Activity 2.5: Reflecting on the research methods

1. In the discussion of task A11 (pp. 279–81) the account of the students’ utterances is plausible, but why is transcript data to be preferred to the video data for such a visual task?

It is not clear ‘why’ they have chosen transcript data over video data (which can also show ‘gestured’ action) – perhaps it is because they are adamant they are solely using !KwicTex, which can only assess transcript data.

2. A criticism sometimes made of quantitative research is that it uses preconceived categories rather than letting findings ‘emerge’ from the data. The ‘Commentary’ on task A11 (pp. 280–1) is qualitative rather than quantitative, but it could be argued that it also uses preconceived categories.

For example, Elaine’s words before the intervention, ‘No, because it will come along like that’, and the fact that the next utterance is by John on the next question are interpreted as, ‘She gives a reason to support her view and this is not challenged.’

Her words after the intervention, ‘Now we’re talking about this bit so it can’t be number 2 it’s that one. It’s that one it’s that one’ are interpreted as, ‘In proposing number 4 Elaine is building on these two earlier failed solutions’ (p. 281).

Wegerif and Mercer have prior expectations about ‘exploratory talk’, defined as ‘talk in which reasons are given for assertions and reasoned challenges made and accepted within a co-operative framework orientated towards agreement’ (p. 277).

So notions such as ‘reason’, ‘support’, ‘challenge’ and ‘failed solution’ have specific, preconceived meanings. Do you think it would be possible to avoid the use of preconceived categories when analysing this data?

In this scenario, I do not think it would be possible to avoid the use of preconceived categories. I would imagine the only way the software could interpret the conversation would be to have some prior inputted categories to enable cataloging.

Just to expand this a little – Conversation is generally spontaneous and certainly at this age (primary 9/10), children can often use incorrect words and badly formulated sentences and have a tendency to link them together with words such as ‘because or cos’. Quite often children actually begin an answer with ‘because’, instead of reasoning their argument out loud.

3. Again in relation to task A11, what evidence might support the following claim on p. 281?

‘In the context of John’s vocal objections to previous assertions made by his two partners his silence at this point implies a tacit agreement with their decision.’

The transcript data could not reveal ‘implied agreement’ with their decision. in order to look at the evidence fully, video footage would need to be introduced, and perhaps a voice-over commentary added to the transcript data to explain this ‘silence’. This isolated instance should not be looked at as valid evidence; John may be a child who is lacking in confidence and will always become silent when challenged by his peers, whether he has given a right or wrong answer.

4. On p. 281, the authors claim:

‘It was generally found to be the case that the problems which had not been solved in the pre-intervention task and were then solved in the post-intervention task, leading to the marked increase in group scores, were solved as a result of group interaction strategies associated with exploratory talk and coached in the intervention programme.’

When you read this claim, did you ask yourself if the researchers had looked at whether this was also true of the control group? If time allows, feel free to look at the papers in which fuller accounts of the study appear.

The use of the word ‘generally’ in a research paper, would suggest one of two things: either the researchers have no evidence to back up their findings and have added a term ‘general’ in order to cover all eventualities – or they do have further evidence, which has not been included in the research paper for some reason, however, I expect that this would be noted in the text.

5. In the post-intervention talk around problem A11, John says, ‘No, it’s out, that goes out look’.

This utterance doesn’t use the words ‘cos’, ‘because’, ‘if’, ‘so’ or a question word, but it is plausible that John is giving a reason. How might one deal with such a problem?

Going back to my answer to question 2. Conversation is generally spontaneous and certainly at this age (primary 9/10), children can often use incorrect words and badly formulated sentences and have a tendency to link them together with words such as ‘because or cos’.

One possible way to deal with this problem is to use some key ‘action’ or ‘doing’ words as categories. Another way could be to actually scan every sentence

6. Are you convinced that the study effectively demonstrates the authors’ case that:

‘the incorporation of computer-based methods into the study of talk offers a way of combining the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methods of discourse analysis while overcoming some of their main weaknesses’?

I think that whilst the theory does offer some way of combining the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methods of discourse analysis while overcoming some of their main weaknesses, the practicality of the technology may have proved to be a stumbling block. I can think back to the earliest version of voice-to-text transcribers we used in the early 1990′s – the theory was fantastic, however the voice recognition software was quite shoddy. With the advances in technology, modern version of the same product are pretty near 100% accurate and can ‘learn’ many different users’ voice patterns.

7. What does the computer add to the analysis?

I think that using a computer speeds up the key word identification process and allows for rapid cross-referencing of inputted texts.

8. What is the status of computer-based text analysis 10 years on? Spend 20 minutes trying to answer this question by searching the web.

Having spent 20 mins (or possibly more) searching on different engines, I came up with the following two sites of note.

http://tactweb.humanities.mcmaster.ca/tactweb/doc/catahist.htm
http://kh.hd.uib.no/tactweb/homeorg.htm

9. How does this paper compare with Reading 1?

Both of the papers deal with different aspects of collaborative learning at both ‘ends’ of the education system. Reading 1 is about e-learning and Reading 2 is pure research (computer-based). On a personal level, Reading 2 was by far a more difficult paper do read and deconstruct!