Announcing
PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense
Hanbyul Jung
Evaluation of a professional development program for Korean EFL teachers in focus group interaction
Chair: Gabriele Kasper
Wednesday, 13 May, 2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 258
Focus groups are an underused method of knowledge production in applied linguistics. When focus groups are chosen over dyadic interviews, the standard reason for doing so is that participants interact with other experts on the focal topic. Yet as in the case of research interviews, the analysis of focus group data typically summarizes the topical content rather than examining how the ‘content’ is produced through the interaction (Puchta & Potter, 2004; Wilkinson, 2011). Using Conversation Analysis (CA), this dissertation aims to (a) re-specify focus group interaction as a locus for participants’ locally and jointly accomplished actions, stances, and identities, and (b) better inform the evaluation questions framing the focus groups.
The focus groups were conducted within a program evaluation context with seven groups of Korean teachers of English participating in a study-abroad teacher development program in the U.S. All groups, each consisting of 4-6 teachers and conducted in Korean, addressed (a) the recruitment process, (b) the teachers’ needs, goals, and expectations prior to the program, (c) how these were met, and (d) the teachers’ suggestions for change. The first analysis chapter examines sequential features of focus groups particularly outlining the openings and turn allocations distributed among participants. The second analysis chapter focuses on the ways topics are constructed and distributed by participants, specifically focusing on how participants formulate responses to the focus group protocol by constructing collaborated talk, constructing the response together as a group, and also through disagreement sequences. The final analysis chapter informs participants’ orientation to focus groups as a social activity, first by examining how participants explicitly display their understanding of the ongoing institutional interaction, and second, by highlighting participants’ talk construction as experts, through epistemic primacy claims and story construction.
The findings contribute to an understanding of the focus group interaction, as well as participants’ perspectives and opinions of the teacher development workshop. These contributions lend important implications: (a) methodological in re-specifying focus groups as a research method; and (b) language policy-related implications on the program and national level concerning teaching and learning the English language in South Korea. It is hoped that this study provides further evidence of the exigency for detailed and comprehensive analyses of focus group interactions, which enables a more nuanced, complex, and grounded view of the research concerns that animate them in the first place.