Gaining Access Participants Research Methodology

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3.4 Gaining Access

To comply with the requirement of conducting research involving humans, the researcher sought ethical approval from the Standing Committee on Ethic in Research involving Human SCERH Monash University and granted the project approval. The ethic committee suggested that the researcher ensure that in collecting the data the research study would not distress, embarrass or create psychological harm to the respondent. After gaining approval from the ethic committee, the researcher still had to seek access to the participants. In doing so, he consulted with the teacher instructors in every district instead of getting names from the district office of the Ministry of National Education. This was handier in terms of avoiding long bureaucratic steps. The only permission sought by the researcher was that of school principals, particularly in relation to the classroom observation and interview with the participants.

3.5 Participants

Data were collected during the period of December 2006 – February 2007 in four districts and one municipality of Yogyakarta province with the target population of Junior Secondary School English teachers in the province. Criteria of sampling picked only teachers that had already attended the Competency-based Integrated Training CBIT conducted by the Ministry of National Education MoNE as the appropriate sample of the research. Data 65 collection was done while teachers were attending the teacher forum meetings in their respective districts and municipality. There were two groups of participants in this research. The first group was one hundred and fifty two English teachers and the second group was four teachers who were members of the first group. Teachers in the first group were those who had been selected on the basis that they had attended the CBIT in 2004 to 2006 and had agreed to participate in this research by signing the consent form and returning the questionnaire. Teachers in the second group were selected based on the teacher instructors‘ nomination. This nomination was based on the teacher instructors‘ evaluation particularly about the English performance of the teachers. The nominated teachers, therefore, formed groups of teachers with high, medium and low English proficiency. The decision of asking for nomination from the teacher instructors was based on the assumption that they knew the teacher participants better due to their duties allow them to have access on the participants, especially in terms of the participant English proficiency.

3.6 Selection criteria and the recruitment of the sample