2 7 Implementing CLIL models constraints and issues It has been argued that intercultural teaching would benefit learners, teachers and
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Introduction
3.6. The sample
In order to gain participation, schools within a practical travelling distance were
considered and approached first, via email or telephone. In addition, schools with
which I had existing contacts were also approached, and the research project was
also shared on a professional online forum, in order to seek additional participants.
Some who expressed an interest had to be discounted, for instance schools which
were outside of England or groups with a language other than French being studied,
as this would have been beyond the scope of the study. Single-sex schools were also
discounted, for comparability reasons. Private schools were not considered for
inclusion, as one of the intended focus of the study was to seek to establish the
feasibility of delivering a set of resources within the specific constraints of the state
education sector and in light of recent and current changes to the statutory
curriculum; the latter would not have necessarily impacted on private schools to the
same extent. Key information about participating schools and classes is summarised
in table 3.2.
Table 3.2
Participating schools and classes
School A B C D E
School Type Mixed
State
Mixed State Mixed State Mixed State Mixed State
School Participation Level Pilot Data
Collection Intervention Data Collection Intervention Data Collection Data Collection
School Context Suburban Suburban Suburban Suburban Suburban
Number of Teachers in Languages Department 4 12 2 5 7 Number of Participating Teachers 3 7 1 4 4 Number of Students 19 16 20 20 19
Age Range of Students 12-13
(Year 8) 12-13 (Year 8) 12-13 (Year 8) 12-13 (Year 8) 12-13 (Year 8)
First Foreign Language Studied
French French French French French
Ability Range at Start of Year (NC Levels)
2a - 4c 2a - 4c 2a - 3a 2a - 4c 2a - 3a
3.6.1. Participating schools
The aim from the outset was always to include one of my own classes as part of a
process of research in action. A class in my own context was selected, following
which additional participant schools were sought. A first school was selected as a
pilot for the student and teacher questionnaires. The pilot guided me to make several
amendments to the questionnaires and to the way I had planned to administer them,
namely:
- Making sure that I would be the one administering the questionnaires, as it proved difficult for the main class teacher to avoid guiding learners’ answers
through questioning, especially in the quiz sections. This would be especially
important for intervention classes, who would need to retake the
questionnaire following the period of intervention.
- Establishing a set of ‘ground rules’ for the completion of student questionnaires, in particular asking them to complete these quietly, to avoid
peer-influence - especially relevant for questions pertaining to perceptions
and attitudes;
- giving learners plenty of reassurance that this did not form part of an assessment of their work, and that responses would be anonymous and for my
sole attention;
- explaining to learners why the ‘correct’ answers to the quiz questions would not be shared with them straightaway - this would need to be done with
intervention classes as learners are accustomed to checking work immediately
after completion - yet intervention classes would need to wait until the
questionnaire was administered a second time for this to occur;
- Some of the phrasing of the questions was reviewed, for greater clarity; - Some of the layout was adjusted, for ease of completion;
- making sure that a whole hour could be allocated to the completion of questionnaires, longer than initially anticipated.
A further four schools were then selected for data collection from learners and
teachers, and an intervention was implemented in two of these schools, including my
own, to assess the impact of the teaching intervention by comparing student
responses before and after the intervention. While schools D and E did not
participate in the intervention phase, they were invaluable in enabling me to collect
responses from a sufficiently large sample to generate a data set which would enable
me to reliably identify some of the issues raised by learners and teachers alike, and to
attempt to address these through the design and selection of intervention materials.
All schools selected were suburban mixed-gender state schools, two schools were
11-16 schools, while the other two were 11-18 schools, although this was not a
deliberate choice but was dictated by their availability and willingness for
participation. All schools had been rated ‘good’ at their latest Ofsted inspection at
the time of participants’ selection.
3.6.2. Participating classes and students
Of those who expressed an interest, the final participant schools, and participant
classes and students, were selected based on the assumption that they would provide
both a broad enough range to be representative, and comparability based on their
gender, age, school type provenance and language background both in terms of home
language and experiences learning a foreign language. With regards to number
distribution, the number of student participants was broadly equal.
All classes were also selected because French was the sole foreign language they
studied as part of their timetabled curriculum. For the purpose of this study, a
deliberate choice was also made to select lower set classes, for comparison purposes
but also to investigate whether some of the literature claims that learners’ access to
intercultural materials was dependent on their linguistic ability were founded
(Mughan, 1998, 1999), and sharing others’ stance that CLIL classes should not be
the remit of the privileged or the most able (Duffy & Mayes, 2001; Springer, 2002).
All students stated English as their home language. All students were in Year 8,
therefore aged between 12 and 13 years old, and were in their second year of
studying French at secondary level.
Students in the intervention schools seemed to have had more exposure to the study
of French at primary level, with 75% of students in the intervention schools stating in
their questionnaire responses that they had been studying French for at least 4 years,
with only 61.5% of students in the remaining schools making a similar statement.
However, the ‘length of study’ was open to students’ interpretation and the depth and
level of French studied would have greatly varied depending on students’ primary
school provenance, as well as personal interpretation as to how much exposure
amounted to the ‘study’ of the subject, and this generated some of the questions
students had during the administration of the questionnaires - with students needing
clarification on how to quantify this, but encouraged to include any period of
exposure to the language they could recall. Nonetheless, when asked if they had
studied French in primary school, results between the intervention schools and other
schools were comparable, with 97.2% of intervention school students and 94.9% of
other schools’ students confirming that the language had been studied, whatever the
extent, whilst in primary school (with 91.7% and 92.3% respectively indicating that
the language studied at primary level was French).
3.6.3. Participating teachers
A total of 19 teachers took part in the study, including myself. Each school was
assigned a main contact teacher who coordinated the collection and return of
questionnaires. The gender and age of teachers was not part of the information
collected through questionnaires, as it was not relevant to the study. However, the
length of service was sought as it was felt it could have been an influential factor
both in terms of teacher experiences and openness to different pedagogies. The
average length of teaching service was 9.3 years, with teaching experience ranging
from 1 year to 28 years. 42% of teachers had English as their mother tongue, 31.6%
French, 10.5% Spanish and 10.5% German, and one teacher was a native
Dutch/Flemish speaker.