Selection of the Case of Focus

Figure 4 overleaf sets out the principal criteria on which the Spring/Summer 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers Group was selected as the case study of focus in respect of the present inquiry. As my concern with the substantive issues underlying the research questions pre-dated case selection, the selection criteria necessarily reflected the requirement that the case of focus should possess the potential and afford the opportunity to address these research issues systematically and comprehensively.

I saw Bryman’s (2008:56) notion of ‘exemplification’, whereby a case may be chosen because it ‘exemplifies a broader category of which it is a member’, as providing a

key rationale in respect of the need to simultaneously focus my attention on several intersecting populations. Thus, program/study participants had to fulfill the following 72

Figure 4. Principal Selection Criteria for the 2010 Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers Group as the Case Study of Focus

81 criteria: they had to be Japanese nationals whose first language was Japanese; they had to be learners of English as a foreign language within the Japanese EFL context; and they had to be pre-service L2 English instructors, i.e. initial teacher education (ITE) trainees.

Figure 4 presents an important additional criterion, namely the requirement for the (cross-linguistic) Language Awareness Program and the concomitant research inquiry to be logistically and practically viable. In this connection, the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick offers an annual fifteen-week spring/summer program for pre-service L2 English teacher trainees from the Department of English Language Education at Hiroshima University, Japan. The Program Director, Cheryl (all names are pseudonyms), aims to provide participants with a varied and balanced program of L2 English development, appreciation of literature, exposure to British culture, and the development of teaching skills. Program participants usually number around a dozen.

I had been aware of the existence of the Warwick/Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers Program for some time when I met Jasmine, one of the Directors of the

Short Courses at Warwick’s Centre for Applied Linguistics informally in the summer

of 2009. By the autumn of 2009 my thoughts had crystallized to a degree such that I felt able to put a formal quid pro quo proposal to the Short Course Directors, Jasmine and Luke: I would teach a free-standing module on the spring/summer 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers Program under the rubric

‘Language Awareness’ in the belief that such a module would have the potential to

add value to the overall program. At the same time, my in situ presence as a program instructor would afford me an ideal opportunity to generate valuable data in respect of my research agenda. Fortunately, my proposal was extremely favourably received. The 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers Group was slightly smaller than usual, numbering nine participants (six male and three female). Their names (altered to pseudonyms for the reporting of the research) are as follows: Yuriko (F), Shunta (M), Tomoya (M), Takashi (M), Shinsuke (M), Shoko (F), Yuya (M), Ayako (F) and Koji (M). All nine are Japanese nationals whose first language is Japanese. All nine participants are, in a sense, ‘products’ of the Japanese EFL context,

in that their formative EFL learning experiences occurred wholly within this context, 74

82 and would thus have been mediated by many if not all of its characteristic features. All nine are second year (of four) undergraduate students in the Department of English Language Education at Hiroshima University, Japan, and all are intending to pursue future careers as L2 English instructors within the Japanese EFL context. The nine participants therefore fulfilled the selection criteria alluded to above.

Were the present inquiry a multiple-case study, with each participant constituting a separate case in its own right, I would of course have provided a fuller profile of each individual participant in order to inform any cross-case comparisons I might wish to make. However, as will be detailed presently, the single-case design meant that the participants’ evaluative response commentaries were to be analyzed and represented at the aggregate level of the group (intra-case). Furthermore, I thought it preferable that intra-group personality, cognitive or experiential contrasts should emerge naturally and directly from the responsive accounts of the participants themselves, rather than my running the risk of reading too much into or perhaps misreading any such intra-group background contrasts as significant.

I felt that the Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers (as a group), having fulfilled the relevant selection criteria, were ideally suited as participants in this particular program and the attendant research inquiry. The research study may therefore be said to possess a built-in element of ‘falsifiability’, in that were my cross-linguistic language awareness program deemed to have fallen significantly short of its intended outcomes, there would be little reason to expect more favourable results in respect of other, less obviously suitable, participant groups.

As this was an initial teacher education program, all nine participants were themselves L2 English learners in addition to being trainee L2 English instructors. I viewed this dual participant orientation of teacher/learner as a crucial aspect of the program, the reason being that the program participants had the opportunity to experience ‘language awareness’ insights first-hand, as learners (experiential learning). I anticipated that this experiential learning would increase the likelihood of the participants utilizing the notion of (cross-linguistic) ‘language awareness’ in their subsequent role as L2 instructors (see Svalberg, 2007 in this connection).

Because the Warwick/Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers as a group are (historically) focused on furthering their development as future L2 English 75

83 instructors, i.e. developing their L2 pedagogical/methodological skills, I identified an opportunity to unify two key program aspects, namely the focus on L2 English proficiency and the focus on L2 pedagogy/methodology – aspects which the literature suggests (e.g. Wright, 2002) are best integrated on such programs but which are all too often, it seems, addressed in isolation.

A final point with regard to the selection of an initial teacher education program as the case study focus for my research concerns the relative strategic significance accorded pre-service programs vis-à-vis their in-service counterparts. The reasons for this are largely self-evident, having to do with notions of ‘tabula rasa’ and the perceived inefficiencies of re-training or un-learning. For this reason it seemed to me that, if (cross-linguistic) language awareness programs or program components are to be introduced and implemented on any significant scale, the pre-service stage would appear to be the natural starting point for such an innovation.

The case study design, following the two by two matrix model presented in Yin (2009:46), therefore took the form of a single case with multiple units of analysis – the 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University Trainee Teachers’ Language Awareness Program constituting the ‘case’ of focus, and the nine program participants constituting the nine individual ‘units of analysis’ (Figure 5 overleaf). I elected to use broken lines to demarcate the nine program participants in Figure 5 in order to convey my intention that this ‘case’ is concerned first and foremost with an evaluative analysis applying at the aggregate level of the group. In other words, while I have taken due note of intra-group variation, i.e. variation among program participants, it was the collective response to program content, ‘averaged out’ over the group so to speak, that I was primarily concerned to record. This concern applied not only in terms of the quantitative aspects of the program, wherein numerical mean pre- and post-test scores and evaluative program ratings were calculated, but also in terms of the qualitative aspects of the program, wherein I used a variety of thematic analyses to highlight recurring ‘commonalities’ in the data.

I kept Stake’s (2005) notion of ‘instrumentality’ – indicating that a given case has been selected (at least partially) on the basis of its broader relevance – at the forefront of my thinking when carrying out the evaluation of the 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University Language Awareness program study. In addition to the potential of this 76

Figure 5. Case Study Design: Single Case, Multiple Units of Analysis Shoko Koji Ayako Takashi Shunta Shinsuke Yuriko Yuya Tomoya Name Context:

The Spring/Summer 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University

Trainee Teachers Program

Case:

The Spring/Summer 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University

Language Awareness Program

Units of Analysis:

The Spring/Summer 2010 Warwick/Hiroshima University

Language Awareness Program Participants

84 particular case as an arena in which to test hypotheses and evaluate propositions of the type highlighted earlier in respect of the central research question, I saw this case as

having broader relevance on two distinct levels, which I term (program) ‘content’ and

(program) ‘approach’.

The ‘content’ level is concerned with the context-specific nature of the program content, which suggests relevance for L1 Japanese/L2 English learners, teachers and

trainee teachers. The ‘approach’ level is concerned with the presence of a cross- linguistic dimension in respect of L2 instructor professional development, which suggests relevance for both ITE and INSET programs for teachers of monolingual L1

learner groups and recalls Yin’s (2009) notion of ‘analytic generalization’. In other words, the program concept is to be generalized and the program content particularized for any given L1/L2 context.