Stage 4: Classroom observations

The first main stage of data collection was the classroom observations, which took place between August and September 2014. I decided to carry out these observations before the

main life history interviews for a number of reasons. The first reason was to build trust with the participants (de Laine, 2000; Richards, 2003). I was going to be spending a fair amount of time with these teachers; therefore, on a personal level, it was very important for me to get to know them and establish a positive relationship. Moreover, a sense of trust would be important in order for participants to feel comfortable enough to share their honest accounts of their educational life histories with me. Therefore, throughout the entire research process, I endeavoured to be as friendly, supportive and transparent as possible with the teacher participants.

Aside from building trust, another main aim of the classroom observations was to familiarise myself with the way these individuals taught. I felt it would be extremely important to experience first-hand how these teachers delivered their classes, what activities they used, how teacher- or student-centred I perceived them to be, and how their students responded to them. This would be useful for two reasons. Firstly, it would help facilitate the interview process, as I would be able to refer back to incidents I had observed in the teachers’ classes (Schensul et al., 1999; Cohen et al., 2011). Secondly, observing classes would be useful for the study for triangulation purposes (Robson, 2011; Cohen et al., 2011). As I explore in Section 3.4, triangulation is one of the key ways in which researchers are able to maximise the “trustworthiness” of life history studies (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2006).

It must be recognised that one of the most important issues when observing classes is that of “reactivity”. This refers to the general tendency that participants are unlikely to behave completely normally in the presence of an observer, a phenomenon which has also been called the “Hawthorne effect” or the “observer’s paradox” (de Laine, 2000; Richards, 2003; Flick, 2009; Robson, 2011). To some extent this might be an inevitable characteristic of this type of research. However, I tried to reduce the possibility of reactivity in a number of ways. Firstly, as mentioned previously, I made a real effort to build trust with the participants. I endeavoured to be as open and transparent with them at all times, explaining to them that the observations were not the key component of the data collection, and I regularly reiterated to them how important it was for them to behave as normally as possible in order for the data to be meaningful. I tried to be as non- judgemental as possible, repeating to them several times that my intention when observing them was not to evaluate their teaching practices. Another strategy I employed was to spend as long as possible observing each participant, an approach known as

“persistent observation” or “prolonged engagement” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2006). Furthermore, perhaps most importantly, I decided not to audio or video record any of the classes. This seemed an appropriate decision to make, because doing so may have significantly affected the way the participants taught (Cohen et al., 2011). I do not feel that choosing not to video record the classes left me at a great disadvantage, given that I was not interested in meticulously analysing them; I was more focused on obtaining a rather general idea of how these teachers taught.

My role when carrying out the classroom observations was as an “observer-as- participant”. Cohen et al. (2011: 457) define this role as “not a member of the group, but who may participate a little or peripherally in the group’s activities, and whose role as researcher is clear and overt, [but] as unobtrusive as possible.” In other words, although I was hoping to observe the class in as natural a way as possible, I did not expect to be “invisible”. This meant that I was happy to “participate” in limited ways in certain situations. For example, every teacher introduced me to their students at the beginning of the class and briefly explained who I was and what I would be doing. In addition, some teachers or students asked me questions about myself or for help with their work, and I was happy to respond. Again, I decided to do this in order to build trust with the teacher (and student) participants.

As I was not going to be video recording the classes, it would be important for me to make notes during the classroom observations (Richards, 2003; Cohen et al., 2011). For practical reasons, I decided to bring my laptop into the classes and make notes directly into Microsoft Word. When I was note-taking, I decided not to follow a fixed structure, but instead recorded the main activities the teachers were doing, as well as any other aspects which I felt might be particularly interesting or relevant to the study, such as how teacher- or student-centred I perceived the activities to be (Wolcott, 1994; Moyles, 2002). After each class, I took my laptop straight back to my office, reflected upon the class I had just observed, and updated the notes if I felt there was anything to change or add. As suggested by Richards (2003), I would refer back to these notes at regular intervals throughout the research. Furthermore, I eventually decided to code the notes into the qualitative data analysis tool NVivo (see Section 3.3.6). This allowed me to analyse in a more comprehensive way the extent to which my perceptions of the teachers’ practices were consistent with what they had said about themselves in the interviews

(triangulation). I have included a sample of one of these notes in Section A.3 of the Appendices.

Several authors have highlighted the possibility of researcher bias when observing. For example, the researcher may not be able to see or record certain happenings, they may misinterpret situations, and they may be influenced by their own pre-conceptions (Moyles, 2002; Robson, 2011; Flick, 2009). In order to somewhat reduce the possibility of this, I made a conscious effort to keep my notes as neutral and objective as possible. However, as mentioned in Section 3.2.5, it must be recognised that the subjective interpretation of the researcher is an inevitable component of this kind of qualitative research (Munro, 1998; Coffey, 1999; Goodson and Sikes, 2001). I revisit these themes again in Section 3.5, in which I focus on my role as the researcher and my relationships with the participants.

An interesting decision that I had to make was when to stop observing. Although I was following the general recommendations of “persistent observation” and “prolonged engagement” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2006), I decided to stop observing when I felt I had reached some sort of “saturation point”; that is to say, when I started to see the same kinds of behaviours repeating themselves (Adler and Adler, 1994). This began to occur after around 3 to 5 classes per teacher. At this point, I was reasonably confident that I had a general idea of how these teachers taught, and especially how teacher- or student-centred I perceived their practices to be. I therefore felt ready to start the main component of the research: the life history interviews.