Abstract Summary
With a commitment to the use of literary works as oppositional practice in Teacher Education, I present a self-study in-progress. The study capitalizes on students’ shared / background knowledge of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to demonstrate principles of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in a graduate TESOL Teacher Education course.
Abstract :
A brief review of past works in applied linguistics and language learning research indicates that the subject of ‘sampling’ has received neither much attention nor sufficient discussion. In many publications on methods, the sampling process is presented as if researchers follow the sampling stages quite readily and smoothly in a linear fashion without facing many complications. However, the topic of sampling is in fact a complex and sophisticated matter, never a linear process, but rather an iterative endeavor that most often entails thoughts from critical, ethical as well as political standpoints. In language education, this is even more so since the subjects are often human participants, the “messiest part of real-world research” (Rose & McKinley, 2017, p. 6). The aim of this presentation is thus to develop a basic understanding and awareness of the debates and issues involved in making sampling decisions in the process of conducting research in the qualitative tradition. It opens by providing a brief overview towards the common understanding of the concept of sampling in present language education research, followed by an account of how the various sampling strategies are understood and employed in the qualitative paradigm by drawing attention to the pros and cons associated in its application. In particular, the presentation discusses the issues and challenges in making sampling decisions by referring to the presenter’s own qualitative research experience (Miyahara, 2015) where issues of power, rapport, and the identities of both the researcher and the participant are brought to the fore. The presentation concludes by calling for a more socially informed approach to sampling. The purpose of this presentation is, however, not to provide definitive answers, but to identify and delineate the issues that researchers need to examine and consider in choosing their samples for their research.
