Methodology

Choosing a data collection method most appropriate for my research question was

essential in order to gather the most meaningful and relevant information possible for this study.

My research is of an extremely personal nature, as it is exploring the thoughts and emotions of

adult ESOL instructors. Seeing as emotional perception is inherently subjective, I wanted to be

able to deeply understand the meaning each individual had created from his or her experiences.

To best understand the personal experiences and manifestations of certain social and emotional

aspects of the adult ESOL classroom I chose to utilize qualitative methods for all of my data

collection. The specific data collection methods used to conduct this study included survey

methodology and follow-up interviews with probing questions further into the written survey

responses submitted by participants. The probing questions were guided by participants survey

responses, and will be discussed more in sections to follow. Upon receiving all completed

surveys, I purposefully selected two participants to conduct follow-up interviews with. The

details regarding my choices for the above decisions, along with additional participant

demographic information, are listed in more detail below.

Qualitative Research

As previously stated, investigating individuals inner-thoughts, emotions, and perceptions

of meaning involves very subjective and personal information. My study naturally leant itself to

qualitative research, seeing as it is a research design intended to capture deeply descriptive data

(Merriam, 2001). Qualitative research also specifically focuses on the meaning of situations from

individual perspectives and seeks to explore the complexities of certain situations (Creswell,

2009, p4). Overall, qualitative approach was most fitting for my study because I wanted to
capture detailed descriptions of the different affective components of adult ESOL instruction,

and what those more emotional elements actually looked like from the participants perspective.

Qualitative research is inductive in nature. This means it is intended to construct more

generalized theories or hypotheses as opposed to other research designs that focus on testing a

previously established hypothesis or theory (Merriam, 2001). My research question was what

value do ESOL instructors find social and emotional awareness plays in their classroom. If adult

ESOL instructors do, in fact, value social and emotional awareness in their classroom, my study

also wanted to explore how that awareness is manifested in their experience. While my data

findings are preliminary, future research can build on this initial inductive investigation to begin

constructing a more generalized theory or hypothesis surrounding the concrete aspects of

affective domain considerations in the adult ESOL classroom. As mentioned before, research

about concrete approaches to addressing the affective domain of adult ESOL learners and

operationalizing the associated emotive terms has yet to be done. Being able to generalize a

classroom model similar to those that have developed in the K-12 arena would be a valuable

contribution to the field.

Philosophical Perspective

I find it necessary to address my philosophical approach to this study. With all research,

it is suggested that the researcher address their own beliefs that could be interpreted as, or lead

to, bias in the study. Creswell names this as a worldview, meaning, a basic set of beliefs that

guide action (2009, p8) throughout the research. The philosophical perspective that I bring to

this study is that of social constructivism, which aims understand phenomena from the personal

meaning formed by individual participants perspectives and experiences (Creswell, 2009). My

social constructivist philosophical worldview is in line with the inductive nature of qualitative

research.

This worldview aims to understand and ultimately produce more generalizable theories

and hypothesis developed through in-depth analysis of individual perspectives and

interpretations of meaning (Creswell, 2009). Crotty has named three key assumptions related to

the social constructivist worldview: the first assumption is that individuals build their

understanding through actual world experiences. Secondly, the researcher should understand that

each person builds their interpretations of meaning based off of their own historical and social

perspectives (Crotty, 1998). The final assumption involved in the social constructivist

worldview is that meaning is always created in a social manner. This acknowledges that the

social constructivist worldview approaches data analysis with the realization that participants

responses have been shaped by their own personal interactions with others in social situations

(Crotty, 1998).

The social constructivist worldview is especially relevant to my study because

teachers are not isolated individuals separate from their environment andtheir perceptions

of this environment are highly important (Collie, 2012). To me, utilizing a constructivist

philosophical lens is the best way to acknowledge that each adult ESOL instructor will have

different perceptions because they have taught in different environments. This will be discussed

in more detail later.

Case Study

After identifying an appropriate research design for my studys question hoping to gain

insight into adult ESOL instructors individual perspective and identifying my worldview, I

chose to conduct a case study. Other prominent educational researchers have utilized the case
study approach in order to better understand the complexities and predicaments encountered in

their educational experiences (Nieto & Bode, 2012). I also think that choosing a case study

analysis to explore my research question could, hopefully, lead to future studies regarding the

social and emotional elements of teaching adult ESOL learners (Merriam, 2001).

Case study research can help illuminate some of the situations encountered by instructors

in hopes of generalizing information relating to adult ESOL affective classroom elements, which

can be utilized by others to guide and reflect on their own practice (Nieto & Bode, 2012). For the

purpose of this study, I will be using the following definition for the case study approach, which

should be understood within the framework of qualitative research, and be an intensive,

holistic description and analysis of a bounded phenomenon such as a program, an institution, a

person, a process, or a social unit (Merriam, 2001, p19). More specifically, educational case

studies utilize the above framework but focus on some component of participants educational

practice and experience (Merriam, 2001).

Data Collection Methods

Seeing as I am looking to gain a deeper understanding of the detailed thoughts and

experiences of adult ESOL instructors, I chose to utilize a survey that allowed participants to

write as much as they would like to answer the questions. The survey methodology is discussed

more below. In order to go even deeper into participants responses I conducted follow-up

interviews with two purposefully selected participants. Later sections of this paper will cover the

selection process of participants to conduct follow-up interviews with.

Survey Methodology. My study is looking to qualitatively explore the personal

meanings and values of individual adult ESOL instructors. Because of this, I wanted to allow the

participants to answer freely and not limit their responses with pre-established responses, as
questionnaires do (Creswell, 2009). For the purpose of this qualitative case study, surveys are

defined as, a procedure that encompasses measurement that involves asking questions of

respondents, (Hancock, 2011). The survey was administered online using Google Forms and

consisted of two-parts with a total of eleven content related questions and 7 demographic

questions. All participants were sent an informed consent form prior to completing the survey,

and were also required to give electronic consent on the survey itself.

The demographic questions solicited participants name, age, gender identity, Country of

origin, number of years teaching, English teaching context, and teacher-training background.

Participants were able to select more than one option for their English teaching context as well as

their teacher-training background. I wanted this demographic information in order to understand

some general traits of my participants. I also included these demographic questions to help guide

my selection of participants for follow-up interviews. My hope was to capture adult ESOL

instructors with different backgrounds and current teaching situations in order to include as many

perspectives as possible in my research. The percentage breakdown of participant demographic

information along with the mean ages and number of years teaching will be provided in the

participant information section.

I tried to make the 11 content-based questions as open-ended as possible in an attempt to

avoid leading questions, which are phrased in a way that influences the response a participant

will give (Seidman, 2013). Open-ended questions, on the other hand, aim to establish the

territory to be explored while allowing the participant to take any direction he or she

wants[and] it does not presume an answer (Seidman, 2013, p87). This is typical of qualitative

case study analysis conducted from a social constructivist worldview because it prioritizes

individual freedom to respond however they like. I requested that respondents provide a
minimum of three sentence responses in order to elicit some deeper details, but there was no

limit to how much a respondent could write. An example of an open-ended question on the

survey is: Can you give me an example of a conflict that you have had in one of your

classrooms and how you resolved it? This question was crafted with the hope of better

understanding some historical circumstances and experiences that has influenced their teaching,

and relates to external manifestations of elements in the adult ESOL classroom. When I say

external manifestations, I mean that the question wants information of actual situations

happening outside of the adult ESOL instructor, in their classroom. The number of participants

solicited for this survey along with data concerning the percentage of solicited participants who

completed the survey will be accompany the demographic breakdown of participants in a later

section.

Follow-up Phenomenological Interviews. I chose to conduct follow-up

phenomenological interviews to better understand what value, if any, adult ESOL instructors

ascribe to the affective domain of their students in classroom. Conducting interviews allowed me

to get information about how people interpret the world around them, (Merriam, 2001, p72) as

it is impossible to observe or understand intangible things such as emotions (Merriam, 2001).

The type of interview I chose to utilize for this qualitative case study analysis was

phenomenological interviews. This interviewing framework allowed me to better understand my

participants individual points of view and how they came to create meaning around their views

because phenomenological interviews really prioritize the lived experience of participants

(Seidman, 2013). I limited my follow-up interviews to 30 minutes in order to prevent fatigue for

the interviewees (Seidman, 2013).

 The list of questions that served as my interview guide were developed individually for

each of the two interviewees. The two interviews that I conducted were done over the phone, due

to time limitations of this study. I used their survey responses as a guide by identifying key

emotive words the survey respondents used relating to the affective domain, such as: friendly,

warm, supportive, and respectful, just to name a few. More in-depth discussion regarding

specific survey responses and questions will be included in the data analysis portion of this

study.

When conducting these follow-up phenomenological interviews I made sure to probe

even deeper into participants responses. Probes are questions or comments that follow up

something already askfor more details, for clarification, [or] for examples (Merriam, 2001,

p80). For example, one interviewee told me that they value the well-being of their students. I

followed up with a probing question of, how do you do that? what does that look like in your

classroom? This approach to interviewing is very in line with my social constructivist

worldview and is also prominent in educational research (Nieto, 2012; Noddings, 2013).

Participant Observer. I thought it was important to participate myself in the research for

this study through personal reflection. I wanted to be inside the classroom to observe

interactions, physical environments, and student involvement in the classroom in order to I,

myself, be able to contribute to the research as well. This semester I worked in a small

community-based English class with adult learners. I was able to observe affective dimensions of

the classroom throughout the semester in order to include in this study.

Participants

The participants in this study are all adult ESOL instructors with 2 or more years

experience. For the sake of confidentiality, all instructors that participated in this study will be
assigned a pseudonym to be used in the data analysis section. I found my participants by

emailing ESOL professors that I found online through faculty and staff directories at academic

institutions. The majority of the professors that I contacted were in the San Diego area because I

had been hoping to conduct face-to-face interviews. In the end, I did not have the time to conduct

face-to-face interviews, and the effects of this will be discussed in the reflection portion of this

paper. To have a more organized visual representation of my participants demographic

responses I created a table including the participants real name, pseudonym, age, gender,

teaching time, and country of origin (Appendix A). In the bottom row I calculated the mean age

and mean number of teaching years to get a more generalized idea of my participants

demographic breakdowns. Visual representations of all percentages discussed below can be

found in Appendix B.

I solicited sixteen ESOL instructors in total and thirteen of them were willing to

participate, meaning 81.25% of those solicited agreed to complete the survey. Of the thirteen

adult ESOL instructors willing to participate, eleven of them (84.62%) submitted the surveys. I

was incredibly happy with the willingness of adult ESOL instructors to participate and was

pleased with the high percentage of response rates I received. Of the eleven participants, 100%

of them were willing to conduct interviews, with 36.6% (four participants) preferring to conduct

the follow-up session face-to-face, 36.6% (four participants) preferring the phone, 18.18%

preferring email, and .09% (one participant) preferring Skype. I ended up conducting two follow-

up in-depth interviews over the phone.

Participants were allowed to choose more than one option for their educational

background. The choices provided to them included:

a) 1-2 Week Program through Placement Agency

 b) TEFL/TESOL Certificate

c) B.A. in TESOL, English, or language related area

d) M.A. in TESOL, English, or language related area

e) Ph.D in TESOL, English or language related area

f) Other

Of the 11 participants, four of them have completed a 1-2 week program through a placement

agency, seven of them have a TESL/TEFL Certificate, six participants have a Bachelors of Arts

in TESOL, English, or language related area, five have a Masters of Arts in TESOL, English, or

language related area, and no participants had a Ph.D. Of the 11 survey responses received, three

participants chose to list other educational training in their personal history. These responses

included Peace Corps TEFL training, tutor certification, and Cambridge certificates. I was

pleased with the mixture of educational backgrounds, and will discuss future ways to strengthen

this participant pool in a later portion of this study.

The participants were 81.82% female, meaning this study was predominately comprised

of women. Participants ranged in age from 28 to 42, with the mean age being 32 years old. The

number of years that participants had been teaching ranged from 2 to thirteen years, with the

mean number of teaching years being seven. Lastly, all but one (90.90%) of participants are from

the United States of America. The outlier within the country of origin of participants was the

Philippines. The reflection component of this paper will discuss the consequences of the

participant pool demographic.

Triangulating the Data

To increase the validity of my study I needed to use multiple data sources and more than

one data collection method, which is known as the process of triangulation (Merriam, 2001).
Addressing my own bias through discussing the assumptions inherent to my social constructivist

worldview is considered another way of increasing my studys validity (Merriam, 2001).

According to Hancock, validity is an indication of the extent to which an assessment measures

what it was intended to measure (2011, p93). In other words, my study would have high validity

if I were able to elicit responses specific to how adult ESOL instructors perceive elements of the

affective dimension in their classrooms. Triangulating data allows me as an educational

researcher to have a more holistic understanding of the data (Mathison, 1988, p13). In this

case, utilizing both survey methodology and follow-up in-depth phenomenological interviews

allowed me to triangulate my data. Ways to further increase the validity of my study will be

discussed in later portions of this paper.