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DATA COLLECTION METHODS Narrative and Biographic Methods

المؤلف:  Nat Bartels

المصدر:  Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education

الجزء والصفحة:  P9-C1

2026-08-07

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DATA COLLECTION METHODS

Narrative and Biographic Methods

As mentioned earlier‚ much of teachers’ knowledge is bound up in stories of their experiences both as students and as teachers. An effective way of accessing this kind of knowledge is using narrative and biographic data collection methods. There are three general directions this can take. First‚ data can be either general stories (“How do you remember learning French?”) or on specific aspects of teaching (“What happens when you try to focus on fluency?”). Data collected from language learning/teaching autobiographies will be more filtered than just asking for stories‚ but it can produce more focused data because the participants explain how their experiences influenced their teaching. It is also possible to collect autobiographies at different points in a teacher’s development in order to assess how their view of teaching has changed over time or due to the influence of a course in applied linguistics (Bailey et al‚ 1996; Polettini‚ 2000). Another advantage of the autobiographies is that many teacher educators use them as a teaching tool‚ so if you incorporate this into your teaching‚ data collection will be much easier. For data looking specifically at how experiences might have shaped a teachers’ knowledge and conceptions of teaching‚ one can ask them to describe critical incidents in their lives where they learned something about teaching‚ language learning‚ phrase structure rules‚ or whatever you want to focus on (Flanagan‚ 1954; Kagan‚ 1993).

The caveat with such data is that such data represents teachers’ interpretations of their experiences‚ not the actual knowledge itself. Wubbels‚ Brekelmans and Hooymayers (1992) showed that teachers’ reports of instruction do not always match their actual behavior in those classes. However‚ analysis of ways experienced and inexperienced language teachers talk about teaching show that this does reveal differences in their knowledge (Meskill‚ Mossop‚ DiAngelo & Pasquale‚ 2002). For an introduction on using these methods see Clandinin & Connelly (2000)‚ Kelchtermans (1994) or Solas (1993).