As displayed in Table 3.2, observation and questionnaire data revealed several problems that participants encountered in the class. These findings informed the designs of our research interventions in Stage 2. We developed the theory based on the findings of the final questionnaire, which revealed positive outcomes of student-negotiated speaking classes. These data led to developing an assumption regarding the role of student negotiation in EFL speaking classes, which was that it increases student engagement in speaking activities by means of fostering positive affective states such as motivation, perceived speaking competence, perceived speaking fluency, willingness to communicate and self-esteem. This hypothesis was the outcome of grounded theory.
Moving Towards Implementing Grounded Theory
In qualitative research studies, the subjective involvement of researchers is acknowledged, because they are seen as a natural part of research. They make important decisions and interpretations throughout the research and these are inevitably informed by their subjective viewpoints. This is considered to be a strength of qualitative research. However, with regard to data analysis, relying on researchers’ subjective intuition is questionable, because this might lead to making wrong interpretations. Miles and Huberman (1994) do not consider this to be a strength of qualitative research and assert that qualitative data analysis should be systematic and methodology-driven.
One of the significant methodologies for qualitative research is grounded theory. Strauss and Corbin (1998) describe grounded theory as a “general methodology for developing theory that is grounded in data systematically gathered and analyzed” (p. 158). It proposes carefully planned steps of developing a theory (Crotty, 1998), and hence, it is “a systematic process of developing a theoretical hypothesis from descriptive data” (Perry, 2005, p. 75).
Glaser (2007) posits that grounded theory is used interchangeably with qualitative content analysis in many research studies. However, grounded theory is more than just qualitative analysis. Glaser and Holton (2004) identified several differences between grounded theory and qualitative descriptive analysis in a detailed way. Accordingly, grounded theory analysis is not descriptive: it does not yield an in-depth understanding of the phenomena but “produces a substantive, conceptual theory with general implications” (p. xx). This allows the researcher to bridge the gap between theory and practice, because relationships between concepts of data are identified without any preconceived categories or codes (Grix, 2004). As a result, from a grounded theory perspective, qualitative data is not seen as an objective that researchers want to achieve to understand a situation, but rather as evidence which leads researchers to generate a theory.
In the literature, there are different methodological alternatives that guide researchers in implementing grounded theory. Considering that qualitative research is context-dependent, each research may require following different processes. For that reason, researchers can adapt grounded theory methodologies to their research contexts. The procedures we followed in this research are in line with the essential grounded theory methods proposed by Birks and Mills (2015).
In this research, I coded and categorized the qualitative data to detect important issues relevant to my research questions. The data collection and analysis processes were iterative, in that I analyzed the questionnaire data before conducting follow-up interviews, so that I could ask interviewees to elaborate on some significant data collected through the questionnaires. In addition, I analyzed the data collected from student participants before conducting interviews with the teacher, so that we were able to exchange ideas on the data provided by the students.
I recorded my personal views throughout the research using the field notes that I made during observations. This enabled me to recall issues that I found significant in different phases of the research and to use these to collect further data and generate a theory. With regard to theoretical sampling, I used purposive sampling and collected data from students with different characteristics, so that I could understand the situation from varied points of view. Throughout the study, I constantly compared different types of data (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) collected through different data collection methods (i.e., observation, interview, and questionnaire). This allowed me to check whether these findings confirmed each other and to identify core categories and sub-categories.
Regarding theoretical sensitivity, I used my knowledge of student negotiation and my memos. This was also useful for generating a further understanding of the categories that emerged from the data. In intermediate coding, I attempted to make connections between categories. For example, participants reported that they learned how to use circumlocution as a communication strategy. This category was then linked with “fluency”, because later on participants reported that using circumlocution helped them speak more fluently. These processes led to the identification of a core category, which was increased classroom participation. In explaining our core category, increased classroom participation, we referred to relevant categories and the literature based on these categories. These procedures enabled me to generate theoretical hypotheses.
The Findings of the Study and How These Findings Have Been Shared
This study revealed some innovative findings by shedding light on an unexplored area – the outcomes of implementing student negotiation in EFL speaking classes. This gap in the literature allowed me to follow grounded theory to generate hypotheses based on the data. Despite the lack of evidence on student-negotiated speaking classes, the existing literature provides ample insight into the factors influencing the effectiveness of these classes. It is agreed that student engagement is very important and students’ attitudes and perceived speaking abilities are among factors that determine whether students will be engaged in an activity or not. We referred to these assumptions in generating our hypotheses. One of the hypotheses was that student negotiation increases student engagement in speaking activities. The findings showed that negotiating the course content with students led to the development of more positive attitudes towards speaking, perceived speaking ability, and greater willingness to communicate. Considering these, it is clear that the hypotheses were generated based on the data, but we addressed the existing literature in identifying important findings that contribute to our knowledge.
To increase the possible contribution of this study to the ELT field, my doctoral supervisors and I hoped to publish articles in well-known journals, so that the results of our research would be available to many readers. However, it was difficult to report all stages of the study in one article. Therefore, we decided to write two articles – one focusing on Stage 2 and the other focusing on Stages 1 and 3. While the former addressed the findings of the research interventions, the latter presented the findings of the data collected before and after these interventions. In the first article (see Uztosun et al., 2014), we described the processes of eight weekly-based interventions, in which student negotiation was implemented, and reported structural