What Can The Diary Study Tell Us?

By Author: Clementine
Total Articles: 129
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In this study, I have examined whether it is possible to collect data about participants' perceptions about classroom language learning. I have attempted to highlight the numerous conceptual and operational difficulties I experienced in a self-report diary study. I showed that some participants were more 'fruitful' than others (Block op. cit.), raising dilemmas about data treatment. I also illustrated that it was necessary to make numerous assumptions about the limited nature of the collected data.

The constraints I have discussed suggest that we should operate with a systematic 'distrust' of diary data and what we think it might show. Thus, All right (personal communication) suggests that 'a participant said this, it is interesting (to me), and this is what I understand by it at this time' might be as much as diary studies can reasonably assert. This seems to indicate that much can be learnt (but perhaps little can be generalized) from participants' perceptions of the language classroom.

Although limited, this perspective can still prove fruitful. If the limitations and decision-making process within data collection ...
... (and subsequent analysis) are made explicit, then readers will be able to: Experience vicariously the setting that is described and confront the key assertions and constructs ... [and]... consider the author's theoretical and personal perspective as it has changed through the study (Erikson 1986:145)This suggests that specific understandings of data are acceptable within our professional community provided these interpretations are disseminated and also draw upon a full, and fully illustrated, theoretical framework.

I am not suggesting, therefore, that diary studies are invalid, but that they are extremely problematical. Nor am I suggesting that the findings of such studies should be kept at an individual level, but that the problems and complexities of diary data need to be made explicit for any audience or readership to find those elements of the study which are genuinely relevant to their own context. Diary findings might be typical of many or most English language classrooms, but, more importantly, they can provide points of immediate interest and recognition for our professional community (and communities) to consider. Accessible mechanisms for dissemination, both formal and informal, through publication and via associations or networks of teachers need support for, as Cameron (1992: 24) notes, 'if something's worth knowing, it's worth sharing'. So too, I hope, are these experiences of the complex nature of 'doing' ethnographic, diary-based research.Our Coach Replica Bags with detailed imitation, qualified materials and lowest price endow you the same dignity and elegance of the original one. You would love cocah hippie handbags 13411 in grey at first sight.