Bringing the voices of participants into our research narratives

Marilyn Martin-JonesMOSAIC Centre for Research on

MultilingualismSchool of Education

University of Birmingham, UK

Topics covered in this first session

• The nature and scope of qualitative research on language and/or literacy e.g. ethnographic research

• Ways of building a collaborative, dialogic relationship with the research participants

• An example of an ethnographic project on literacy in a bilingual setting in Wales – designed to bring the voices of the participants into the research narrative.

Researching multilingualism and literacy: qualitative approaches

Qualitative research aims to understand specific cases in depth, rather than to make generalisations

Research approaches include:•Case study research•Ethnography•The study of linguistic landscapes (e.g. public signs, in different languages, in an urban space or in a school)

Doing ethnography

• Providing a detailed description of the language practices (and/or literacy practices) of a particular group of people – studying how people use the languages and literacy resources in their repertoires

• Building an analysis of why their language (or literacy practices) are the way they are

What we can do with ethnography

Ethnography allows us to see how language practices are connected to the very real conditions of people’s lives, to discover how and why language matters to people – in their own terms – and to watch processes unfold over time(Heller, 2008: 250)

Six dimensions of an ethnographic approach

1. Focusing on the uses of language and literacy in real world settings, on real lives and on social processes as they unfold

2. Being holistic – taking account of all possible aspects of a phenomenon

3. Using multiple methods e.g. ethnographic interviews, participant observation and audio-recording of particular events

Six dimensions of an ethnographic approach (cont.)

4. Investment of time – ‘being there’ (Erickson, 1990) for extended periods

5. Building a relationship with the research participants (and being careful about observing research ethics – as in all social research)

6. Aiming to understand participants’ perspectives

‘ETIC’ versus ‘EMIC’ perspectives

• ‘Etic’ perspectives are those of the researcher on starting the research

• ‘Emic’ perspectives are those of the research participants –including their beliefs and values about language and/or literacy

The ethnography of multilingual literacy

The ‘classic’ research methods:

•Semi-structured interviews e.g. about the literacy histories of participants, focusing on how they learned to read and write in different languages

•Observation of current multilingual literacy practices – in different spaces of the participants’ lives - and the writing of field notes

Interactive/dialogic methods that complement the ‘classic’ methods

• Participant literacy diaries and diary-based interviews (Jones et al., 2000)

• Still photography by participants and photo-based interviews (Martin-Jones, 2011)

The value of interactive/dialogic approaches

The use of interactive and non-objectifying methods enables us to gain rather richer insights into subjects’ own understandings of their behaviour, and to engage in dialogue about these understandings. This, we believe, is to our mutual benefit (Cameron et al., 1993).

Ethnography of multilingual literacy in education: the kind of research people do

Examples include:•The ways in which teachers use and talk about texts in the classroom (e.g. primary schools –Da Costa Cabral, 2015; adult literacy classes – Boon, 2013)

•Comparing and contrasting school, college or university literacy practices with students out-of-school literacy practices

Comparing school and out-of-school practices

An example from my own research in a bilingual education setting in the UK•The project•The context•The research questions•The research site•The research participants•The interactive/dialogic data collection methods•The data analysis methods

Bilingual literacies for learning in Further Education

A research project in a bilingual college in Wales, UK

2005-2007

Research Team:

Marilyn Martin-Jones, Roz Ivanic, Daniel Chandler, Buddug Griffith,Beryl Davies, Margaret Lewis, Anwen Williams

The context of the research•Political devolution•Language policy supporting Welsh as a minority language in the region•The development of bilingual (Welsh/English) vocational education

Bilingual vocational education in Wales

• Current policy promotes the use of Welsh in public & voluntary sector workplaces

• There is increased demand for bilingual vocational education

• There are policy commitments to the expansion of bilingual education to vocational education –for students aged 16+

Two of the questions guiding our research

• What literacy practices and what kinds of texts – in Welsh and in English - predominate in college courses? How can they be characterised?

• How do these practices and texts compare with those of the work worlds that the students hope to enter?

coleg meirion-dwyfor

The participants in the project

Bilingual teachers in two vocational courses: Agriculture and Early Years (Childcare)

28 students enrolled in their courses:

15 in Agriculture 13 in Early Years (Childcare)

The nature and scope of the 2-year study

Ethnographic research, with two dimensions:Year 1Research into college-based literacy practicesClassroom observationsInterviews with the bilingual teachersTeachers’ literacy diariesYear 2Research into students’ out-of-college literacypractices: workplaces (p/t) and homeStudent literacy diaries & diary-based interviewsStudent photos and photo-based interviews

Research with the bilingual students

• Literacy diaries (using a clock face format)

• Diary-based interviews

• Student photos of literacy practices in their lives

• Photo-based interviews

Danielle’s Non-

College Day and

CollegeDay

Clocks

Danielle’s Non-College Day

Clock

Clockface interview with Manon

Louise 1’s photo interview

‘Take out any 3 pictures that you think represent literacy practices that are really important to you personally’

Louise 1’s Top 3

23

1

Photographs do not ‘speak for themselves’

Captions as ‘anchorage’ (Barthes)

Venn diagram

Talking through photographs

• Not using photographs here as transparent, (indexical) records of specific practices

• Using them (more symbolically) to capture the personal importance of a practice in their everyday lives

• In the dialogue with students – we were getting them to use photos to ‘think aloud’ about their literacy practices

Coding & analysis of the student data

• Transcription & coding of the interviews• Coding categories: domains of literacy; uses of

literacy; literacy technologies; characteristics of their literacy practices

• We then built case studies of individual students (using the interview data and other data sources)

• We then compared the case studies, identifying themes and patterns that recurred

Insights from case studies of two agriculture students: bilingual literacy at work

Cadwaladr

Ceunant

Cadwaladr

Cadwaladr

Cadwaladr

Welsh & English literacies at work: Cadwaladr

• Running a lawn-mowing business (mostly English)

• Seasonal work in sheep shearing (only Welsh)• Assisting his mother with farm ‘paperwork’ &

digital record-keeping (Welsh & English)

Print and screen literacies included: creating invoices, record-keeping, reading equipmentmanuals, creating databases, filling in forms, email correspondence with customers etc.

Ceunant

Literacies at work: Ceunant

• Running a campsite for hill walkers (mostly in English)

• Assisting his father with farm ‘paperwork’ and digital record-keeping

Print and screen literacies included: creating a website for the campsite; correspondence with customers; record-keeping; filling in forms; creating data-bases.

The value of working ‘in dialogue’ with the student participants

Learning that all the students were already working part-time and engaging in a wide range of literacy practices – either in Welsh or in English or both – at work.So…each case study was fuller, deeper and more accurate than if we had just done traditional interviews…We then compared all 28 case studies and identified characteristics of the young people’s literacy practices

Bilingual literacy at work: characteristics of the young people’s practices

• Self-determined & purposeful

• Varied literacy practices, including a range of genres

• Multi-media

• Multi-modal

• Shared & interactive

Bilingual literacy at college: characteristics

• Oriented to the requirements of the curriculum and designed for assessment purposes

• A narrow range of reading & writing practices, focused on traditional academic genres e.g. monolingual essays & project reports

• Limited use of media e.g. computer for word processing or web browsing

• Rarely multi-modal• Mostly solitary, not shared

References

Boon, D. (2013) Multilingual classroom talk in adult literacy education in Timor-Leste: teachers and learners doing literacy and numeracy tasks. Language and Education, 27 (4), 356-73.

Cameron, D., Frazer, E., Harvey, P., Rampton, B. and Richardson, K. (1993) Ethics, advocacy and empowerment: issues of method in researching language. Language and Communication 13 (2), 81-94.

Da Costa Cabral, I. (2015) Multilingual talk, classroom textbooks and language values: a linguistic ethnographic study in Timor-Leste.

Erickson, F. (1990) Qualitative methods. In R. Linn and F. Erickson (eds.) Research in teaching and learning Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 71-194.

References (continued)

Heller, M. (2008) Doing ethnography. In L. Wei & M. Moyer (eds) Research methods in bilingualism and multilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 249-262.

Jones, K., Martin-Jones, M. and Bhatt, A.(2000) Constructing a critical, dialogic approach in research on multilingual literacy: participants’ diaries and diary interviews. In M. Martin-Jones and K. Jones (eds.) Multilingual literacies: reading and writing different worlds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 319-351.

Martin-Jones, M. (2011) Languages, texts and literacy practices. In T. McCarty (ed.) Ethnography and language policy. New York: Routledge, 231-253.

Martin-Jones, M., Hughes, B. & Williams, A. (2009) Bilingual literacy in and for working lives on the land: case studies of young Welsh speakers in North Wales. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 195, 35-62.