In this section I describe four main problems that can affect teacher cognition research, any of which, if not addressed by researchers, can threaten the validity of individual studies. These are:
• The fact that ‘cognitions’ revealed in studies may be a product of the data elicitation methods used;
• The often misleading distinction between cognitions claimed to be professed by teachers and those ascribed to them by researchers;
• The fact that researchers and teachers may mean different things when they talk about concepts relevant to the teachers’ practices;
• The lack of attention to the co-constructed nature of the interaction in verbal commentary data such as qualitative interviews.
In the rest of this section, I will discuss each in turn, before showing how an approach informed by conversation analysis and discursive psychology may offer a solution.
Qualitative research on teacher cognition uses a range of data elicitation methods, each of which implies underlying assumptions about the nature of the cognitions being investigated. For example, as Borg (2006) points out, interviews reflect the assumption that cognitions such as beliefs can be articulated by teachers and that they can provide accounts of the cognitive processes that underpin what they do in the classroom.
Beyond this, there is the assumption that teachers’ accounts of practice are a pathway to some other underlying reality (i.e. their ‘mental’ lives), and that this can somehow be ‘read off’ the verbal data. For example, in a recent study of a language teacher’s practical knowledge, the author claims that ‘interviews allowed access to her thoughts, feelings and beliefs’ (Wyatt 2009: 20). Whatever the data elicitation method used, then, there is a need for a high level of researcher reflexivity. We need to be aware of the
possibility that, as Borg warns, ‘the nature of the cognitions which are obtained is a product of the elicitational methods used’ (2006: 279).
The second problematic issue in teacher cognition research is that of the perceived inconsistency between ‘professed’ and ‘attributed’ beliefs (Speer 2005). This tended in the past to be put down to teachers’ inconsistency because the beliefs they said they had (their professed beliefs) did not match the beliefs that could be inferred from what they actually did in the classroom (their attributed beliefs). However, as Borg (2006) points out, rather than seeing teachers as being inconsistent, we can put down variation in their responses to sources beyond individual inconsistency, such as the contextual constraints on their practices or their reactions to different data collection methods. Thus, as Speer (2005) shows, this problem can be related to the first problem discussed here, that of the relationship between the data elicitation methods and the cognitions revealed. She argues that it is inappropriate to describe aspects of teacher cognition such as beliefs as ‘professed’ by teachers, given that such attributions are filtered through researchers’ data collection methods, theories, data analyses, and presentation of findings.
Speer (2005) also identifies the third major problem in teacher cognition research: that of the lack of shared understanding between researchers and teachers. This in fact can contribute to the second problem, as researchers may wrongly attribute supposed inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and actions based on misunderstanding about the meaning of terms used to describe the teachers’ practices. Speer gives the example of ‘group work’, which can mean many different things in different contexts. As was discussed in chapter four, this problem is also identified by Woods and Çakir (2011), who point out that the same concepts can be labelled differently, or different concepts can have the same label in teacher cognition research. This can be seen as part of a wider problem in qualitative research in the social sciences, where researchers can ‘flood’ interviews with terms and categories which belong to their theoretical preoccupations, and not to the participants’ worlds of practice (Potter and Hepburn 2005).
The fourth problem can be said to be more fundamental, in that it underlies all the others. It is the failure to recognise the co-constructed nature of discourse and
is a crucial issue, as most of the elicitational methods used for investigating teacher cognition are discourse-based, as can be seen from the chapter headings on research methods in Borg’s (2006) volume on language teacher cognition (self-report
instruments, verbal commentaries, reflective writing). Even the least discursive elicitational method, observation, is based on linguistic constructions, such as checklists, schedules, field notes or coding schemes. However, in most reports of teacher cognition studies, there is little recognition that the cognitions obtained were the product of co-constructed social interaction, for example in qualitative interviews.
Indeed, this problem is prevalent throughout qualitative applied linguistics research, as is shown in Mann’s (2011) discussion of four ‘discourse dilemmas’ in qualitative interviewing. These are: the co-constructed nature of interview talk; the need for a greater focus on the interviewer; the need to represent the interactional context; the need for a focus not just on the ‘what’, but also on the ‘how’ - showing the interactional processes through which phenomena of interest were produced. In short, Mann is arguing that qualitative researchers who use interviews need to provide information not just on the ‘what’ - the substantive issues under investigation, but this needs to be accompanied with more detailed information on the ‘how’, in the form of transcripts and analyses which show how the interviews were jointly accomplished by participants, with the interviewer playing a key role. There also needs to be more information on the context, both in terms of the conditions under which interviews (or any other data elicitation procedure) were carried out, and the interactional context - that is, how the talk is produced turn-by-turn in sequences.
Mann’s (2011) work applies to applied linguistics methodological concerns about the use of qualitative interviewing which have been voiced in the wider social sciences literature. In an important paper, Potter and Hepburn (2005) distinguish between ‘contingent’ and ‘necessary’ problems in using qualitative interviewing in social research. Contingent problems can be dealt with by making some methodological adjustments, while necessary problems threaten the very validity of qualitative
interviews as a method for investigating social practices. The contingent problems are:
1. the deletion of the interviewer;
3. the specificity of observations;
4. the unavailability of the interview set-up; 5. the failure to consider interviews as interaction.
(Potter and Hepburn 2005: 285)
These issues broadly mirror the ‘discourse dilemmas’ identified by Mann, with points three and four worthy of some additional comment. The third problem relates to the practice of making claims about, for example, cognitive phenomena such as beliefs based on discourse data without specifying exactly where and how in the data such an assertion can be justified. The fourth problem has two dimensions. First, there is the issue of the category under which the participants have been recruited. Potter and Hepburn give the examples of people being recruited for research being categorized in such roles as ‘lesbian mother’, ‘adolescent male’, or ‘recreational drug user’ (p. 290). Recruiting someone for an interview as a ‘teacher’ is likely to have significant
consequences for how interview interaction turns out, as they may orient to behaviours and opinions that may be expected from a member of this professional category. The other dimension of the ‘unavailabilty of the set up’ problem refers to what task
understandings are presented to participants. This usually occurs right at the beginning of interviews, or just before the recording device is switched on, with the result that this important aspect of the interview set up is lost. How were the participants informed about the goals of the interview? How was the interview task set up at the beginning? This type of information may be crucial for an understanding of how the interview actually unfolded as an interactional event.
The ‘necessary’ problems, which threaten the very validity of qualitative interviewing as a research method are:
1. The flooding of the interview with social science agendas and categories; 2. The complex and varying footing positions of interviewer and interviewee; 3. The possible stake and interest of interviewer and interviewee;
4. A drag toward cognitive and individual explanations.
(Potter and Hepburn 2005: 291)
As briefly discussed above, the first necessary problem relates to the use in interviews of a specialized terminology which may derive from the theoretical concerns of the researcher, but which do not represent the way the participants would describe their reality. Even when no technical terminology is used, this problem can be seen in the way researchers refer to topics in abstract terms, rather than the specifics of actual teachers, schools and learners.
The second necessary problem relates to the ways in which interviewees may be positioned as speaking as representatives of some category, such as teachers, or
themselves. ‘Footing’ is the term used by Goffman (1981) to describe the different ways a speaker can be positioned in relation to what he or she says. A speaker may simply an ‘animator’ or kind of mouthpiece for what is being said, without having chosen either the ideas or form of words. Or he or she can be the ‘author’ of the words, without necessarily being responsible for the content of what is being said. At the highest level of commitment, a speaker may be a ‘principal’ in the sense that he or she is responsibe for the ideas being expressed. As discussed above, people may be recruited for social science research as members of some category, such as teachers. Within the research interview as an interactional event, their ascribed membership of categories can be seen in the ways that they are addressed.
The third ‘necessary’ problem refers to ways in which participants in social interaction are not just neutral commentators on their own practices. All descriptions of actions, people, events or other phenomena can be read either explicitly or implicitly as displaying the speaker’s stake or interest. An interviewee, for example, may build a picture of his or her actions to make available a certain interpretation of these actions as justified, reasonable, etc. and to ward off any other interpretations that may be seen as unfavourable to his or her interests. The fourth necessary problem has two facets: conceptual rumination is privileged over action and cognitive language is treated as descriptive. The focus on conceptual rumination means that participants are positioned as commentators on what they think and do, rather than as practitioners taking part in some relevant activity. The assumption is, as Potter and Hepburn put it, that ‘You ask people about what they do and think and they helpfully tell you about it’ (2005: 298). Treating cognitive language as descriptive can mean falling into the trap of assuming that when participants talk about what someone thinks, wants, knows etc., they are
actually describing a pre-existing mental phenomenon, rather than using these categories as part of what their descriptions of reality are meant to do, for example attributing intention to someone as part of justifying one’s own response to their actions.
The overall point being made by Potter and Hepburn, and to a large extent by Mann, is that social researchers need to be more reflexive in their use of qualitative interviewing as a research method. Indeed, if we look at the ‘necessary’ problems, there may be strong grounds for not using interviews at all, and for preferring more naturally-
occuring types of interaction. At the very least, however, researchers who choose to use interviews and other similar forms of verbal commentary need to address the ‘discourse dilemmas’ or contingent problems. Generally, teacher cognition studies do not address these discourse dilemmas or contingent problems, let alone the necessary ones. The consequences of this are often an exacerbation of any one or more of the first three problems identified at the beginning of this section. For example, research reports often present blocks of participant talk pulled out of the data in order to illustrate cognitions such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘beliefs’. No information on the situational or interactional context may be given. For example, Hashweh (2005: 286) cites a piece of data which he claims shows that the teacher ‘subscribed to what might be called a cognitive view of learning’:
I like to do what’s called an overview. And I like to show them how this particular subject that we’re dealing with ties into stuff that they already know, how it fits into stuff that they’ve learned about … I help them fit it into their intellectual framework if possible.
Apart from the fact that the interviewer’s turn has been effaced so that we can’t see how this piece of interaction was co-constructed, there is a lack of specificity of observation. That is, we do not know exactly which part of the teachers’ turn shows that he has a ‘cognitive view of learning’. Usually, as is the case here, the interviewer is invisible (Potter and Hepburn 2005), airbrushed out of the presented data with the result that his/her contribution to how the teachers’ ‘cognitions’ were produced is lost. Sometimes researchers do mention interactional features, but, as Mann (2011) shows in his
discussion of Borg (2009), this may be just a mention, with no reproduction of transcribed data which would show these features in action.
The identification of these problems does not involve the invalidation of the valuable and necessary qualitative research on teacher cognition carried out over the last thirty years or so. What it does do is to add to Borg’s (2006) and Woods and Çakir’s (2011) calls for a clearer definition of concepts and terms, a call for greater reflexivity and transparency in recognizing the reflexive relationship between the (discourse) data produced by different elicitational methods, and the ‘cognitions’ produced. Most teacher cognition studies use discourse data as a resource, that is, as a means of gaining access to the other phenomena the researcher is interested in, such as knowledge,
beliefs, attitudes etc. An alternative is to see the discourse data as a topic in themselves, something that is worthy of study partly for its own sake, and partly for what it can tell us about how the other phenomena of interest to the study were produced in interaction. In fact, not doing this, or in Mann’s (2011) terms, not addressing the ‘discourse
dilemmas’, means that any teacher cognition study may be vulnerable to one or more of the four problems described in this section.