• Stages of Research
• Our Method
| Stages of Research |
1st
year
.....a. Site Selection
.....b. Filming and editing
2nd year
.....a. Focus groups with teachers, parents
and children in each site
.....b. Focus groups in other sites
.....c. Focus groups of international sites
3 rd year
.....a. Data analysis and Writing
| Our Method |
Our core method is the use of video to stimulate reflection and discussion. This is a method developed by the principal investigator Joseph Tobin for his study Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China, and the United States (Yale University Press, 1989). The original study has been praised for introducing a powerful new methodological tool, the use of a complex video cue to stimulate a multivocal, multicultural conversation. We will adapt this method for our study of how childcare programs in Europe and the US work with children of im/migrants.
In this method, videotape is primarily not data but rather a cue or stimulus, like a set of interview questions in conventional social science research or an inkblot in a psychological study. Our basic assumption is that the video material we shoot and edit is a stimulus that is simultaneously richer, better contextualized, and less abstract than a verbal question asked in an interview. For example, if we ask im/migrant parents what sort of curricular approach they are looking for in preschool, the question is likely to be difficult to answer. But if we show them a videotape of a preschool in which children are seated behind desks in rows facing a teacher who is writing words on a blackboard, parents will find it much easier to voice an opinion. Similarly, if we ask a practitioner in an ECEC setting to explain her approach to classroom management, the question is so abstract as to make a meaningful response difficult. Showing her a videotape made in her classroom in which a fight occurs and asking for her reactions and reflections will work much better to elicit her beliefs.
The other key idea behind this method is the production of a multivocal conversation of parents, teachers, and other stakeholders in five countries all taking about the same set of tapes. As in a projective test, the differences in how people respond to our tapes will reveal differences in their beliefs and worldviews. As we show a tape made in a classroom to the classroom practitioner, then to her supervisor and colleagues, and then to the parents of the children she cares for, and then to audiences of early childhood educators at other sites in her country and then in other countries, the effect is to create a virtual conversation among a diverse community of stakeholders. We will be especially interested in the comments on the videotapes of parents who have recently immigrated. This is a group of stakeholders in early childhood education whose voices and concerns are too rarely heard.
Specifically, the steps in the method are:
The research team in each country selected a site and then spent time getting to know the administrator, the practitioner, children, and parents and explaining our project.
During a one-week visit, we shooted a video of a more or less typical day in a classroom for four-year-old children in a childcare program in each country. We spent Monday and Tuesday of the week letting the children and teachers became comfortable with the cameras and microphones and with us, and then videotaped on Wednesday, using two “prosumer” level digital video cameras and wireless and camera-mounted microphones in each setting. On Thursday, we showed the classroom teacher footage we shot in her classroom. As the teacher watched the videotape, fast forwarding to key moments, we asked her to talk about the children, the context of the events captured in our footage, and the thinking behind her actions.
On Friday we showed footage to the children and to a group of parents.
Based on the initial feedback from the teacher, children, and parents, we edited the 10-12 hours of videotape from each site (5-6 hours per camera) down to approximately 2 hours and then, down to about 30 minutes. The logic of this winnowing process is to select those shots that best reflect the program’s approach to working children of im/migrants and shots that we anticipated to have the capacity to function effectively as cues to stimulate informants to explicate their beliefs and philosophies.
Several months later, we returned to the sites where the videotapes were made and showed the classroom teachers the 30-minute version of the video shot in their classrooms. We put the VCR remote control on the table between us, and instructed the teacher to pause the tape whenever she wants to comment. We paused the tape when there is something we would like her to explain. We asked the practitioner if there is anything in the tape she would like us to remove or anything missing she would like to have added.
Once the practitioner has told us that she is comfortable with the tape’s contents, and feels that it fairly represents her practice, we showed the tape to administrators and other practitioners in her program, and repeated the process of using the tape as a stimulus for a conversation. In this step, the tapes are cues for a focus-group interview, with groups of 4-10 staff members watching and discussing the tapes together. As in the screenings of the tapes with the teachers, we videotaped these focus-group discussions.
We invited parents to watch and comment on the videotape made in their child’s classroom. We organized these screenings in various ways. Mothers who do not work outside the home were invited to watch and discuss the tapes over tea after they drop their children off at school. Mothers, fathers, and other family members invited to screenings of the videotapes in the evenings and on weekends. We organized homogeneous groups of parents who speak the same language and come from similar cultural backgrounds. These group discussion were conducted in the parents’ native language and facilitated whenever possible by a researcher who is a member of their community. We also run heterogeneous focus groups, where im/migrant parents from a variety of culture/language backgrounds engaged with each other and with parents from the mainstream culture in discussions about their children’s preschool. Interpreters were present to allow parents to express themselves easily and clearly.
We screened the videotapes made in an early childhood program in one site in each country in three other sites, chosen to reflect regional, social class, and ideological variation.
We showed focus groups of early childhood educators in each country the videotapes made in two other countries. Each country in the study was matched with two others for this step so, for example, French informants had shown the German and English tapes, while Italian informants had shown the French and US tapes, as explained in the table below). Their comments on what they find attractive and repugnant in the practices of other countries will serve to clarify and highlight their own beliefs and values.
©2006
......design by
Sinan
Yucel
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