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Research Methods in Language Teaching and Learning


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be woven into the writing, which I supplied. I subsequently engaged in “member checking” (Stake, 1995), sharing drafts with research participants, achieving, through this process, a degree of pragmatic and communicative validation (Kvale, 1996). For example, in one case, not only could the research participant

      confirm that the story was accurate, but in the way he engaged with it he assumed a kind of ownership for it. He developed, too, not just his understanding of research as he discussed the text with me, but the member checking process also seemed to heighten his awareness of his own development.(Wyatt, 2008, p. 67).

      However, a methodological limitation was that I was unable to conduct meetings for the purpose of “member checking” with all the research participants; the schools were closed in July 2006 when I was doing this, and for cultural reasons I could not have met the female research participants in other locations. They were nevertheless sent drafts, with invitations for written comments, and I received some feedback.

       The Findings of the Study and How These Findings Have Been Shared

      The strategies I adopted in disseminating my original work (Wyatt, 2008) may provide insights not only into what I learned from it, but also my perceptions of how I needed to negotiate the quantitatively oriented research environment that surrounded TSE beliefs. In fact, I felt that two of the five cases were of teachers who overcame some initial self-doubt (Wheatley, 2002), but who were largely efficacious, in developing materials to enhance motivation (Wyatt, 2011a) and in supporting the development of reflective practice through mentoring (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012) respectively; the articles written about these two teachers were consequently focused primarily on their developing practical knowledge in these areas.

      However, from other teachers in the collective case study, I gained deep insights into TSE beliefs, which shaped articles I subsequently developed. Wyatt (2010b), for example, explored a teacher’s TSE beliefs for supporting low achievers in group work activities in relation to dimensions of practical knowledge, using a framework based on Elbaz (1981), which included practical knowledge for learners and learning, the curriculum, teaching techniques, the self and the school context. In this study (Wyatt, 2010b), the teacher’s practical knowledge growth appeared uneven, but so did his TSE beliefs, and a good degree of fit between the two was identified. For example, on the positive side, he seemed to develop practical knowledge for learners and learning through experimenting with forms of group organization and analyzing learning outcomes, and also reported enhanced TSE beliefs in these areas. And yet some of his teaching techniques were less developed, for example, when organizing reading races in groups, and he also reported feeling inefficacious in relation to such tasks. My interpretations here, with the implications for teacher education they carried, were based on “data source” and “methodological” triangulation (Stake, 1995), drawing on observations, interviews, and analysis of reflective writing produced over time; the findings provided evidence that there is a need to study TSE beliefs in relation to practical knowledge.

      I developed these two case studies (Wyatt, 2010b, 2013a) before producing more theoretical articles from the original thesis (Wyatt, 2008) – for example, Wyatt (2014), which highlighted problems with much of the quantitative research to date – as I could then use these cases to illustrate theoretical arguments. The case study work also led into further data analysis in Wyatt (2015), which presented data relating to apparent lack of fit between practical knowledge and TSE beliefs; one teacher seemed over-efficacious in supporting reading skills development, while another seemed to unnecessarily doubt her capabilities to use communicative tasks to help her learners to develop speaking skills (Wyatt, 2015). Implications for in-service teacher education were raised. The final article from my thesis presented a conceptual model illustrating how TSE beliefs might develop (Wyatt, 2016).

      While, to a certain extent, I managed to disseminate the results from my original thesis (Wyatt, 2008) quite effectively, the process was not without challenges and rejections, which invariably followed reviews that were mixed, for instance when one or two reviewers were in favor and another was against. Peer reviewers in the quantitative tradition sometimes strongly objected to my (occasionally fierce) criticisms of the field of research into TSE beliefs. One hostile review, for example, included the following:

      The assumptions throughout pp. 1-8 are suspect and not well presented either theoretically, empirically, or practically. The author assumes there are connections between the issues selected but does not carefully and cautiously consider the confounding variables that undergird the various issues(anonymous review).

      Occasionally, reviewers dismissed the relevance of observation to the study of TSE beliefs or seemed to be demanding a narrower “psychological lens” (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) that did not allow perspectives from related fields, such as language teacher cognition (Borg, 2006), or consideration of related constructs, such as mindset theory (Dweck, 2000). The paradigm wars (Gage, 1989) may largely be over, but not entirely perhaps in all research areas traditionally dominated by quantitative research methodology, such as TSE beliefs.

      Conclusions

       Methodological Issues