Methodology Literature Review

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Methodology Literature Review

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Methodology Literature Review

Introduction

This methodology literature critical review intends to support the methodology that will be used to research teachers’ perceptions of parental involvement in special education preschools in Saudi Arabia. The central question of the study is; what are the barriers to parental involvement in the provision of special education in preschools in Saudi Arabia and what perceptions do preschool teachers hold regarding these barriers?

There are disparities in the manner in which teachers and parents perceive their roles in providing education to special needs children in preschools in Saudi Arabia. On one hand, parents in the kingdom assume that teachers have the sole mandate over the schooling of children, while teachers claim that parents withhold their contribution in helping their children acquire quality education (Gahwaji, 2019). Consequently, a communication barrier ensues between these two critical partners, which leads to a lack of collaboration in providing preschool children with special needs with high-quality education (Nitecki, 2015). This study seeks to unearth the barriers to parents-teachers collaboration and explore the underlying perceptions that hinder such collaboration. Epstein’s model for parental involvement provides a suitable theoretical framework for interrogating the research topic by providing different aspects of parental involvement, which are researchable (Epstein, et al., 2018). These components describe parenting style according to parenting skills, communication, volunteerism, home learning, decision-making, and community collaboration (Epstein, 2013). According to this model high-impact family engagement is beneficial to the performance of a school, while parent-teacher engagement facilitate the attendance of high learning and developmental needs of children with academic, emotional, and social benefits (Epstein, 2013). Therefore, parents and teachers are best positioned to explain, through their naratives, why parental collaboration is functional or dysfunctional, and abundant or minimal, while revealing the challenges facing parental involvement in the education setting.  

The methodology described in this critical review is expected to enhance the knowledge and skills of the researcher as a student of special education administration and facilitate the formulation of a policy that would enhance collaboration between parents and teachers and stimulate family engagement in the special schools’ setting. The methodology is based on the view that parent-teacher collaboration is a social phenomenon that can be studied systematically and wholesomely. Epstein’s model for parental involvement underpins the theoretical framework that will underpin qualitative research and guide the interview questions that will be directed to parents and teachers (Epstein, et al., 2018). Therefore, it should facilitate the utilization of specific methodology aspects that are cohesive in enabling the answering of the research question, which is about the perception of teachers and parents of preschoolers in Saudi Arabia. To this end, the critical review will justify the application of interpretivism, qualitative research, narrative strategy and design, purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis as the research philosophy, approach, strategy and design, sampling strategy and techniques, data collection methods, and data analysis procedures respectively.

Critical Review

From the research question and objectives of this study, qualitative research appeared the most appropriate given that the findings of the study would be in form of qualitative data comprising words, statements, and explanations from education stakeholders, namely parents and teachers. The study intends to unearth perceptions of teachers and parents regarding their collaboration barriers in the provision of quality education for preschoolers with special in Saudi Arabia. Qualitative research is suitable for research in the field of education because it can gather in-depth information about the experiences of education stakeholders using a variety of data collection approaches (Creswell & Creswell, (2017). In qualitative studies, meaning is rooted in the experiences of participants, which is mediated by the perceptions of the researcher (Antwi and Hamza, 2015). Therefore, qualitative research endeavors to unearth perceptions about how social experiences are created, perceived, and given meaning (Kivunja and Kuyini, 2017). This premise facilitated the selection of an appropriate philosophical foundation that captures my belief system and worldview and places it into a research paradigm. Using this philosophical orientation, other aspects of the methodology, such as the research approach, strategy and design, sampling strategy and techniques, data collection methods, and data analysis procedures can be selected objectively.

Research Philosophy

This study will be philosophically founded on constructivism. I arrived at this research paradigm after answering three philosophical questions related to ontology, epistemology, and methodology. I had to clarify my conceptualization of the nature of reality, my relationship with the participants intended for the study, and how we would gather knowledge about the world around us. I intend to capture the diverse perspectives of teachers and parents, with each giving his or her view of the lived experience. The multiplicity of the responses is justified by the presence of multiple realities for the numerous participants as would be accommodated by my worldview. My relationship with the participants is diverse because it is characterized by being a guide to encourage the participants to reveal their perceptions and interactions because of the free conversations we intended to hold. Also, the participants and I can gain the knowledge of the world through constructive conversations that allow us to share our perspectives and discover those of each other, to form a basis on which they can be influenced and changed for the better (Adom, Yeboah, & Ankrah, 2016). For these reasons, I chose the constructivist research paradigm because it conforms to my belief that people build their own knowledge of the world using their experiences and reflections of them (Adom, Yeboah, & Ankrah, 2016). In this regard, the experiences of teachers and parents and the resultant sense-making of them influence their knowledge and actions about educating children with special needs. Further justification is provided by Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2013) who contend that constructivism is applicable in education research because it explains how learning occurs during the study process, which influences the perspectives of the researcher and participants, and ultimately inspires change as a learning outcome. Kenny and Fourie, R. (2015) argue that constructivism allows the researcher and participant to co-construct knowledge from the mutual interpretation of meaning from the participants’ experiences.

Research Approach

This study will use qualitative research as the preferred research approach. Qualitative research has several strengths that make the approach of choice for gathering perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and behavioral choices of people living an experience (Saldaña & Omasta, 2016). These strengths convinced me to opt for qualitative research for several reasons. Firstly, qualitative research delivers in-depth information regarding a lived experience, and is therefore preferred to studying social problems. Antwi and Hamza (2015) and Alharahsheh and Pius (2020) argue that qualitative research focuses on human behavior as being dynamic rather than static, and is therefore changing over time, based on internal and external influenced on the actor. In the same vein, Creswell and Poth (2016) support the ability of qualitative research to produce high-quality comprehensive information about a phenomenon from the diverse choice of methods and techniques that it affords the researcher. In this aspect, the researcher can choose between questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, archived publications, presenting a myriad of methods for collecting primary and secondary data. Similarly, Queirós, Faria, and Almeida (2017) revealed that qualitative research offered a broader focus that was required for addressing group studied and problem contexts due to its flexibility and exploratory quality. The problem addressed by this study is broad because it touches practice, parenting, and policy issues, alongside being culturally situated in Saudi Arabia, in which the lived experiences are uniquely by Islamic and Arabic traditions on family and education. 

Secondly, qualitative research can deliver high-quality results because it has eight identifiable markers of quality, including significant contribution, resonance, credibility, rich rigor, topic worthiness, sincerity, meaningful coherence, and ethics (Tracy, 2010). This makes qualitative research flexible and expansive, and thus suitable for studying complex social problems, such as this study’s parental collaboration in preschool education in Saudi Arabia. The researcher can particularly be assured of valuable information that can be used to inform policy decisions related to the improvement of parental collaboration and involvement in education and teacher training in improved collaboration with parents, in line with the ambitions of Vision 2030, which sought to have 80% of families involved the school activities by 2020 (Gahwaji, 2019). In this regard, qualitative research aligns the research problem, question, and objectives to the research strategies of data collection and analysis.

Thirdly, qualitative research is aligned with the constructivism paradigm in this study. The resulting cohesion is appropriate for a well-structured study because it will deliver valid and authentic findings, which also convinced the researcher to opt for qualitative research (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). Several researchers have argued that research approaches are compatible with specific research paradigms, with qualitative research being best matched with constructivism as an offshoot of interpretivism (Kivunja & Kuyini, 2017; Panhwar, Ansari, & Shah, 2017; Rehman & Alharthi, 2016; and Saldaña & Omasta, 2016). Moreover, Antwi and Hamza (2015) and Alharahsheh and Pius (2020) have praised the alignment between qualitative research and interpretivism/constructivism because of their compatibility in exploring educational issues, like the one being addressed in this study.  

Fourthly, qualitative research is cost-effective, while allowing the researcher to remain creative. By speeding up the data capture process without compromising its quality or increasing its cost, qualitative research is preferred when time and financial resources are a constraint (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). This advantage is critical considering that movement and gathering are restricted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which makes the collection of quantitative data particularly challenging, and therefore leaving the qualitative approach as a viable alternative.   

Research Strategy and Design

A narrative research strategy and design will be used in this study. This strategy and design uses narratives in the form of stories, which are relational, social and laden with power relations, to express personal identities, experiences, explanations, and justifications about lived experiences at specific times and settings (O’Toole, 2018). This choice is advised by Bruce, et al. (2016), Loh (2013), McAlpine (2016), and O’Toole (2018). For instance, McAlpine (2016) and Loh (2013) argued that narrative studies are compatible with the interpretive-constructivist paradigm and qualitative research. Therefore, it fits with the proposed study because it will help study human experiences, like teachers’ and parents’ experiences with working with each other in a special needs preschool setting.

Bruce, et al. (2016) revealed that narratives are developed from in-depth discussions between the interviewer and participants to elicit a shared understanding of the lived experiences. O’Toole (2018) noted that narrative inquiry was becoming popular in social and educational research because it combined personal and institutional storytelling, which situated people and their experiences in a context, while helping the researcher develop an in-depth understanding of their behavior. Narratives revealed the intersectionality between practices and environments. In this regard, narratives will help parents and teachers express the sociocultural elements that facilitate or hinder their collaboration and partnering in preschool children’s’ education. Moreover, they are applicable with interviews and thematic analysis, which are proposed for this study.

Sampling Strategy and Techniques

A sampling scaffold will be used to implement a combination of purposive sampling and snowball sampling until saturation is reached. A sampling scaffold is a structured guideline directing the sampling strategy by outlining the pertinent considerations on sampling, such as participant selection, number of participants, and site selection, which confirming their feasibility and ethical grounding (Qureshi, 2018). In this regard, the researcher will select teachers and parents of preschool students in Saudi Arabia. Their selection is based on the insightful knowledge they have about parent-teachers collaboration, family involvement, and the barriers that hinder parent-teacher partnerships in Saudi Arabia. Purposive sampling and snowball sampling will be used concurrently until saturation of new information is reached. These nonprobability sampling techniques are preferred for their cost, time, and personnel effectiveness, particularly when the researcher is facing these constraints (Etikan, Musa, & Alkassim, 2016). For these reasons, the researcher preferred to have a sampling guide in form of a strategic scaffold that outlined the sampling process stepwise.

Purposive sampling was preferred because it helped the researcher target participants that are knowledgeable about the subject matter of the planned study. Singh (2015) helped the researcher arrive at this sampling technique because he argued that its judgmental nature facilitated the researcher to capture sections and attributes of a population that are difficult to select using random sampling, particularly those present in small sampling units, such as preschool parents and teachers. Also, Singh (2015) advised that the bias purposive sampling introduced can be mitigated by selecting participants with vast attributes, like teaching disciplines, age, work experience, and the number of preschool children. Therefore, the researcher will select participants that represent diverse preschool parents and teachers, as espoused in the maximum variation sampling to enhance information richness and broaden insights (Kim, Sefcik, & Bradway, 2017).

However, the researcher will also use snowball sampling as a variant of purposive sampling, to help build up diverse knowledge and information regarding the research problem. Using the participants already identified using the purposive technique, the researcher will ask them to invite their acquaintances to participate in the study, and offer additional information, until no new themes are forthcoming, meaning that saturation will have been reached, in a purposive snowball sampling approach (Sharma, 2017). Woodley and Lockard (2016) explain this advantage of snowball sampling by arguing that it helped access more participants where few are known or accessible directly to the researcher, especially those from a hard-to-reach population, such as parents and teachers of children with special needs. Moreover, Sharma (2017) supports the researcher’s choice by noting that purposive sampling is compatible with qualitative research designs that consist of several phases. In this regard, snowball sampling is used to build on the sample gaps identified by purposive sampling to enhance heterogeneity in the population representation and foster generalizability (Sharma, 2017). In this regard, the researcher will target 30 participants comprising an equal number of preschool parents and teachers. This decision is supported by Qureshi (2018), who noted that 10 to 25 knowledgeable participants could provide comprehensive information regarding a phenomenon without thinning data. Although the researcher cannot visit preschools in Saudi Arabia, the participants can be accessed from staff lists of the schools. Also, informed and voluntary consent will be sought directly from preschool parents and teachers, as advised by Cridland, Jones, Caputi, and Magee (2015), who warned against soliciting consent using family proxies when studying sensitive topics. Therefore, the participants will be informed about the protection of privacy, guaranteeing of confidentiality, and ethical use of results when soliciting their consent, as recommended by Cridland, et al. (2017).           

Data Collection Methods

Semi-structured interviews will be used to collect data from preschool teachers and parents in Saudi Arabia. The interviews will be administered using the telephone to avoid contravening the social distancing and travel restrictions placed by the Saudi government following the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. So far, Saudi students are attending virtual classes as schools remain closed in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic (Khamis, 2020; Love, 2020). This means that preschool teachers cannot be accessed from their place of work, requiring an alternative arrangement for conducting the proposed interviews. The recruited preschool parents and teachers will be asked to choose between a direct call from the interviewer, a WhatsApp call, or an online chat. This approach is preferred because it will be convenient for the participants and the researcher as well. The interviews can be held at the convenience of the participants, in terms of time and location. It is expected that the participants can respond to the interviews at the comfort of their homes and at a time of their choice. However, the researcher will send a soft copy of the questions that will guide the interview before the planned date of the interview to allow the participants to prepare themselves sufficiently.  

This choice is informed by the several advantages semi-structured interviews present, particularly when studying sensitive topics with hard-to-reach participants. Parents and teachers of preschool children with special needs are sensitive about issues related to educating such children, and therefore wary of divulging too much information. However, Cridland, et al. (2015) note that semi-structured interviews allow families of children with special needs to express their experiences freely without being controlled by the researcher, allow diverse perceptions to be aired, and are flexible enough to focus on issues that participants consider meaningful.

Data Analysis Procedures

Thematic analysis will be used to make sense of the qualitative data obtained from the participating preschool teachers and parents. The critical variant of thematic analysis suits this study best because it will allow the interrelationships between ideologies, power relations, social practices, and interview discussions, which influence parent-teacher collaboration is a special school setting to be unearthed from the narratives of the teachers and parents (Lawless & Chen, 2019). The research question of this study has complex issues that influence the teacher-parent collaboration in educating children with special needs. These include Islamic and Arabic influences, and power relations between parents of the children and between teachers and education officials, which collectively influence parenting practices and teacher-parent interactions. In this regard, the critical thematic analysis gives critical qualitative research the methodological rigor for analyzing complex social issues (Clarke, Braun, & Hayfield, 2015), which informed the researcher’s choice. However, Javadi and Zarea (2016) offered the researcher some advice on how to bias and misinterpretation that comes with rephrasing and translating data, from Arabic to English in this case. For these reasons, the researcher will opt for latent themes rather than thematic ones, because they will unearth the hidden ideas, assumptions, and conceptualizations from the participants’ narratives (Maguire & Delahunt, 2017).   

Descriptive interpretation of the data from the participants will help present the information and knowledge unearthed by the thematic analysis of the interview responses. Qualitative descriptions produce an in-depth and comprehensive summary of the interview data, with narrative excerpts from the participants, and the themes unearthed from the thematic analysis (Kim, Sefcik, & Bradway, 2017). It fits with this study because the researcher seeks to understand comprehensively the challenges that hinder parent-teacher collaboration.

Conclusion

This critical review discussed the methodology that will be used in this study. The reviewed literature supported the application of constructivism as the philosophical orientation of the study and researcher. This was tied together with qualitative research to be performed using narrative strategy and design to situate the study in Saudi Arabia while studying the phenomenon of preschool parent-teacher interactions and collaboration. Semi-structured interviews responded by teachers and parents that will be sampled using the purposive snowball sampling technique and whose responses will be analyzed using critical thematic analysis will unearth the pertinent themes explaining the barriers in teacher-parent collaboration is preschools in Saudi Arabia.

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