68 As can be seen in Chart 1, the first step in the case selection processes was contact the
potential participants to gauge their willingness to participate in the study. Participants were contacted by email and by Facebook. All ten contacted teachers agreed to
participate in this study. The next step was to obtain approval for the study from the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee HREC and Human Research Ethics
Advisory HREA. This approval was required in order to recruit, interview, and observe teachers. The process to gain approval involved contacting the Rector of KUM
to obtain a letter of support given the university was the work setting of the research participants. The letter of support from the rector of KUM is included as Appendix B.
When approval was obtained, the first phase of the data collection process was initiated specific details of the data collection procedures are discussed in Subsection 3.3.2 of
this chapter. The next step involved the selection of the three case study teachers and the initiation of the second round of data collection. The second data collection phase
was completed three-and-a-half months after the first data collection phase.
3.3.2 Data collection process
The entire data collection process including the first and second data collection phases is illustrated in Chart 3 below. The step in the first data collection phase are
numbered one to five and the steps in the second data collection phase are numbered six to nine.
Chart 3: Overview of data collection process
Step1.Conduc3ngan ini3almee3ngwith
thepar3cipants Step2.Interviewing
thepar3cipants Step3.Doing
classroomobserva3on Step4.Conduc3nga
seriesofteacherselfJ evalua3onac3vi3es
Step5.Interviewing thepar3cipants
Step6.Selec3ngthe threecasestudy
teachers Step7.Conduc3ng
morevideorecording ofteacherslessons
anddirectobserva3on Step8.Conduc3ng
semiJstructuredand unstructured
interviews
Step9.Collec3ng documentarydata
69 The initial step in the first data collection phase involved conducting a meeting with the
ten participants which became nine participants at the end of this phase. The meeting was held during the first week of the study to inform the participants about the aims and
procedures of this study, including the need for participants to conduct a series of teacher self-evaluation activities. The meeting was conducted at the university meeting
room and it was also used to introduce the notion of self-evaluation to the participants and to answer their questions about the research. In addition, informed consent forms
were discussed and signed by the research participants. Furthermore, timelines for the interviews were discussed as well as other activities lesson video recordings,
participation in collegial dialogues, and my observations of classroom practices included as part of this study.
The second step involved conducting the first semi-structured interview with the participants. This interview had a biographical focus and aimed to gather background
information on the participants’ historical life experiences including their family, educational background, and teaching experiences, and activities to improve their
professional practice. Interviews were conducted during the second week of October, 2011 and were recorded in support of Seidman’s 2006, p. 114 view that “the primary
method of creating text from interviews is to tape-record the interviews and to transcribe them”.
The third step in the data collection process was the first observation of each participant’s lesson. The observations focused on the teachers’ instructional practices
including the way they taught, talked to or interacted with the students, as well as the way in which they managed the class prior to their engagement in a series of teacher
self-evaluation activities. Participants then engaged in these activities as the fourth step in the data collection process, which is discussed in detail in the next subsection of this
chapter. The fifth step was to conduct the second interview of participants following their participation in the teacher self-evaluation activities.
The sixth step in the data collection process marked the commencement of the second phase. At this point the three case study teachers were selected from the nine
participants in the study. The procedure for selecting the case teachers was outlined in Subsection 3.3.1.2. As part of step seven of the process, the three case study teachers
were invited to video record their teaching practices during a lesson so that they could later reflect upon their practices in a series of teacher self-evaluation activities. I also
observed the lessons and observation notes were recorded.
70 The eighth step in the process was to conduct unstructured interviews with the
three case study teachers, in addition to semi-structured interviews with the university managers, other lecturers, and students. As noted in Section 3.2.4.1, the final interviews
were conducted to primarily to obtain comments, ideas, and feedback from the participants regarding the teacher self-evaluation activities and their thoughts about
making changes in their teaching practices. Furthermore, unstructured interviews were conducted with the three case study teachers, which included questionings about the
observed lesson, or other matters to emerge from analyse of the video recorded lessons. The semi-structured interviews with the university managers, other English lecturers,
and students were conducted to gather information about their beliefs and perspectives
of teaching and learning as well as the research setting . Finally, documentary data from
university managers, the head of English, and the university staff at KUM was collected as complimentary data for the interpretation of results. The next subsection describes
the process involved in implementing the series of teacher self-evaluation activities in this study.
3.3.3 Teacher self-evaluation activity
