El Fondo de las Naciones Unidas Para la Infancia (UNICEF)

Design

This research employs a constructivist, qualitative methodology. Interviews with

individuals and student groups were carried out in the naturalist setting of school and the research employed an interpretive theoretical perspective utilising both ethnographic and phenomenological methodologies.

Classroom observations were made of teachers who taught the student participants of this study to ‗frame‘ and develop questions used in interviews with participants. The interview approach of using standardised open-ended interview questions with a conversational strategy was employed with students, teachers and principals to investigate the three research questions:

Do Victorian Government secondary-school teachers explicitly model social skills so that students have the opportunity to develop social skills and social competence?

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What value do students, teachers and school leaders place on social competence as an educational outcome?

Do students identify teachers as exemplars/role models of social skills?

Individual interviews were conducted with teachers and principals. Multiple interviews and focus-group interviews were conducted with students. Ethics approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Ballarat and from the DEECD of Victoria. Participant identity was protected by the use of re-identifiable data, from which identifiers have been removed and replaced by a code.

Participants

The purpose of the study was initially raised with principals who then discussed it with school staff. When principal approval was achieved, I conducted an information evening, for interested parents of year seven students in one school and addressed year seven students in their classes at both participating schools. It was explained to interested participants that the research was about social skills with the intent to explore students‘ experiences about teachers‘ pedagogy in classrooms, their relationships with teachers and social competence gained in schools.

Teachers and students were invited to participate and consent forms were collected either from me (on the occasions on which the presentations were made) or from coordinating staff at each of the two schools who volunteered to participate in the study. Students were required to take consent forms home to gain and prove parent or carer consent. Eighteen young people chose to participate: eight males and ten females, all aged between twelve and fourteen years. Six students came from a background where their home language was not English; these students are termed as English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners by DEECD.

Having voluntary participation in this research could have resulted in a cohort of students who were the most engaged and motivated in their respective school settings, something of a non-heterogeneous sample. However, this does not appear to have been the case. Many of the students who were interviewed spoke of having difficulties at school, with several students disclosing that they had had instances of disruptive behaviour, absences, poor grades and suspensions for various reasons, including fighting.

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I approached teachers who taught year-seven students to be interviewed during my visits to the school. Multiple visits over the course of the school year allowed the teachers to make appointments for interviews with me when it was most convenient for them. I attempted in all cases not to add to teachers‘ workloads and for the research to cause as little disruption as possible to the school programme. All teachers approached agreed to be interviewed and fourteen interviews were conducted, with nine females and five males. Interviewed teachers taught across a number of subjects and their years of practice ranged from one newly graduated teacher to several teachers with over 20 years of teaching experience each. One male and one female principal were interviewed.

Methods

This study was conducted in two government secondary schools in the Melbourne metropolitan region. Data was collected from in-depth interviews, focus groups, participant observations of classroom-teacher behaviours and a research journal. The research journal allowed observations, overall impressions and emotional responses of the research process to be recorded. Multiple interviews over the course of three school terms, or seven months, were conducted to build a rapport between the participants and myself, and therefore, assist in ensuring the response data was more reliable.

An interview approach of using standardised open-ended interview questions with a conversational strategy was employed with students, teachers and principals. The purpose of this was to develop and explore guiding questions and those that emerged during interviews and to ensure that complementary issues were explored in the two separate schools. To ensure that the same issues were explored with students, teachers and

principals, the three interview schedules posed complementary questions. These questions concerned the value of social competency for individuals and the extent to which the concept of teachers as modellers of social skills was considered relevant and/or feasible. Each interview was audio taped and later fully transcribed by a professional service that guaranteed transcription security via internet upload and download. Separate consent for audio taping was required and one teacher chose not to have the interview recorded, which meant that I took interview notes with this teacher instead of using an audio tape. Interviews with principals were by appointment, were generally of one hour duration, and were conducted in their respective offices. These interviews focused on the value placed

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by the school on social competence as an educational goal, as well as on the resources available (e.g. staff professional development) to teach social skills. The role of classroom teachers in modelling social skills for students was also a theme explored in interviews with principals. The lens of inquiry was on an ethnographic investigation of the school social culture.

Teachers who were approached and agreed to participate often chose to be interviewed in the staff room or a vacant classroom, usually during a period when they were not required to teach or at lunch times. Interviews lasted from 25 to 90 minutes with the average teacher interview being of 60 minutes duration. Interviews with students were conducted during class time with their teachers‘ permission to be absent from class. No teacher refused to allow a student to participate but some students chose (on occasions) to stay in class rather than leave for an interview. Student interviews were conducted in quiet

spaces such as conference rooms, libraries and staff offices and varied in duration from 45 to 85 minutes. Nineteen focus-group interviews and four single-student interviews were conducted. Focus groups ranged in size from two to six students and consisted of all-girl, all-boy and mixed gender focus groups. School timetables and programmes dictated planning schedules on research days in schools, but participants‘ absences or other unexpected events, which can be common in schools, affected some research-day plans. Some flexibility and adaptability were necessary to utilise the available time effectively. The lens of inquiry of student interviews focused on their perceptions of the phenomenon of teachers as exemplars or role models of social skills. The research also focused on investigating teachers and students‘ views on teacher–student relationships and

interactions that develop and shape the culture of the school. This ethnographic approach sought to investigate the opportunities available to students within the school curriculum, specifically teacher pedagogy, to develop social skills and social competence.

Teacher pedagogy was observed during my visits to classrooms of year-seven teachers (with their permission). A Teacher Observation Checklist—Social Skills (see Appendix 1) was devised based on observable behaviours characteristic of the three social skills of i) interpersonal skills (listening attentively and empathically, offering support, giving compliments and sense of humour); ii) self-awareness and control (temper control, coping with frustration or anger, describing one‘s own emotions and behaviour, and accepting criticism); and iii) assertion (initiating conversations, inviting others to interact and

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acknowledging compliments). Annotations made in the Teacher Observation Checklist when behaviours were observed, together with written notes, assisted me to put the teacher behaviours and situations in context to ensure that questions discussed with students and school staff were relevant and about ‗real‘ situations.

To refine the interview questions, a pilot test was conducted by initially interviewing one student and seeking feedback about question clarity and interview style. Research

questions were manipulated or re-posed when students appeared not to comprehend completely the meaning of the question. Care was taken when interviewing EAL learners to explain terms and some expressions, for example, when discussing the concept of a role model, an explanation of the term was provided to the students as follows: ‗someone you look up to, or someone that maybe you would like to be like‘.

The research journal allowed observations, overall impressions and emotional responses of the research process to be recorded. In addition, by matching the dates of the

interviews with the journal entries, a richer sense of the data was achieved that further strengthened the data triangulation of this research.

Interview transcripts were made available at the end of the school year for participants to view to check for authenticity and accuracy of transcription. One teacher took the

opportunity to edit the manuscript where she felt the transcribed comments did not accurately reflect her intended meaning.

Transcript analysis

Data analysis began by reading the interview transcripts and looking for themes that emerged from participants. Transcripts were verbatim and the essential raw data for this research. Analysis of the respective groups of interview transcripts, principals, teachers and students, was initially performed in accordance with Robson‘s (2002, pp. 487–488) outline of thinking, developing categories and progressive focusing. Patton‘s (2002) requirement for a ‗sense of the whole‘ was determined (p. 440).

Significant participant responses that had themes that related to the research questions about the phenomenon of teachers as role models or exemplars of social skills and the ‗culture‘ of pedagogical teacher–student relationships, and school as it relates to social- skills acquisition were extracted and coded by hand.

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Meanings were formulated by connecting emerged themes with significance by ‗creative insight‘, a term used by Colaizzi in Kickett-Tucker (2008, p. 142), which means to connect the language to meaning. Themes and related meaning were examined and a detailed description of the findings of the phenomenon of teachers as role models or exemplars of social skills and the ‗culture‘ of pedagogical teacher–student relationships and school as it related to social skill acquisition were made.

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