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Presentation of a mixed-methods approach to identify the development of a third space in a telecollaboration project.
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QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ATTITUDINAL COMPONENT OF ICC IN TELECOLLABORATION: A DIACHRONIC STUDY
Marta GuardaSarah GuthFrancesca HelmUniversity of Padova
Telecollaboration …
… is Internet-based intercultural exchange between students with different cultural/national
backgrounds organized in institutional contexts
… aims to develop language skills (Belz 2003; Belz & Thorne 2006;
O‘Dowd 2006, 2007) intercultural communicative competence (ICC)
(Byram 1997) online literacies (Helm & Guth 2010).
Research on ICC and telecollaboration Language learning / focus on form The influence of technology on learning Development of ICC
Non-linguistic - Surveys, interviews, transcripts Linguistic – Appraisal analysis to measure
attitude (Belz 2003) Corpora: focus on student interactions for
development of language (Belz 2006, Belz & Vyatkina 2005)
Aims of study
To investigate the diachronic development of attitudes of curiosity and openness and critical cultural awareness during a telecollaboration exchange through analysis of the diaries of a group of learners
To explore differences between individual learners
To identify common linguistic markers of attitude and critical cultural awareness
To explore the ‘added value’ and limitations of qualitative and quantitative approaches to the same data using a mixed methods approach
The Exchange
The diary writers
Characteristics of group – interculturally experienced, knowledge of at least 2 foreign languages, well-travelled, motivated, English level min. B1
Maria – Political Science student, Italian, insecure about language and technology
Elisa – Political Science student, Italian Marco – Political Science student, Italian Andrea – Political Science student, Italian Farah – Modern Foreign Languages student,
Lebanese, lived in France, Beirut, Italy
Data
Diachronic corpus of learner diaries of 5 students 44 entries over 9 weeks total 24,000 tokens based on discussion, text transcripts, posted as
comments to blog
Why diaries? They are a form of first person narrative, only
recently recognised as legitimate data in our field of research (Pavlenko and Lantolf 2000)
to gain insight into the factors, both individual and pedagogical, that can foster or hinder ICC development in telecollaboration
Definitions of constructs (Byram, 1997) Attitude
Curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own.
Critical Cultural Awareness/political education An ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of
explicit criteria, perspectives, pratices and produts in one’s own and other cultures and countries.
Research method: Mixed approach
learner diaries
qualitative analysis quantitative analysis
manual coding LIWC corpus anlaysis
Qualitative Analysis
Coding diaries Starting point – Byram’s savoirs New codes emerged related to specific context and
research aims, Reliability - 3 coders, established codes, separate
coding and discussion of differences to reach agreement.
‘Units of meaning’ (of various length) were assigned codes
Multiple and embedded codes were accepted Quantified codes to identify patterns, emergent
patterns between learners, and over course of exchange
Weekly patterns (whole group)
Critical cultural awareness
Total x student
Critical cultural awareness
Findings
Different identities and patterns in different learners Focus on different aspects of exchange Different roles (in situated context) eg. Farah –
Moderator, Marco – curious ethnographer, representative of values of ‘western male’, Elisa - stimulated discussions with provocations and parallels
Emerging trends Changing attitudes, perspectives and identity –
Farah became much more politically aware and interested, Elisa became much more critically aware of similarities
Quantitative Analysis
To see how attitude is reflected through language
Computerized content analysis – using LIWC
Corpus analysis used both quantitatively and qualitatively to further explore findings from coding and LIWC
To identify linguistic indicators of a ‘third space/culture’
LIWC – Computerized text analysisLIWC – developed by Pennebaker, Booth & Francis in 1990sPsychological meaning of words (see Tausczik and Pennebaker
2009).“The words we use …reflect what we are paying attention to,
what we are thinking about, what we are trying to avoid, how we are feeling, and how we are organizing and analyzing our worlds”
2 components: Dictionary – 80 categories of words reflecting language
dimensions linguistic processes: articles, pronouns, verbs: auxiliary, past,
present…; psychological processes: social, affective, cognitive …,
Processor - compares each word in a given file with the dictionary file
Compares linguistic features across different genres: emotional writing, science, blogs, novels, talking
Observations
Categories analysed:1° person single and pluralSocial processesAffective processesCognitive processes
Comparison with LIWC output variable informationMarked use of plural pronoun ‘we’ compared to all genresMarked presence of social processes in all studentsMarked development of cognitive mechanisms in some
studentsMarked positive emotion overall, marked negative
emotion in certain weeks for certain students
Corpus analysis
Methodology Wordlists – corpus and individuals Keywords – comparing each learner to rest
of group Confirm identity/attitude differences?
Concordances (Keywords in Context) for: adjectives which convey attitudes and
contribute to group membership personal pronouns and in-group identity
markers agreement and disagreement
Findings from corpus analysis Confirmation of qualitative study:
Identities and approaches of different learners (keywords handout)
Emergence of ‘third space’: A new and fluid space where identities are
negotiated and re-constructed through intercultural encounters and dialogue
A third space?
In-group identity markers Agreement/disagreement Adjectives that indicate group membership
and attitudes
Results reinforced by qualitative analysis of: Empathy Proper names and reference to the group
Third space (1)
Pronoun use indicatinggroup membership
Reference within the group (688 total occurr.):
“With the same joy and freshness, we met
yesterday for our second Soliya session!” “Bye bye for now...and see you next
time!” “Then everyone tried to explain what
they want to get out of Soliya”
Reference outside the group (116 total occurr.):
“Palestinian people have no choice to make their reasons heard”
“so if you, young people of Palestine, refuse to give peace a chance, who else would do that for you?”
Third space (2)
Agreement (15 occurr.) “All the guys agreed with my opinion” “The last question showed a total agreement within us”
Disagreement (8 occurr.) “And once again we weren’t agreeing because from Mark’s
point of view some occupation is an attempt to stabilize the region…which made me disagree”
Disagreement seen as “constructive”: “Respecting other points of view even if it’s different from ours
helps us create a better dialogue and makes us closer to one another, even if we disagree! Then disagreeing mixed with understanding makes the discussion more exciting!”
“I like very much my friends because (..) they like to take part in the discussion in a strong way, I mean if they disagree they underline why they haven’t the same opinion giving examples”
Third space (3)
Adjectives that indicate attitudes To evaluate the session
Interesting (51), great (17), fantastic (7), exciting (4), good (3), wonderful (2)
i.e. “my last Soliya session represented a really good moment to reflect about my future”
To convey feelings and attitudes Sad (10), surprised (6), afraid (4), curious (4) Not all adjs have negative connotation: i.e. “The time
finished quickly and we were sad to end the session, but luckily one week is short”
Third space (4)
Explicit reference to the
group and its members
NAME “In the end Mary asked us
to talk about something funny so I declared that I wish a ‘geometric beard’ like Mustafa!”
GROUP-IT “I hope not to have been
too boring. See you next week!”
GROUP-SO “I miss u all, my friends
and soliya’s sessions”
Third space (5)
Empathy (12 occurrences)
Within the group (6 occurrences) “As she lives in Palestine she is
emotional involved and so closed to the conflict that we can understand this choice of perspective”
“I was very mooved by his experience in the palestinian refugee camp and about what he told me on the humanitarian conditions of the palestinians!”
Outside the group (6 occurrences) “…everyone was stun about the
situation that Palestinian people are living”
Within the group
Outside the group
Conclusions
Mixed methods approach useful in validating/triangulating data
Importance of diaries as data source as evidence of attitudes development of IC competence and
change(s) in perspective Importance of diaries as learning tool
Comparing methods
Quantity of Data Time
Qualitative
Corpus Analysis
Computerized Text analysis
Qualitative Analysis
Corpus Analysis
Computerized text analysis
