Archiving Self-Access : Methodological considerations
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: This study has illustrated how a long-term ethnographic approach of archiving data and profiling its key participants represents an effective means of revealing perceptions of a new Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) within a university in Japan. This on-going process of conducting qualitative interviews and conversational narratives with center staff, accompanied by student questionnaires, has required methodological reduction of the large amount of ensuing data. Such a process is achieved by a combination of crystallization of themes emerging from dialogues, and analysis of questionnaire data from various perspectives. This methodology reflects the researchers' wishes to investigate the self-access center where they work in a manner more locally situated, co-constructive and, importantly, in one which accords voice and agency to peripheral SALC stakeholders. As a study for the purpose of the continuous improvement of practice, the triangulated methodology employed to gather and analyze data can be adopted by other self-access centers seeking a rich, diverse body of evidence and an analytical framework to respond to the pedagogical and institutional environment where they operate.
Authors: John Adamson, Howard G. Brown, Naoki Fujimoto-Adamson
Language: English
Topic: Data Analysis and Archiving
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W45282896