All of the project participants were initially contacted by phone or e-mail to briefly explain the purpose and requirements of the research. These initial contacts were made to the provider CEO or equivalent. None declined the invitation to participate in the study, although two providers did not have programmes currently running or current ones that met the requirements of the sample. Alternative programmes were successfully sought that matched these providers’ characteristics. Two providers in addition to the 15 stipulated in the research brief were also contacted in order to extend the diversity of provision, but both withdrew late in the project due to issues and incidents that were not related to the research study.
Once providers agreed to participate, they were e-mailed a Participant Information Sheet outlining in greater detail the requirements for the project and asked if they would like anything explained further. The CEOs were then asked to nominate a teacher for the study, once they had discussed the project with prospective subjects; we specified that we were looking for “a reasonable cross-section of teachers and not necessarily their most experienced or best teacher.” In many cases, simple availability and the type of class currently being taught determined the selection of the nominated teacher. Only one teacher declined the invitation to participate; this teacher was relatively new and did not feel comfortable about being observed. Informal feedback in the course of the project also indicated that in most cases the nominated teachers were not atypical; there is no indication that we did not access ‘fairly typical’ teachers from the organisation participating in the study.
Specific arrangements were then made with the participating teachers as to logistics for the observations. In three cases, it was only possible to observe one session, as specific events or difficulties (e.g. learners not turning up, restrictions on times and schedules with non-Auckland visits) meant that a second session was not feasible.
Where possible, learners who were willing to participate were also interviewed about their perspectives on learning after the final observation. Again, this component was not possible in six cases, because of logistical issues such as learners having to leave immediately after their teaching session. Overall, we decided that the data gained from these learners was of limited value for this study and we have therefore decided not to report them. This is not to say that learner perspectives are unimportant; indeed, we feel that they are an important viewpoint on literacy, numeracy and language learning and one that has been shown to be extremely weak in the research literature (Benseman et al., 2005). Rather, we believe that learner perspectives warrant a study in their own right, where greater consideration can be given to developing an appropriate methodology than we have been able to do in this present study.