interviews and, to my mind interviewing was not the best tool for me to carry out the
present research. This point needs further elaboration (see following section).
Fig. 5.4 summarises the main points of these three different approaches:
|
Van Lier |
Holliday |
Freeman |
|
- emic and holistic principles |
- culture-sensitive |
- reasons above behaviours and |
|
- contextually defined setting |
- sociological imagination |
outcomes (second order) |
|
- observation as research tool |
- ethnographic action research |
- hermeneutic∕interpretative |
|
- discourse analysis as |
- holistic above emic principle |
research |
|
interpretative tool |
- emic stance of researcher |
Fig. 5.4 Three different approaches of ethnographic research in language education
5.2.2 INSIDER TOOLS
At the planning stage of the study in question, I thought that my main tool for
getting data was going to be interviewing. However, as soon as I started to put things in
practice, I realised that I was not dealing with interviews. Actually, on several occasions,
I found myself doing things opposed to what the literature recommends. Often, I had
came across authors saying that interviewers should avoid giving their opinions, should
minimise their influence and should look for distance and objectivity (Fontana and
Frey; 1994,367-9). And often I found myself doing quite the opposite. At that moment I
felt the necessity to find a way to explain the way I was doing research and the reasons
that underlay it.
First of all, I had to remind myself about my stance as an emic ethnographer
carrying out action research. As I stated above, this involves being, part of the research
context, that is, being an insider. With regard to this, I believe that when you are, or
become, an insider, you need to work with the tools that the inner context provides you
with. In the next paragraphs I will explain why I considered that some instruments, like
verbal reports, were useful for my research while others, such as interviews (and
observations, see above) were not.
Let me start with, what I see as a main issue: what are the insider tools a
reseacher can work with? To answer this question, one has to reflect on her role in the
context that is being researched and this allows her to see that the insider tools may vary
from research to research and context to context. Thus, in order to answer this question
for my own research I need to reflect on my job as a SAC counsellor, which is also my
insider role. Taking into account the way I define self-directed learning, I consider that