Methodology Post

Methodology:

In Teaching the Way children Learn (1994 NCREST Columbia) Beverly Falk suggests that teachers should teach in ways that are responsive to the ways children learn.

She feels the role of the teacher in this process should be to give students centre stage in the classroom where they could play an active, inquiring role in their learning. The teacher acts as guide, coach, mentor and advisor.

She terms this conception “constructivist” because it sees learning as a dynamic internal process in which learners actively “construct” knowledge by connecting new information transferred to them from external sources (e.g. the radio programme). The emphasis is on developing the students’ capacity for analysis and problem-solving, rather than on “covering the curriculum.” In this way they become thinkers, creators and problem-solvers. (Falk 1994:3) Constructivist classrooms include students of different ages and abilities and students of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Although the learners in my pilot study groups will be more or less the same age and of the same abilities, they will be of different cultural, linguistic and socio-economic groups and this will also enhance exposure to different perspectives and frames of reference.

Participatory action research has been used, involving spontaneous and scientific concepts, as defined by Buckingham in his chapter Defining Pedagogy (2003:139).  Spontaneous concepts are those developed through the child’s own mental efforts while scientific concepts are influenced by the adult involved.  Conventional methods of surveys, interviews and focus groups have not been chosen and the real classroom situation was simulated as far as possible.  Buckingham warns that the realities of classroom practice are usually more messy and contradictory than the well-ordered educational theory. (2003: 153)

The research was conducted during school hours and in school context to gain data of a qualitative nature during the period allocated for Life Skills in the specific school (13.00 on Thursday 7 April 2011 at Reddam and 11.00 on Monday 18 April at Jan van Riebeeck).  The research was collaborative in that it involved learners, a facilitator and the Children’s Radio Foundation.  It was participatory in that the learners actively used their own mental efforts and the adult involved helped them to link this to scientific concepts of the research process.  Semi-structured questions were posed and more questions flowed spontaneously from the dialogue.  Only process notes were kept for maximum non-intrusiveness and in the case of Reddam, a Dictaphone.  Gender differences have not been investigated.  Investigator responsiveness is (Morse et al. 2002) plays an important role in naturalistic rather than conventional criteria relating to rigour. (Lincoln and Guba 1985, 300).  Only second level coding (pattern coding) between Jan van Riebeeck and Reddam was used since the questions already coded the answers.  The computer programme NVivo was not needed since the data was small enough to handle and words could not be coded – the learners did not repeat the same vocabulary and questions were also answered in Afrikaans.  The naturalistic criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability relating to rigour have been taken into account.

 

Reddam was chosen because it is a private, co-ed urban school with learners from high socio- economic status.  This school was further selected because it has an interesting audience of mostly confident, knowledgeable and eloquent learners who are used to speaking their minds.  The learners attend an English medium school and will have no problem understanding the radio programme.

Jan van Riebeeck represents a co-ed urban government school with learners from different socio-economic backgrounds, including children from the South African Children’s Home.  It is an Afrikaans medium school, which means that the children will have to make sense of a radio text that is not in their home language. (In South Africa where there are 11 official languages, children will necessarily sometimes have to listen to media that is not in their home language.)  I did not map the classroom, since the study does not look at gender differences and the children were more all less the same age.  There was a time restriction and I wanted to keep it as close as possible to a natural classroom situation.  Learners were all given a turn to speak to ensure that answers or suggestions did not only come from a few.   First-time participants were given priority.  After analyses of the transcriptions, themes were identified and coded.

The radio programme selected for this pilot project is a documentary about the young Zimbabwean Jonathan Gala, who left his country in search of a better life in South-Africa.  He tells his own story of endurance, suffering and hope.  Teachers and parents were able to listen to the programme before their children were exposed to it and it was available on the website (http://www.childrensradiofoundation.org) under the heading: “Human Rights – a real-life story”. The story was chosen because it ties in with the Curriculum Statement for Life Orientation on constitutional rights and responsibilities.