Bazeley and Jackson (2013) argue that researchers continue to hunt around for suitable programs that support their analysis. PowerPoint became a useful tool for diagramming my thinking, using it to visualise various concepts, such as cultural influence, early learning experiences or institutional factors. These concepts themselves do not explain much about the journey of shaping technological and pedagogical practice, but need to be
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put together in order to generate an understanding of how teacher educators’ pedagogy was shaped. In qualitative analysis, connecting meanings and concepts is inherently important. Without them the big picture would not be fully understood. Dey (2003) says “building blocks… But building requires more than blocks, the blocks must be brought together” (p. 48), conceding the importance of connections between concepts in order to theorise and conceptualise in-depth understanding. Buckley and Waring (2013) say that diagrams help a researcher conceptualise relationships between concepts. Through diagramming, I created visual representations of concepts emerging from different analysis steps, particularly those about the shaping of habitus and I diagrammed them in six different ways. I drew these diagrams on the basis of some thoughts and questions that emerged. Examples of these are:
- Do teacher educators experience tensions in the pedagogical context? (Appendix G); - Are teacher educators’ pedagogical practices influenced by their own background and
the institutional context? (Appendix G);
- Is teacher educators’ pedagogy culturally embodied? (Appendix G); and - Is their pedagogy shaped through ‘‘layers’? (Appendix G).
In this way, I continued creating diagrams until I found the most relevant and appropriate explanations for how teacher educators’ technological and pedagogical habitus were shaped. After creating each diagram, I analysed it by explaining it to some doctoral colleagues and my supervisors, and checked what they understood from the visual representations. I realised that every diagram helped me to refine and build more connections between the concepts that emerged in the early stages of analysis, and explaining the diagrams to someone else also helped clarify my interpretations. A range of these are covered in the discussion chapter, while other diagrams are in Appendix G. Step 6: Linking the habitus lens through the writing of findings
The diagramming approach helped me learn more about teacher educators’ journeys regarding the shaping of their pedagogical practices when they used digital technologies. However, I needed the habitus lens to be visible throughout my writing. In this phase, my writing became a form of analysis. Richardson (2005) argues that writing enables
researchers to construct knowledge about the researched area. At times, I wrote stories about specific participants, about how they started using technologies, started their career of teaching, their early education, their higher education, and their classroom practices. In this stage, I used the visual stories created through Inspiration 8 IE and diagrams along with my field notes, and data from other sources. I often I returned to original transcripts and memos. During this process, the theoretical lens of habitus helped form the big
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picture in understanding my participants’ practices. When writing about teacher
educators’ early learning experiences, for example, I interpreted them through habitus, for they appeared to influence participants’ pedagogical thinking and practice. This process of writing supported me in reflecting on what I understood about my participants’ practice through the habitus lens. Table 5.6 summarises the analysis process discussed above.
Table 5. 6. Data Analysis summary
Steps Tools Activities carried out Useful outcomes Importing &
transcribing
NVivo-10 - Import all data sources and organise them into folders.
- Transcribe all
interviews Translate all local language spoken interviews
- Enabled me to manage all data sources in one place. - Allowed me to write memos
on what I learnt from the hanging out approach - Allowed me annotate some
parts of the transcripts when necessary.
Open coding NVivo-10 - Read data line by line - Create codes on any
conversation relevant to my research focus - Write memos and
annotations reflecting on field journal entries.
- Enabled me to understand the piece by piece
- Led me to identify common themes and patterns across participants and across different sources of data
Axial coding NVivo-10 & Microsoft Word
- Create node summaries - Read through and code
each conversation - examine themes - Export the created
codes to Word document
- Read through the codes and write some
interpretations
- Examined how themes were connected with the
conversations
- Allowed me capture the context meanings and experiences pertaining to these conversations Seeking the big picture Microsoft Excel Mindjet Inspiration 8 IE - Create a matrix by using the main concepts - Develop a landscape representation in Mindjet - Create a visual overview of individual participants’ journeys
- Allowed me to capture in- depth story of teacher educators.
- Enabled me to achieve the main concepts associated with the shaping of pedagogical practice - Allowed me to seek the
missing pieces of the story - Enabled me to look for what
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Steps Tools Activities carried out Useful outcomes Diagramming to see connections between building blocks Microsoft PowerPoint
- Examine each concept with the conversations - Diagram more than six different explanations for how teacher educators’ pedagogical practices may have been shaped
- Allowed me to achieve a holistic understanding of how pedagogical practice is shaped
- Enabled me to produce a framework for understanding pedagogical practices of professionals in light of habitus lens Linking habitus lens through the writing Microsoft Word
- Write trajectories for each teacher educator - Write vignettes for
specific episodes linking with habitus lens
- Enabled me to provide thick descriptions about what is occurring in teacher educators pedagogical practice
- Allowed me to anticipate in- depth understanding of embodied cultural
phenomenon associated with teacher educators’ shaping of pedagogy.