Data preparation and analysis

67 Namibian learners before and after the use of a visual-verbal intersemiotic complementarity teaching approach. The guiding questions were formulated to maintain the focus on the intervention. This made observation easier in both cycles of this action research.

4.5.4 Teacher’s and learners’ reflective journals

Reflective journals have been employed in various studies as instruments for capturing the participants’ experiences of the settings or cases being studied (Olitsky, 2007). They can be written by teachers, learners or both (Olitsky, 2007). This study has employed both the teacher’s and learners’ daily journaling as data collection instruments for evidence of learners’ sense-making of chemical bonding after the traditional and the visual-verbal intersemiotic complementarity teaching approaches were undertaken.

Gay, Mills, and Airasian (2009) explain that the teacher’s reflective journal provides “first- hand accounts” of what is taking place in the classroom (p. 374). In order to obtain first-hand data on, and to get an overview of, the Grade 9 learners’ sense-making of chemical bonding, this study involved daily reflective journaling by me as the teacher-researcher. These reflective journal entries were made by me after I taught each lesson.

Gay, Mills, and Airasian (2009) describe learners’ reflective journals as providing teachers with “a window into students’ worlds” and their “daily classroom experiences” (p. 374).

Audet, Hickman, and Dobrynina (1996) describe learners’ reflective journals as instruments that provide evidence of learners’ sense-making of scientific topics or concepts. They add that learners’ reflective journals publicise the learners’ knowledge. However, it is argued that learners with no experience in writing reflective journals or learners with language barriers may not know what to write or how to express their thoughts via writing (Towndrow, Ling &

Venthan, 2008). In consideration of this, I formulated guiding questions (Appendix P) for directing learners’ responses towards providing the data that are relevant to the goal of this study.

68 process. The data collected in this study underwent preparation so that only those that were relevant would be analysed. This transformed raw data into being technically correct, consistent and tidy, and ready for analysis.

Qualitative data analysis entails a researcher identifying patterns, themes, categories, and regularities in data (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011). Data can be analysed inductively, deductively, or through a combined deductive-inductive approach. Inductive data analysis involves generating patterns, categories, and themes from the raw data, whereas deductive data analysis involves the generation of specific data from the more general sets of data (Bertram & Christiansen, 2015). This study has employed a combined inductive-deductive approach to data analysis, since literature provided sense-making indicators, but it was also acknowledged that additional findings not previously mentioned in literature may emerge.

Employing this approach to data analysis was considered in this study, as it allows specific data (learners’ sense-making of chemical bonding through analysing sense-making indicators) to be collected from the learners, and also general data sets related to learners’

sense-making of the topic to be formulated from them. Even though no analytical tools were devised for capturing unforeseen sense-making changes, other indicators of sense-making, such as the change in motivation, desire, and interaction of learners (Zimmerman et al., 2009), were considered for ascertaining whether coordinated visual-verbal intersemiotic complementarity influenced Grade 9 learners’ sense-making of chemical bonding.

Teddllie and Tashakkori (2009) explain that qualitative studies do sometimes involve collecting quantitative data. The use of quantitative data in qualitative studies enables more meaningful data to be collected, which would lead to more authentic findings (Teddllie &

Tashakkori, 2009). Hence, quantitative data in this study were also considered for analysis as numerical information (such as learners’ test marks, percentage of learners answering a particular question etc.) cannot be ignored.

Learners’ sense-making of chemical bonding was analysed according to sense-making indicators/types, as suggested by Zimmerman et al. (2009) and Brandsford and Schwartz (1999). These indicators of sense-making (adapted to take the form of the coordinated visual and verbal modes) include: perceptual (P), chemical bonding facts (CBF), connecting and analysing ideas (CA), clarification (Cl), and ideas about nature of chemical bonding (ICB).

These sense-making indicators are realised in excerpts of learner talk, and in visuals. They are listed and defined in Table 9. The comparison of qualitative data of sense-making

69 indicators during the first and second cycle of this action research was used to reveal details about the influences of the teaching intervention on the Grade 9 learners’ sense-making of chemical bonding.

Table 9. Sense-making analytic framework (Adapted from Zimmerman, Reeve & Bell, 2009, p. 486)

Sense-making evidence Code Sense-making indicator/type defined

Exemplar quotations from the data

(column to be filled after data collection)

Perceptual (descriptive) P Talk and visuals where learners identify, count, or describe concrete chemical bonding processes or objects observed

e.g. atoms give away electrons, atoms given electrons, atoms combine, etc.

Chemical bonding facts CBF Talk and visuals made by learners about abstract chemical bonding processes and objects.

e.g. covalent bonding, ionic bonding, sharing and transfer of

electrons, lose electrons, gain electrons, etc.

Connecting and analysing CA Talk and visuals where learners make explicit and implicit comparisons and analogies to prior knowledge or experiences.

e.g. cations and anions attract each other like charged objects attracting each other.

Clarification Cl Verbal and visual explanations by learners about how atoms bond.

e.g. how hydrogen and oxygen atoms bond to form water (hydrogen oxide) molecules.

Ideas about nature of chemical bonding

ICB Talk and visuals by learners about how knowledge of chemical bonding is discovered by scientists.

e.g. microscopes are used to magnify the particles.

70 4.7 Validity

According to Bertram and Christiansen (2015), validity in critical paradigms is the consideration of whether the data reflect the reality of a case being studied. They argue that some of the aspects that make studies devoid of reality are the fear of maleficence (harmful or unfavourable consequences of study) by participants, and the use of inappropriate data collection tools. I have addressed the fear of maleficence by highlighting to participants that the study is designed in the way that does no harm and causes no unfavourable consequences to them. For example, the pre-test and post-test scores were not recorded for use towards formal assessment for the participants’ promotion to the next grade. According to Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2011), validity threats caused by research tools can be avoided by using triangulation. They define triangulation as the collection of data by two or more methods. In this study, data were collected by various methods. These include document analysis, structured lesson observation, reflective journal writing by learners and the teacher, pre-testing, and post-testing. These tools were piloted with learners in Grade 8 (since there was only one Grade 9 class at the school) to test their reliability. Access to piloting these tools with Grade 9 at a different school was not available, as this was a hectic time for teaching – each teacher tries to finish the syllabus as the year plan. The pilot revealed the following: learners had difficulty understanding some guiding questions in reflective journals, and structured lesson observation sheets needed to be made more specific. These were addressed by making appropriate changes, such as explaining guiding questions for reflective journals in order for learners to understand them, and making small changes in the structured lesson observation sheets to specify what to look for when reviewing lesson recordings.

Merriam, Johnson, Lee, Kee, Ntseane, and Muhamad (2001) remark that validity of research can also be affected negatively if the researcher’s positionality is not taken into account. They define positionality as the researcher’s standing position in relation to research participants.

These positions may include education level, social class, gender, and cultural dominance. I have addressed this validity issue by explaining to participants that my position as a teacher and them being learners should not influence the way they respond to questions, and by encouraging their free participation in the lessons through the creation of a welcoming and participatory environment, as alluded to earlier.

71 The validity threats can also be averted by member-checking (Bertram & Chritiansen, 2015) and the contributions by a critical friend (Stenhouse, 1975). The data collected were member- checked, by the critical friend and learners, in order to avoid any deviation from the learners’

intended meanings that could have arisen as a result of misinterpretation by me as the teacher-researcher. In addition to the functions mentioned earlier, a critical friend can serve as a researcher’s consultant during the research process (Stenhouse, 1975). Her core duties involve providing ideas to and assisting the researcher in order to help the researcher avoid bias. These were also highlighted in the aforementioned letter provided to the critical friend in my study, which outlined her responsibilities (Appendix B).