An Ethnography in Turkish Higher Education: A Collaborative Research Based Approach to Teacher Empowerment (CORBATE)

Abstract

This ethnographic study investigated the process of empowerment in the context of Turkish higher education. Data were collected through participant observation of teachers working in a collaborative action research project over a period of three years. The three sources of data were observational, interview and documentary data. The participants of this study were teachers working at the Department of Basic English, School of Foreign Languages, the Middle East Technical University, Ankara where the researcher has worked as a teacher and teacher trainer. All participants of this study have been given pseudonyms for purposes of confidentiality. This study used the interactive model of qualitative data analysis and phenomenological interview analysis. The procedure was as follows: Firstly, raw data were processed. Then, observational data were analyzed by open and axial coding, hence two levels of analysis. Segmented field notes were identified as emerging themes, coded and categorized. Data were displayed and conclusions drawn using three techniques from ethnographic data analysis: Plot and Characters, Natural History, and Thematic Organization. As is the case in an interactive model of analysis, implicit coding was happening from the outset of the study, thus making "a continual blurring and intertwining of coding, data collection and analysis" (Filstead, 1970, p.291). Naturalistic criteria for reliability and validity were used along with intercoder reliability. The findings of the study indicate the feasibility of teacher empowerment as Conversations with Self. Among some of the domains of activity described in the process of empowerment were consciousness raising, working with other people, knowing self better and listening and observing both self and others better. The findings of the study do not reveal a feasibility of teacher empowerment in terms of the political agenda of Conversations with Settings. Such conversations remained at the level of job involvement. That is to say, the political agenda of Conversations with Settings, was feasible in terms of autonomy and control in the classrooms of individual teachers.