Qualitative Inquiry in the Field of Language Education

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Qualitative Inquiry in the Field of Language
Education

• Dr. Fengmin Wang
• Institute of Applied English
• National Taiwan Ocean University

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Problems in Naming the Research That We Do
(Miller, Nelson, Moore, 1998 )

• Qualitative/quantitative might better confined to
  discussions of methods.
• The term postpositivist may better represent the
  stance of these researchers mixing qualitative
  and quantitative research strategies.
• Constructivist or interpretivist better captures
  epistemological concerns.
• We prefer use positivist or logical positivist to
  describe the assumptions of the paradigm.

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Methods of Qualitative Research

• --how x plays a role in causing y, what the
• process is that connects x and y
• --research design a reflexive process,
• multiple cycles, varying order in which
  the
• different tasks or components must be
• arranged, not prescriptive,
  design-in-use
• (Kaplan, 1964), emic points of view,
• decentered perspectives, interpretive
• analyses

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The Nature of Qualitative Inquiry

• characteristics
• Bogdan, R. C. Biklen S. K. (1998)
• Lichtman, M. (2006)
• Maxwell (2005)

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Issues of theory-method relationship

• What do we observe? How do we observe? How do we
  interpret it? Why is one procedure selected for
  use by researchers over other procedures?
• The choice of validity procedures is governed by
  two perspectives the lens
• researchers choose to validate their studies
  and researchers paradigm
• assumptions (Creswell Miller, 2000).

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Research Terms (Richards, 2003)

• Paradigm representative of a set of basic
  beliefs (worldviews)
• e.g. constructivism
• Tradition a historically situated approach to
  research covering generally recognized territory
  and employing a generally accepted set of
  research methods
• e.g., ethnography
• Method a means of gathering, analyzing and
  interpreting data using generally recognized
  procedures
• e.g., interviewing
• Methodology a theoretically grounded position
  that the researcher takes up with regard to the
  research methods that will be used
• Technique a specific procedure for obtaining
  information informed by the research methodology
  employed
• e.g., asking open-ended questions

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Tradition Paradigmatic Choices

• Seven core traditions (Richards, 2003)
• ethnography
• grounded theory
• phenomenology
• case study
• life history
• action research
• conversation analysis

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Tradition Paradigmatic Choices

• Paradigms
• (post-)positivism
• constructivism(constructionism,
• interpretivism, naturalism)
• critical theory
• poststructualism

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New trends

• an increased inclusivity both
• philosophically and methodologically
• to new ways of knowing and
• thinking about teaching and
• learning and about the contexts in
• which they occur
• the shift from single to multiple
• research paradigms

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Building a framework Logic of Inquiry

• Theoretical orientation/Employing theoretical
  lenses to frame a study
• --position, constructing the logic of
• inquiry
• 2. Research goals, questions, methods
  techniques

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Positions/Theoretical Languages

• A set of substantive assumptions (i.e.,
  ontological, epistemological and methodological)
  informing us what to see, how we see, and how we
  know
• Theoretical commitments with conventionalized
  ways of describing, knowing, and justifying
• --taken together these form a particular language
  that guides the approach to data collection,
  interpretation, and representation. A theoretical
  language allows researchers to conceptualize and
  talk about certain phenomena to ask and answer
  particular questions and thus to construct
  particular claims based on their data.

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The roles of the governing assumptions by Kenneth
Strike(1989)

• They enable us to distinguish relevant from
  irrelevant phenomena, inform us as to what
  phenomena is expected to deal with, what sorts of
  questions are appropriate to ask about them.
• They tell us what is to count as a well-formed or
  appropriate account of phenomena. Some proposed
  accounts

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• will be excluded at the outset because they are
  not properly structured or because they do not
  fulfill the conception of a proper account within
  the field.
• They provide the standards of judgment that we
  use to evaluate proposed accounts, and they tell
  us what is to count as evidence for proposed
  accounts.

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• They provide the context in which theoretical and
  empirical terms are defined.
• They provide the perceptual categories by means
  of which the world is experienced.
• They specify the problems that require solution.

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• They provide the standards of judgment that we
  use to evaluate proposed accounts, and tell us
  what is to count as evidence for proposed
  accounts.
• They provide the context in which theoretical and
  empirical terms are defined.

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• They provide the perceptual categories by means
  of which the world is experienced.
• They specify the problems that require solution.

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Conceptual Framework of Your Study

• The system of concepts, assumptions,
  expectations, beliefs, theories that supports and
  informs your research a key part of your
  research design
• (the lens used by the researchers,
• researchers paradigm assumptions)

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My interest The study of linguistic phenomena in
school settings

• -- interested in language use/discoursethrough
  them we can gain insight into the social
  events/practices of the classroom and thereby
  into the understandings of what counts as
  learning, the actual (as opposed to the intended)
  curriculum, the meanings enacted or realized by a
  particular teacher and class.

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Research Examples

• Constructing and Taking up Communicative
  Repertoires in order to Learn Language An
  Interactional Ethnographic Study of Opportunities
  for Learning Language in a Second-Grade Classroom
• --Shopping center Project
• --Poetry Project

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Premises to Guide Observations and Analysis

• Language as outcome of interactions
• An individuals cultural assumptions about ways
  of using language are shaped by the community of
  language users in which the individual lives
  (Bloome, 1986Moll, 1990).
• What members in a conversation deal with is
  different worlds of meaning, not merely
  vocabulary and grammar (Bakhtin, 1981 Agar,
  1993) there are meanings beyond grammar and
  vocabulary, meanings that tell us who we are,
  with whom we are dealing, the kind of situation
  we are, how life works, and what is important in
  it (agar, 1993).

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• Language (language use, ways of communicating,
  view of language, and views of language
  learning) is shaped by social interaction in a
  social group (Bloome, 1986 Ochs, 1979)

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• Learning as a social, dialogic process
• Learning is viewed as a human activity in which
  participants of the classroom construct
  relationships, meanings, and ways of
  communicating that form a particular set of
  communication and literate practices (Kantor,
  Green, Bailey, Lin, 1991Santa Barbara Classroom
  Discourse Group, 1995).

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• Living in a classroom community, members of
  classroom jointly construct and reconstruct
  common knowledge (Edwards Mercer, 1987), and
  patterned ways of living together (Erickson,
  1986 Green, 1983) through discourse and actions
  in everyday classroom life in order to know,
  understand, interpret, perform, and produce to
  participate in socially and culturally
  appropriate ways (Gumperz, 1986 Heath, 1982).

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• Actions and interactions of teacher with a
  student in a particular discursive event were
  shaped by what was constructed in previous
  events, and conceptual understandings shaped in
  and across these events became resources for this
  student in subsequent events (Putney, Green,
  Dixon, Yeager, 2000).

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• Learning opportunities
• Interactions provide particular opportunities for
  students and the childs interpretation and
  take-up of the sociocultural resources
  constructed in and through the social
  interactions are consequential (Putney et al.,
  2000Souza Lima, 1995 Wertsch, 1981)
• In every classroom, the ways teachers engage
  students in the classroom activities and the
  patterns of interaction constructed within the
  classroom shape particular types of opportunities
  for learning in which individuals develop
  particular ways of using language and
  communicating, values of using language in those
  ways, and thus a view of language in that
  classroom (Castanheira, 2000Ernst Richard,
  1995 Floriani, 1993 Lin, 1994).

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• Living in particular classrooms leads to
  particular
• ways of communicating (e.g., talking,
  using language,
• 
  reading, writing, drawing, etc.)
• ways of being (e.g., students, teachers,
  etc.)
• ways of doing (e.g., interpreting text,
  working in a group,
• asking and answering
  questions, writing
• a report, presenting
  evidence, etc.)
• ways of knowing (e.g., what to do, how to
  do it, what is
• constructed as
  content, etc.)
• and thus to particular opportunities for
  learning constructed by members through their
  joint actions. (Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse
  Group, 1998)

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• These discourse processes and practices (oral,
  aural, visual and written) serve as cultural
  resources which members drawn on to guide their
  construction of events and cycles of activity
  that constitute everyday life within time and
  space, and over times and spaces. (Santa Barbara
  Classroom Discourse Group, 1998)

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• These opportunities for learning result in the
  construction of particular cultural resources by
  the collective that are available to be taken up
  and transformed by individuals as opportunities
  to learn. (Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse
  Group, 1998)

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• The ways teacher engage students in the classroom
  activities and patterns of interaction
  constructed within them shape particular types of
  opportunities for learning in which individuals
  develop particular ways of using language and
  communicating, values of using language in those
  ways.

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• Learning opportunities result from interactions
  among the participants in that particular
  classroom.
• A communicative process is not solely related to
  a persons ability to use language but how human
  collaboratively construct or negotiate their
  world.

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Lenses chose for this study

• The perspectives of sociocultural theories
• The perspectives of linguistic anthropology
• The perspectives of ethnography of communication
  about the nature of language, learners, and
  learning in classrooms
• Views
• Constructing classroom communicative repertoires
• Constructing opportunities for language learning

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Views to generate research goal/arching questions

• How do students learn English in this classroom?
• What communicative repertoires are constructed?
• What opportunities for language learning are
  constructed?
• Open-minded ? empty-minded

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Research Process

• Gaining Access Oct.98
• Re-Entry Jan.99
• Participant Observation Jan.Jun. 99
• A Cycle of Analytic Process
• posing questions
• constructing data
• analyzing data
• Writing up Findings
  

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Research Site and Participants

• School Site
• The ethnic population of the school and the class
• The classroom teacher
• Researchers Roles

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The Ethnic Population

• School Site Classroom
• Total Students 448 Total Students 19
• Ethnicity Percentage Ethnicity Person
  Percentage
• White 67 White 12
  63
• Hispanic 23 Hispanic 6
  32
• Asian 9 Asian 1
  5
• Black 1 Black 0
  0

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Participant Observation(Spradely, 1980)

• Intensive Observation (6 hrs per day)
• 1/6/99-1/21/99 (Total 66 hrs)
• Focused Observation (at least 10 hrs per week)
• 1/22/99-6/10/99 (Total 172 hrs)
• Data set
• fieldnotes, artifacts, video recordings,
  audio recordings

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Posing Questions

• 1. What are the recurrent events for learning to
  be literate in this classroom?
• 1.1. How do I view literacy events?
  (Defining literacy events)
• ? Events can be further defined as literacy
  events when the focus of study is literacy
  (Heath, 1983).
• ? These literacy events can be studied by
  looking at literacy practices which are common
  patterns of using reading and writing in
  particular situations (Barton, 1994).

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Constructing and Analyzing Data

• First level of Structuration Maps
• 1.Daily Event Maps
• 2.Weekly Maps
• 3.Monthly Maps
• from running records

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Taxonomy of Recurrent Literate Events

• X
  is Y
• Daily Language Activity
• Anthology Reading
• Read Aloud
• Magazine Reading
• Shopping Center Project a kind of
  literate event.
• Silent Reading
• Writing A Letter
• Sketch Journal
• Making Calendar Items

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Posing Questions

• 2. What were the historically created
  opportunities for learning language afforded
  students and for what purposes?
• selecting a cycle for in-depth analysis
• Shopping Center Project

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Constructing and Analyzing Data of Shopping
Center Project

• What happened in this cycle of activity? (history
  phases)
• Mapping the timeline based on the running
  records
• Identifying the subevents and what they did based
  on the running records

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• 2. How did the teacher and students construct the
  cycle of activity?
• Transcriptions (1) (2) (3) (4)
• Identifying patterns of practice based on
  discourse transcriptions
• --social demands (space, groups, ways of
  participating)
• --academic demands
• Analyzing the teachers and students roles and
  strategies based on their use of language in the
  construction of the cycle of activity

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• 3. What opportunities for language learning were
  constructed by members through their joint
  actions?
• Progression of opportunities for learning
  constructed

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• 4. What and how did the cultural resources were
  constructed by the collective available to be
  taken up?
• selecting the advertising event
• --mapping intertextual ties of advertising
  
• previous events
• --transcribing students first performance
  of
• advertisements, group discussion of the
  first
• performance, the second performance
• --examining students texts tracing the
  roots of
• the knowledge/referents from relevant
  texts
• constructed in the previous context
  within the
• cycle

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• 5. How did the individual students take up the
  cultural resources to learn?

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Discussion

• The students were provided a wide range of
  opportunities to learn language through a series
  of intercontextual events.
• Practices were organized in consequential
  progressions in which the previous event served
  as a means of establishing and maintaining a
  common focus or referent and became resources for
  the students to draw on to construct the
  subsequent event.

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• Text, context, and meaning constructed in each
  phase or practice were not isolated or given
  entities, but among participants for the
  subsequent construction.
• The way of their doing the lessons and the
  meaning constructed across practices jointly
  create an inquiry approach, in which a particular
  type of interpretation, stance, action,
  communicative repertoire, ideology, emotion, or
  other culturally meaningful reality were
  developed.

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Ethnographic Methods Analytical Strategies

• How can tools of ethnography make visible the
  many patterns of classroom life patterns?
• Note taking and note making
• structuration mapping
• domain analysis
• tracer units
• discourse analysis

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What is culture?

• Culture, as a shared system of meanings, is
• learned, revised, maintained, and defined in
• the context of people interacting (Spradely,
  1980).
• what people do (cultural behavior)
• what people know (cultural knowledge)
• the things people make and use (artifacts)

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Strategies for Participant Observation

• The purpose of the observation influences what is
  observed, how it is observed, who gets observed,
  when observation takes place, where it takes
  place, how it is recorded, what is recorded, how
  data are analyzed and how data are used.

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Basic observation questions

• Who are the members?
• What history have the members constructed
  together?
• What cycles of activity have the members
  constructed?
• What language do the members use to interact?

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Basic observation questions

• Who can do and say what, to or with whom, under
  what conditions, for what purpose, when and
  where, with what outcome? (In what ways are
  members participating in these events?)
• How do the members know how to participate
  appropriately?

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Basic observation questions

• What are the requirements for participating from
  insiders perspective? (e.g., academic/instruction
  al, social, and conversational or communicative
  requirements)
• What roles and relationships are constructed in a
  cycle of activity? Are they visible among the
  members?

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Basic observation questions

• What does it mean to be a member?
• What knowledge is constructed? What counts as
  academic and social knowledge?
• Who has access to these practices? Are they
  visible and accessible to all students? If not,
  to whom are they visible and accessible?

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Basic observation questions

• How can ethnographers develop his ways of knowing
  and doing in the field?
• situated meanings and cultural
• models
• intercontextuality (Floriani, 1993)
• intertextuality(Bloome, 1989
• Bloome Egan-Robertson, 1993)

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• Ethnographers constantly make cultural inferences
  from what people say, from the way they act, and
  from the artifacts they use. Then compare and
  contrast it with others.
• At first, each cultural inference is only a
  hypothesis about what people know. These
  hypotheses must be tested over and over again
  until the ethnographer becomes relatively certain
  that people share a particular system of cultural
  meanings.

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• Example flamecrash