An eventual research design

Confined. [Online Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.claudiam.com/images/Confined.jpg.

Here I am three months after the last post in this research blog with mixed feelings. I had not been able to restart my data analysis due to external issues and the pressure this delay and the consequences it would bring were overwhelming. Besides, on one of those occasions in which I tried to retake the study, I went back to the data collected and I noticed the learners had not handed in all the additional tasks assigned (e.g. PowerPoint presentations, additional guides), and a careful analysis of the guides and writing tasks collected showed their performance along the process had not been as positive as I had initially considered. Something even more worrying: the information collected in this blog had been more anecdotic than research-related and it did not help much compensate or provide validity to the information I had. As a result I had decided to give up, abandon the project and give myself a second chance in the action research adventure with lighter perspectives in the future.

However, a friendly conversation helped me realise that a real study, in real contexts, with real people is prone to this kind of mismatches between planning and implementation and the value of the research study could be in making sense of the information I saw insufficient. Then, I decided to go back to the data and, having left the study at rest helped me approach things from a different, more relaxed perspective. The first step then, was to identify which research design would fit the general profile of the implementation, and I found the concept of case study appropriate: “an intensive study of the background, current status and environmental interactions of a given social unit: an individual, a group, an institution, or a community” (Brown and Rodgers, 2002, p. 21).


The lighthouse

Case study research book cover. [Online Image]. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/design-books/47-2.jpg.

Doing some further research in the field of case study, I found the view of Stake (2000) of case study as “an overall strategy rather than a genre of research” (as cited in Rossman and Rallis, 2003, p. 104) very useful for a novice researcher like myself because it allowed the implementation of principles instead of step-by-step procedures which might fail to fit the gaps I had identified in the data collected. I was then lucky to find an expert in case study research and implementation: Robert K. Yin, who had written several books on its principles, components of research design and approaches to data analysis. He had identified the following matrix for the taxonomy of case study, and it helped me identify a more accurate approach to the specific case I wanted to analyse:

I could then label my study as exploratory single-case study because it is “aimed at defining the questions and hypothesis of a subsequent study (not necessarily a case study) or at determining the feasability of the desired research procedures”. (Yin, 2003a, p.5). Then Yin (2003b) outlined the components of the case study research design and it was my duty to turn them into concrete items for analysis; they were:

1. A study’s questions

2. Its propositions (if any)

3. Its unit(s) of analysis

4. The logic linking the data to the proposition

5. The criteria for interpreting the findings. (Yin, 2003b, p.21)

These components were then identified as follows for this specific study:

1. The study’s main question: What are the effects of attempting an 8LEM-framed process-writing strategy on two graduate learners’ quality of argumentative essays and on their level of active participation in their language learning process? Based on the elaboration Creswell (2007) does of the kinds of subquestions devised by Stake (1995), the following subquestions were developed:

Issue subquestions

• What does the 8LEM explicitly involve in terms of language teaching?

• Which of the 8LEM roles appear to be predominant in this context? Why? How can it be proven?

• What happens if any of the roles is not performed entirely?

Procedural subquestions

• How can process-writing exercises be integrated into the 8LEM?

• Which strategy(ies) can be used to measure essay quality?

2. Its propositions:

- The principles of the 8LEM model, which had been originally designed as a framing strategy for online environments, could be transferred to language teaching modules, taking advantage of the roles and interaction proposed.

- The interaction involved in process writing seems an appropriate companion for this 8LEM attempt.

- The creation of argumentative essays involves a great deal of personalisation, which fosters the development of critical thinking skills and engages learners in lifelong learning processes.

3. Its unit(s) of analysis: established on the basis of three observable elements, which constituted the data collection methods in themselves, as will be shown in detail in the following paragraphs. The first two had to do with the degree of active involvement of the learners in every module and in each one of the writing tasks, and the last one attempted to analyse the quality of the essays written through a variety of tools designed to identify the degree of complexity of a written text. The units of analysis were the positive 8LEM role match, the accomplishment of the process writing cycles and an analysis of the changes observed from the application of three different readability formulas to the essays written by the learners along the modules.

The fourth and fifth components of the case study research design, i.e. linking data to propositions and criteria for interpreting the findings are actually hard to pinpoint, according to Yin (2003b): “these components foreshadow the data analysis steps in case study research, and a research design should lay a solid foundation for this analysis” (p. 26). In this specific case, the trends identified in positive role match, and in the accomplishment of the process writing cycles were then contrasted to the propositions and justified in the additional data collected.

References

Brown, J. D. & Rodgers, T. (2002). Doing second language research: Oxford handbooks for language teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Rossman, G. R. & Rallis, S. F. (2003). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Yin, R. K. (2003a). Applications of case study research: Design and methods (3rd. ed.) – Applied social research method series, Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Yin, R. K. (2003b). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd. ed.) – Applied social research method series, Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, In