Transcribing the Data

According to Bailey (2008), transcription is an important first step in data analysis because it involves the close examination of data, such as audio and/or video recordings, through “careful and repeated listening” and/or watching (p. 129). Bailey describes the process of transcribing data as an interpretive act rather than a technical procedure. Data analysis in this study involved the transcription of several data sources including: lesson observation and video footage, audio recordings of post- lesson interviews with teachers and students, and written data in the form of short reflections from the students.

Transcribing the Video Footage

Approximately 13 hours of video footage was produced across the three classes, not all of which was used in the analysis. It was not feasible to transcribe all the footage in its entirety. Instead, the researcher viewed the video footage of the instructional phases of each of the lessons and produced summaries of the footage. From these summaries, the researcher selected aspects of the video-footage to transcribe in full. This footage was chosen on the basis that it illustrated the range of PCK that was enacted by the teachers, and/or discussed from the multiple

transcribing this footage in full, was to enable the construction of the Scenarios which are presented in Chapter 4. Each Scenario provides a detailed snapshot of the

enactment of PCK from the perspectives of the researcher, the teacher, and students. Further detail about the nature and purpose of the scenarios are addressed in Sections 3.9.4 and 4.1.

Clarke (2013) acknowledges the role of data reduction within the context of classroom video study. He asserts that the researcher’s “choice of classroom, the number of cameras used, who is kept in view continuously and who appears only given particular circumstances” all contribute to data reduction (p. 227). Clarke also emphases the idea that data reduction “does not stop” with the video recording but continues throughout the construction and coding of video transcripts given that the researcher has such a principal role in the construction of these data.

Each lesson summary was completed within days of collecting the video footage and presented in the format shown in Table 3.5. The preparation of the lesson summaries was time intensive and involved regular pausing and re-watching

segments. In many cases the researcher needed to watch aspects of the footage multiple times as she interpreted the PCK in the teachers’ actions.

Table 3.5

Excerpt from a lesson summary

Time Transcript/outline

Mr McLaren: Introduction to Differentiation by first principles.

Comments (preliminary coding)

0:30 T: “What do you understand the derivative to be?”

S: Gives the rule for y=x^n (i.e. gives procedure rather than a meaning) T: [Recasts question]: What does the derivative tell us?

S: The gradient at a point. (acknowledged by teacher as correct)

T mentions that looked at limits last lesson

Questioning techniques

Classroom techniques (of a lead-in focus question)

1:55 Emphasises that first principles differentiation is on the exam

Knowledge of Assessment

2:00 Refers to a diagram of an arbitrary function f(x), showing both a secant and a tangent through one particular point. Starts to label all the key points P (x, f(x)) and Q (x+h, f(x+h)) with discussion of the second point being h further along the x axis.

Knowledge of the standard diagram and explanation of first principles derivative

The preparation of the lesson summaries involved some initial descriptive coding as indicated in Table 3.5. According to Miles and Huberman (1994) early labels in the form of descriptive codes, which require little inference beyond the data itself, are particularly useful in “getting the analysis started, and in enabling the researcher to get a ‘feel’ for the data” (p. 176).

In relation to the interpretation of the video footage it is useful to draw upon Rowland’s (2008) assertion that every “human account of events is an interpretation of the messenger/teller’s experience” and that no “objective” account of a lesson can be written (p. 279). Therefore, to check for consistency of interpretation, video footage from at least one lesson per teacher was viewed independently by the researcher and at least one of her supervisors. The extent to which similar incidents

(e.g., choice of particular example, acknowledgement) in the lesson were noticed by the researcher and her supervisor, were also of interest. There was general agreement in what was identified as PCK. Most discrepancies involved one viewer noticing one aspect that the other had not seen, rather than disagreeing on the category of PCK. In some cases, this was because it was possible to look at the teaching with different levels of “graininess”. Given that the study was not attempting to quantify the occurrences of different PCK types, the researcher identified the most obvious examples rather than attempting to identify every micro-occurrence.

Transcribing Teacher Interview and Student Post-Lesson Interviews

As soon as possible after each lesson observation, the corresponding post- lesson teacher interview and student focus-group interview were transcribed verbatim for coding and analysis. The interviews and short written reflections were transcribed in full for the close examination and interpretation of evidence of PCK from the perspectives of the teachers and students.

The act of transcribing the data also afforded the opportunity to make initial connections between evidence of PCK observed by the researcher from the classroom observations and that discussed by the teachers and students.