Qualitative Inquiry in the Field of Language Education Dr. Fengmin Wang Institute of Applied English National Taiwan Ocean University.

Qualitative Inquiry in the Field of Language Education

Dr. Fengmin WangInstitute of Applied English

National Taiwan Ocean University

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 th

e 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.

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

The Nature of Qualitative Inquiry

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

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).

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

Tradition & Paradigmatic Choices Seven core traditions: (Richards, 2003) ethnography grounded theory phenomenology case study life history action research conversation analysis

Tradition & Paradigmatic Choices

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

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

Building a framework: Logic of Inquiry

1. Theoretical orientation/Employing theoretical lenses to frame a study

--position, constructing the logic of inquiry

2. Research goals, questions, methods & techniques

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

They provide the perceptual categories by means of which the world is experienced.

They specify the problems that require solution.

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

”)

My interest: The study of linguistic phenomena in school settings

-- interested in language use/discourse…through 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.

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

Premises to Guide Observations and Analysis

Language as outcome of interactions: An individual’s cultural assumptions about ways of using

language are shaped by the community of language users in which the individual lives (Bloome, 1986;Moll, 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).

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)

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).

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).

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).

Learning opportunities: Interactions provide particular opportunities for students and

the child’s interpretation and take-up of the sociocultural resources constructed in and through the social interactions are consequential (Putney et al., 2000;Souza 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, 2000;Ernst &Richard, 1995; Floriani, 1993; Lin, 1994).

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)

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)

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)

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.

Learning opportunities result from interactions among the participants in that particular classroom.

A communicative process is not solely related to a person’s ability to use language but how human collaboratively construct or negotiate their world.

Lenses chose for this study The perspectives of sociocultural theories The perspectives of linguistic anthropology The perspectives of ethnography of communicati

on about the nature of language, learners, and learning in classrooms

Views: Constructing classroom communicative rep

ertoires Constructing opportunities for language lear

ning

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

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

Research Site and Participants School Site The ethnic population of the school and t

he class The classroom teacher Researcher’s Roles

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

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

Posing Questions 1. What are the recurrent events for learn

ing to be literate in this classroom? 1.1. How do I view literacy events? (Defining literacy e

vents) 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 liter

acy practices which are common patterns of using reading and writing in particular situations (Barton, 1994).

Constructing and Analyzing Data

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

Taxonomy of Recurrent Literate Events

X is YDaily Language ActivityAnthology ReadingRead AloudMagazine Reading

Shopping Center Project a kind of literate event.Silent Reading Writing A LetterSketch JournalMaking Calendar Items

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

Constructing and Analyzing Data of Shopping Center Project

1. 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

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 teacher’s and students’ roles and

strategies based on their use of language in the construction of the cycle of activity

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

Progression of opportunities for learning constructed

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

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

Discussion The students were provided a wide range of opport

unities 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.

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.

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

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)

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.

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?

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?

Basic observation questions What are the requirements for

participating from insider’s perspective? (e.g., academic/instructional, social, and conversational or communicative requirements)

What roles and relationships are constructed in a cycle of activity? Are they visible among the members?

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?

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)

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.

Example: flamecrash