A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

5.2.3 Preliminary Field Work and Access to Schools

As prescriptive rules are not always very useful in gaining access to case study
schools (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1991), telephone calls were made, followed
by visits to schools where the purpose of the study and the proposed method of
data collection were discussed and agreement obtained. Both schools were
very open, keen to take part in the study and hoping to benefit from the
experience. It was agreed between all partners that confidentiality would be
respected. No schools or teachers will therefore be explicitly named and
children will only be referred to by their first names.

5.3 Lesson Observations

Participant observation, mixed with various degrees of involvement in the
activities ofthe classroom and sometimes working alongside individual children,
seemed the most natural way to proceed in the primary classroom. During
largely teacher directed lessons it is difficult to know what goes on in children's
minds. Working closely alongside children over a number of lessons, however,
would provide an opportunity to obtain data which otherwise might be difficult to
collect. Working with children on an individual basis would allow for a more
detailed gathering of information on both verbal and non-verbal responses from
children and enable the researcher to check what individual children had
understood, for example. Ephemeral or unpredictable responses, responses
such as ducking to avoid the teacher's question, asking a peer or the
researcher about an adequate response would be more problematic to record if
the class as a whole would be observed at all times. Participant observation

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