the field by both gatekeepers and participants. The advantage in accessing the field and building relationships more quickly and intimately has been reported for many insider researchers, for example Sherif (2001) and Hodkinson (2005). For me, I had almost immediate access before the beginning of the research. I am familiar with the director at the university and know some of the directors and principal teachers in schools. My background also helps me to know my participants’ past history, which has advantages in predicting and understanding individual and group responses to innovative implementation (Fullan, 2007 p. 94). This role influenced data collection, analysis and interpretation of data, and the maintenance of the study’s rigour.
My teacher participants, to some extent, considered me as their lecturer, although previously I had never taught them before. In Thai culture, teachers are respected and will not be openly challenged as discussed in chapter three. Being respected as a lecturer and supporter as well as, at the same time, being an interviewer was acknowledged as a methodological challenge. The unequal power between myself and the participant teachers is a Thai hierarchical boundary, and might pose a threat to participants. The issue of control and compliance on the participant behaviour and the research process was critically considered. On this point, my supervisors and I discussed potential guidance for me to work in an appropriate way with participants as described in the previous section of consideration of ethical issues. In addition, initially, I committed to the suggestion that I work as a team researcher (Bartunek and Loius, 1996) to encourage teachers to share their status.
129
Insider researchers can be open to criticism for being too close, too involved, too familiar; over-rapport and lacking detachment mean that it may lead to the loss of critical abilities and objectivities (Brewer, 2000; Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). However, ‘detachment and objectivity are barriers to quality, not insurance of having achieved it’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2002, p. 334). I agree that rather than divest our own values, we should be aware of the role we play (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p. 308). Inside research, on the other hand, has its methodological advantages in the research process: the advantage of shared experiences; the advantage of greater access; the advantage of cultural interpretation; and the advantage of deeper understanding and richness of data (Ashworth, 1995; Wellington, 1996; Labaree, 2002). In this study, being, to a certain extent, an insider researcher enabled shared experiences to occur continually, and this was the important part for developing practice of teachers. Being an insider allowed me to spend adequate time in fieldwork which can inform a deeper understanding and knowledge of the perceptions of my participants.
As an insider, my professional background, personal belief and Thai culture would shape the research. I was going to be involved in the data generation and my fieldwork experiences would impact on the data interpretation, which I was greatly aware of. This required me to combine the view of insider with that of outsider, who was able to maintain more critical and analytical abilities and needed me to maintain the proper balance of those two points of view (Brewer, 2000; Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Here, I was neither in a purely professional status, where I maintained emotional distance, domination and no rapport, nor in a position of ‘over-rapport’. I needed to engage actively with my teacher participants, but retain outsider’s view to access adequate data collection (Brewer, 2000).
In the very early fieldwork, I felt I was an outsider due to the difficulty of accessing my participants’ groups. Here (in the northern part of Thailand), regional dialects were used within the group, but formal language was used with me. I had just moved into this area and had worked there for a couple of
130
years. I come from the capital territory, am 12-16 years older than my participants, and also have a higher social status. The teachers at this stage treated me as a lecturer and researcher from the UK, a land they thought only the one who has Vadsana (goodness accumulated from the previous life) could visit. Further, the tradition in the north in relation to social hierarchy and authority status is much stronger than that in my former workplace (the southern part of Thailand). For example, if I sat in a chair they would walk on their knees when approaching me, or if I stood up, they would bend their back when walking past me. Besides Wai, they used the oral respect forms of Ka or Krub. I am called A-Jan (lecturer in a university), and they call themselves Knoo (the word that a daughter calls herself when talking to her parent, or the younger sister calls herself when talking to her older sister/brother). My professional status and my age were a distance between us. As my fieldwork progressed, I applied Intensive Interaction with some pupils together with my participants. We taught pupils together, exchanged our teaching practices and shared a laugh with them. They spoke much more to me and allowed me to participate in some activities with them, such as sharing food, talking, going to a beauty salon, and going out to eat. In this time, I felt and acted more like an insider. I called myself ‘Pee’ which means ‘older sister’. Thai people call familiar people who are older than them with respect ‘Pee’ (older sister or brother) and younger than them ‘Nong’ (younger sister or brother). I also called them by their nicknames, as in Thai culture a nickname is the usual way to address people.
However, I felt like more an outsider again when I arranged the workshops where they acted like my students - they went back to their group and spoke to me in a cautious manner again. In addition, my outsider status often was shown to my participants while I was with their directors. Shifting the balance between insider and outsider occurred frequently throughout my fieldwork research period. Further, while writing my research diary in the evening, I felt the same as Hastrup (1987, cited in O’Reilly, 2009), who noted that “in the mirror of fieldwork you see yourself at the same time as you see others” (p.117). This needed me to be ‘a third-person character’ in order to reflect myself from the thing I observed and interacted with in the fieldwork.
131
Importantly, in that time, the professional distance and outsider’s view were most emphasised. Although I moved in and out between insider and outsider position, my role as a student and an academic researcher, as well as a lecturer, enabled me to grasp a wider perspective and the deeper stories of teachers in relation to their own experiences and perceptions of Intensive Interaction.
The most challenging part in my fieldwork was being expected to fill a role which mismatched the agreement between my participants and me during the process of developing teachers’ practice. I was expected to be in a strict evaluator role with my participants. The situation was a problem in relation to gatekeepers, as described by Taylor and Bogdan (1998, p.47). I fully recognized that it was impossible to conduct my research project without the directors’ helpful support. They took the role of being my gatekeeper, and of being kind and supportive. They wanted me to be a volunteer who was used to working with Thai teachers and pupils with SEN in the special centres. In a volunteer role, they worked as the setter of the teaching programme structure where they would direct the teachers to what they had to do. They would evaluate by monitoring the teachers and keeping records about their teaching practice every morning, with meetings arranged for discussion every week. I was aware my participants felt uncomfortable and were unhappy, and even that some might resist me, if this situation happened. I knew this would happen from my previous work experience with the director, the volunteers and the teachers. As such, teachers would do this new practice more regularly as a regulation and it might be a better data source for my research, but it would not make the participants happy. For me, conducting research means behaving to my participants as people, not only as a data source (Taylor and Bogdan, 1998). My participants’ well-being and our good relationship were frequently considered as important.
In the process of developing teachers’ practice, I had to negotiate continually between teachers and their directors. It was difficult to say that this was not the way I wanted to do the research. In Thai traditional culture, social hierarchy is still strong where we are always obedient to whoever has
132
seniority and is higher in status than us. However, this does not mean that we are forced by authority, but rather by the duty of being in a ‘family’. In Thai traditional culture, the expected duty of the older ones who are in a higher status or higher authority is to support and take care of the younger ones as the younger sister in their family, and the younger ones give them obedience and respect in exchange. After again being informed of the aims of my research, the directors allowed the teachers to try their own way within the principles of Intensive Interaction, as long as they remained comfortable, , and allowed them to stop the teaching session if they wished.