Current Research Procedures

4.5.1 Research Outline and Design Overview

The five main research Chapters of this thesis are laid out in Table 4.2. Chapters 5 through 7 detail the qualitative and quantitative groundwork leading to the main study documented in Chapters 8 and 9. Chapter 5 details the observational protocols for understanding structure in foreign language teaching contexts. Though positive teaching practices for motivating students have been posited based on theoretical perspectives (e.g., Dörnyei, 2005), specific practices of highly engaging elementary teachers deserve special attention in order to derive effective methods for helping students to engage in class. While the idea of what might constitute autonomy-support and structure in foreign language has been researched (Noels, 2003), features of this may differ across cultural contexts (Iyengar & Lepper, 1999). Using multiple contexts to gain the most generalizable factors, this Chapter investigates foreign language teaching practices in the United States and Japan. The findings in this Chapter are used to develop the basis and background for the study in Chapter 6. Chapter 6 details the procedures used to explore and validate the practices documented in Chapter 5. This Chapter focuses on Japanese elementary students generating items regarding good classroom teaching based on self-determination theory. Chapter 7 details an individual comparison of the features of structure generated in Chapter 6. Using a quasi-experimental design embedded within Chapter 6, this Chapter shows comparisons between native and non-native teachers with regard to how students perceive their teaching styles.

Table 4.2. Research outline for the 5 research Chapters of this thesis.

Design Participants Time Research Goal Methods

Ch. 5 QUAL:

Observational Elementary stu-dents and teach-ers in Japan and the United States

Fall 2010 (USA);

Spring 2011 (Japan)

Observe and record potential elements of structure for foreign language classes to understand preliminary features of high-engagement classes in multina-tional context

Grounded theory coding with proce-dures for theoretical integration

Ch. 6 qual → QUANT:

Discussions fol-lowed by 4 lon-gitudinal quanti-tative validation studies

Japanese 4^th-6^th grade students (Discussions);

5^th Grade stu-dents (surveys)

Summer 2012 – Win-ter 2013

Create and validate an instrument for measuring students’ under-standing of foreign language classroom structure-support

Focus group discus-sions; exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis; lon-gitudinal structural equation modeling

Ch. 7 QUANT

Cross-sectional Survey Re-search;

Quasi-experimental

Japanese 5^th

grade students Summer

2012 Measure and record students’

reactions to classes led by native, non-native, and non-specialist teachers’ classroom structure, with a view to identifying signifi-cant differences between teachers

MANOVA and re-gression

Ch. 8 QUANT:

Longitudinal surveys at 3 data points; external ratings by ob-servers; assess-ment by teachers

Japanese 5^th grade students and their teach-ers

Spring 2013 Use the research instruments to find further patterns of structure-support which strongly influence both self-reported and observed classroom engagement, then test their influence on long-term mo-tivation

Structural equation modeling; Repeated-measures MA-NOVA; Classroom observation and ratings

Ch. 9 quant → QUAL:

Observe and document fea-tures of high-structure

Japanese 5^th grade students and their teach-ers

Spring

2013-Winter 2014Use the research instruments to find further common features of supportive-structure which influ-ence both self-reported and ob-servable classroom engagement

Inter-Rater reliabil-ity testing; Observa-tion, coding, and thick descriptions of classroom events

In the first Chapter of the main study, Chapter 8 details the longitudinal quantitative procedures used to show changes in motivation and engagement across the school year.

Based on the individual classrooms in Chapter 8, Chapter 9 looks at the observable practices used by highly engaging teachers. Thus the overall body of this research will trace the pattern outlined in Figure 4.5.

Sequential  research  design

  [  QUAL  ]  →  [  qual  → QUANT  ]  → [  QUANT  ]+  [  quant  +  QUAL  ]

      [  QUANT  ]

   [Ch.  5]    →     [Ch.  6]            →            [Ch.  8]        +       [Ch.  9]

      [Ch.  7]

Figure 4.5. Research design and Chapter outlines.

This design uses a partially symmetrical design, with layers of quantitative research sandwiched between qualitative classroom observations. Using flexible amounts of theory

and observation to document classroom events before the ultimate presentation of common principles for instruction, I hope to offer a practice-oriented guide for teachers to take to the classroom. By standing on thoroughly documented phenomena in Chapters 5 through 7, the final research design will offer the best available interpretation of the motivational effects of the classroom environment over the course of a school year. The overall model for data triangulation and embedding to be used in Chapters 8 and 9 is detailed in Figure 4.6.

This project will include a series of surveys to measure students’ internal perceptions of their motivational state at the beginning and end of their foreign language studies, as well as the environment in their foreign language classes. Classroom surveys will be triangulated through external quantitative observations. External observers will then describe the qualitative elements of teachers’ scaffolding and instruction. As outcome variables, teachers will provide their assessments of students’ performance in class. One of the major goals of this work is to have no data point reliant on only one point of observation, but rather to cross-validate all data independently. By exploring the classroom environment from multiple perspectives, I hope to provide a sense of both quantitative validity and qualitative trustworthiness to the data.

Figure 4.6. Concurrent mixed-methods used by this research.

4.5.2 Participants and Setting

The subjects for this study will come from seven suburban schools in southwestern Japan.

This city serves roughly 100,000 people. The city spans a wide area, encompassing farmland, fishing villages, and suburban business areas. While there is a substantial elderly population in the town, it is also located within commuting distance from two major urban centers, and so is a popular location for young families. Much of housing property is tenant-owned, and there are a significant number of locally owned and run businesses.

The schools ranged in size from roughly 100 students in grades one through six to close to 1000. The schools themselves are very similar to those described by Peter Cave (2007), indicating similarity to many suburban Japanese elementary schools. For the most part, facilities have been built or renovated within the past two decades, though many of the

renovations were to maintain existing school buildings constructed in the 1950s and 60s. As the focus of this thesis is on the interpersonal rather than physical school environment, unless absolutely necessary classrooms and facilities will not be discussed in this study.

The largest participating school had 5 classes of 30+ students per grade, while the smallest had only 1 class of roughly 25 participating students. Public schools in the area are of good reputation. Unlike in Tokyo and other major metropolitan areas, students in elementary school are not pushed to compete for limited spaces in elite schools (Carreira, 2012). As in most of Japan, the vast majority (99+%) of the students go on to upper secondary education in an average year, and a large number continue on to tertiary education as well (Statistics Japan, 2014).

Cooperation for this research was provided by the principals and teachers at each school, with the support of the local board of education. All studies were granted approval by the Fukuoka University of Education Ethics Review Board. Local boards of education provided permission for the research, coordinating with school principals and teachers. All participating teachers and principals were informed of the scope and aims of the study before agreeing to sign permission forms. Principals, acting in loco parentis, gave permission to gather student data.

For the majority of the study, fifth-year classes were chosen as fifth grade is the first year targeted for foreign language study in Japanese elementary schools (MEXT, 2008a). The fifth year of elementary school is further ideal due to the fact that students have little previous in-school foreign language experience, and therefore have fewer expectancies regarding the classroom environment based on previous classroom learning (Bandura, 1986, pp. 230–231).

Based on the fact that upper elementary learners are quite likely to begin to lose their

motivation over time beginning in this period (Kim & Seo, 2012) an investigation of this period is appropriate for understanding both the how and why of this trend.