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A qualitative case study approach was applied to this research. Qualitative research is concerned with the phenomena in everyday life, in this case the reality of students’ and teachers’ lives. The exploration of meaning in context is the key to understanding a phenomenon (Denzin & Lincoln, 2013: 7).

Qualitative case study also provides an in-depth understanding of the situation and meaning for those involved. Within case study research, a comprehensive understanding of the case is interpreted and analysed by taking into account the influence of each aspect in context and synthesising these aspects in a whole order to give an in-depth and comprehensive description of the case (Stake 2005). According to Yin (2003), a case study is used to answer “when”, “how”, and “why” questions in research. Thus, case study is appropriate to answer “when”, “how” and “why” teachers code-switched in this research context.

3.2.1 Research context

The participants of this study, both teachers and students, worked in two elementary schools in Kota adang, West Sumatra, Indonesia − Se olah Dasar Percobaan Negeri Kota Padang and Sekolah Dasar Pembangunan UNP Padang. These schools had included English-language instruction in the curriculum for at least the last 10 years. The former was a pilot school for elementary schools in Kota Padang (Diknas No: 302/C2/DL/2009- refers to a project number); the pilot school acted as a testing ground for subject, curriculum and methodology development, and as a model for elementary schools in the surrounding Kota Padang area. It was located in the centre of Padang City. Sekolah Dasar Pembangunan UNP Padang was linked to the Padang State University and the program offered there was developed with the university; thus, the English- language program at the school was developed by the English faculty members.

These two schools were set up as bilingual programmes or Rintisan Sekolah Berstandar Internasional (Pilot International Standard Schools as per Act of The Republic of Indonesia, 2009). This program was officially terminated in January 2013 because it appeared exclusively targeted for students with high economic status, and was thus criticised for discriminating against poor students (Margana, 2013). Rintisan Sekolah Berstandar Internasional was a school where students learn Maths and Science delivered in English. Some of the vocabulary they learned in English class might have already been learned in Math or Science class, for example, in English class they learned the vocabulary of ‘weather and seasons’. These vocabularies had already been learned in their Science class. In other words, these students were not only getting language input in the English class but also from Science and Math class.

The number of students in each class participating in this research ranged from 20 to 25. The classes selected for classroom recordings were the ones in which teachers A, B, and C, as I will refer to them, taught English. All the participating students were between 10 to 12 years of age. They had all learned English as a foreign language for a 70 minute period per week from first grade in elementary school. School terms run for a total of 34 weeks a year; thus, they potentially had 132 sessions of English-language instruction, or 9240 hours. In this sense, with the implementation of the 2013 curriculum, students who graduate from primary school miss a chance to be exposed to English in a classroom for 55,440 hours since they are not learning English in primary

school anymore. The students start learning English as a subject in year seven or secondary school (Depdiknas, 2013). In the 2013 curriculum, English as a subject in primary school in Indonesia was taken away from the curriculum. But up till now there are still discussions and debates on re-taking English teaching in primary schools in Indonesia (Tuhusetya, 2014).

Each English lesson in Indonesia, as in many contexts, consists of three stages: pre-teaching, ‘whilst-teaching’ (exploration, elaboration, and confirmation), and post-teaching, as required by the English curriculum for elementary school (Depdi nas, 2006). These stages need to be clearly stated in the teacher’s lesson plan for each lesson unit (see appendix 3 for an example of a teacher’s lesson plan). In pre-teaching activities, the teacher introduces the topic and gives the students clear instructions and modellings of the language to teach in that lesson. In the next stage, the ‘whilst-teaching’ stage, students are supposed to practice based on their needs, the aim being to encourage independent learning. In the post-teaching activity, the lesson concludes with the summary of the lesson that day. Hence, the present research explored the opening, body, and concluding stages of classroom discourse in terms of the language used.

One important difference between the present study and other studies on code- switching in Indonesia is that in this study the recording of the three stages of each lesson are differentiated. For example, this research investigated in which stage of the teaching the teacher mostly used English or Bahasa Indonesia and

3.2.2 Selection and description of teacher participants

Prior to the researcher contacting the schools selected for this research, a letter from the Department of Education of Padang City was sent to meet the local requirements for the conduct of this research. I communicated my intention first through email to the principals of the two schools in order to ensure that they knew what I was going to do with their staff and students.

The participant selection was undertaken by sending an invitation letter to the two schools mentioned above, specifying certain criteria. The initial criteria for the selection of teachers were as follows:

 They were classroom teachers responsible for teaching not only English, but also all other subjects in their class, except Sports and Religion.  They were all graduates from English departments in Indonesian

universities.

 The teaching course that they completed prepared them either for elementary teaching, or for secondary teaching.

The response from the schools was that there were three teachers who taught English subject in the two schools who fit the criteria. The three teachers who agreed to participate in this research were therefore: two teachers from grade 5 of Sekolah Dasar Percobaan Padang, and one teacher who taught grade 5 and 6 of Sekolah Dasar Pembangunan Padang.

All teachers participating in this study were female.

 Teacher A was 27 years old. She had a bachelor’s degree in English and had been teaching English for 4 years.

 Teacher B was 24 years old. She also had a bachelor’s degree in English and had been teaching English for 2 years. These two teachers (Teacher A and Teacher B) taught at Sekolah Dasar Percobaan, Padang.  Teacher C, 39 years old, taught English at Sekolah Pembangunan UNP

adang. She had a bachelor’s degree and had been teaching English for 12 years. Teacher C had also taught at secondary schools.

The three teachers spoke Bahasa Minang, Bahasa Indonesia and English. However, they never had been to an English speaking country. In terms of proficiency levels, Teacher C’s English seemed to be the lowest among the teachers, as was evident when observing her lessons. She apologized repeatedly for her low level of proficiency in English during interview.