Mixed Methods: Angewandte Integration qualitativer und quantitativer Methoden in den Sozialwissenschaften GESIS, Mannheim 8. 5. 2014
An Integrated Mixed Methods Research Design:
Example of Project „Power in the Classes Taught by Student Teachers"
Katerina Vlckova
Masaryk University, Faculty of Education Department of Education vlckova@ped.muni.cz
This paper was funded by Czech Science Foundation - Project Nr. GA13-24456S "Power in the classes taught by student teachers".
Aim
To describe in detail how student teachers and their students negotiate, use, and perceive power in Czech lower secondary classes during the student teachers' long term teaching practice.
QL part: To describe power related cultural particularities of the classes (both their tacit and explicit parts) in which student teachers meet with students; 3 aspects of their experience: cultural behaviour, cultural knowledge, and cultural artefacts (Spradley, 1980).
Q.N part: (a) Types of used power, types of compliance gaining behaviour, behaviour alteration techniques, types of disciplinary mechanisms,... (i.e. quantified parameters from video recordings ); (b) Students' reflection of student teacher's power and student teachers 'reflection how they perceive their own power (questionnaires for power bases).
Theoretical framework
Theory of relational power (circularity, reciprocity,..) based on French and Raven (1959) with 5 power bases (expert, referent, legitimate, coercive, reward).
Regulative discourse is dominant to didactic discourse. Didactic aims can be reached only when power relation were set. (Bernstein, 1996)
Novice teachers have problem with setting of power relationship and it is one of the main causes to leave the profession (Ingersoll, 1996; Veenman, 1987).
Research question
How do student teachers and their students negotiate, use, and reflect power in instruction/lessons during the long term teaching practice in Czech lower secondary classes ?
Methods
Research is during the long term teaching practice, i.e. within the duration of one semester during which student teachers meet with students from one class on a regular basis.
Research sample: 8 student teachers of Civics, History, Czech Literature and their students.
Video recordings of 6 lessons + direct observation with researchers'field notes.
Audio recordings of interviews with student teachers after the teaching practice.
Students questionnaire - Czech adaptation of Teacher Power Use Scale -TPUS (Schordt, Witt, & Turman, 2007) to teachers 'power bases, later to student teachers'power bases. CFA in MPIus - coercive and legitimate power constituted one factor.
Student teachers reflective diaries about their teaching practice.
Validity threats
Data collection about power by video taping.
Sensitivisation, Hawthorn effect - as the student teachers know the are in research and they slowly realize its about power bases, they change their teaching behaviour.
We investigate 8 student teachers, in fact they were already teaching, sometimes even in the class.
Non-qualified data collection (8-13 researchers and assistants) - difficult to get complete data.
Effect of the regular teacher of the class => We collected some extra data to be able to compare if there might really be a strong effect that the student teacher has to continue in the teaching style of the usual teacher. The aim of the analysis should be clearer: What is the aim - types of students reaction on different student teachers types based on power bases?
Research questions
1) How does the process of power negotiation between the student teachers and their students occur in Czech secondary schools?
2) How is the process of power negotiation subjectively perceived by student teachers during their long term teaching practice?
3) What power is attributed to student teachers by students during a semester long period?
4) How does the process of socialisation of student teachers into institutional mechanisms that stem from their roles of teachers occur? (In other words, how are they socialised into the social dimension of power?) How do they reflect this process?
5) Which means of exercising power do student teachers incorporate into their teaching styles during their semester long teaching practice? How are the means implemented in their teaching styles? How do student teachers perceive the means of exercising power?
6) Which resistance strategies do students use during the semester? How are these strategies perceived by student teachers?