Page 183 - Getting of the fence

6.2.1). Nevertheless, we believe it is important to also investigate whether and how the Comprehensive Approach has an impact on student engagement and student learning. Further longitudinal research is necessary to confirm our results and to investigate the Theory of Instruction. Such research should preferably take the effects of the process of sensemaking (Spillane et al., 2002; Weick et al., 2005; Coburn, 2001) as well as several contextual factors (Desimone, 2009) into serious consideration.
In Chapter 6 we reported on a two-year intervention that included eight
teachers and a total of 276 video-recorded EFL literature lessons. Observing only
one or two teachers throughout the course of two years would have provided us
the opportunity to include, for example, contextual factors at classroom and school
level (Desimone & Stukey, 2014), and thereby deepen the scope of our research.
However, because we were primarily interested in how teachers experience the
relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive Approach, we felt that perspectives
from several teachers working in different secondary schools (and therefore working
with different EFL literature curricula) would be more relevant in answering our
research questions. With regard to the number of lessons, one the one hand, this
was very time consuming and it could be argued that recording a certain percentage
per teacher would have been sufficient to provide a representation of the lessons.
However, recording a percentage requires selection (which lessons are recorded?)
and assumes generalizability. Furthermore, because the average percentage of EFL
literature lessons per year ranged between 6% and 42%, recording a percentage 7 would have created a distorted balance between the eight teachers. It could also
create pressure on the teachers in that they could get the feeling that they have
to show an excellent lesson, again affecting the generalizability. Although we feel
that the data collection suited our research purposes, further research into, for
example, one case or a selection of specific representative lessons, could provide
more detailed insights into how EFL literature lessons are taught and experienced
by both teacher and students. As an example, a logical extension of this thesis
would be a case study research into the Language approach in foreign language
literature lessons, an issue that we encountered in several empirical studies in
this thesis. Such research should not only consider the Language approach as a
referential function of language where language is regarded as “fixed data, finished
products, and non-negotiable meanings” (Chan, 1999, 39) but also in terms of
language awareness. According to Hawkins (1984), language awareness involves
challenging “‘pupils to ask questions about language’, encouraging learners ‘to
Summary, discussion, and conclusion
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