Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

6 RESEARCHING APPLIED LINGUISTICSet al‚ 1993; Strauss et al‚ 1998). Table 1 presents a list of studies using interviews toresearch teacher knowledge and teacher learning. For more information on composinginterview questions‚ see Foddy (1994) or Seidman (1998). For a finely detailed look atan interview tool see Kennedy‚ Ball and McDiarmid (1993).QuestionnairesThere are several different kinds of questionnaires such as Likert scale questionnaires(where participants choose a response on a continuum)‚ checklist questionnaires (whereparticipants check of actions they do‚ values they share‚ information they are familiarwith‚ etc.)‚ and open-ended questionnaires (where participants write answers to specificopen-ended questions). Likert scale questionnaires are convenient data collectioninstruments as they are easy to use with large numbers of participants and offer clear‚numerical data which is easy to analyze. Questionnaires can focus on both specificknowledge about teaching and pedagogical content knowledge (for an excellent examplesee Kennedy‚ Ball & McDiarmid‚ 1993) or teachers’ conceptions of and attitudestowards teaching and their content knowledge (Fang‚ 1996; Horwitz‚ 1985). Whenquestionnaires are used to investigate teachers beliefs or conceptions of languagelearning‚ it should not be assumed that changes in these reported beliefs directly reflectchanges in how teachers conceive of and carry out their teaching (e.g. MacDonald‚Badger‚ & White‚ 2001) as studies have shown that general beliefs and those used foractual teaching are often divergent (Foss & Kleinsasser‚ 2001; Kennedy‚ 1996; Zeichner&Tabachnick‚ 1981)In general‚ questionnaires should not be used alone‚ but triangulated with data fromother sources in order to establish the credibility of the results (Fang‚ 1996; Kalaja &Barcelos‚ 2003; Kennedy‚ Ball & McDiarmid‚ 1993; Parajes‚ 1992). If used alone‚ theyshould have not only abstract‚ general questions‚ but should also include specific