Constructivist Grounded Theory

The transformational approach (Freire, 1998) can be achieved through critical pedagogy. The present study describes the development and validation of a questionnaire to access critical pedagogy for evaluating teachers’ perceptions of critical pedagogy in two different contexts i.e. public and private schools. This study used a mixed-method design. In the qualitative phase, 15 experienced high school teachers from public and private schools in Sabzevar, Iran, participated in a semi-structured interview. Based on the result of the constructivist grounded work and the literature review, the main constructs of critical pedagogy were described. Then, an eight-construct operationalization of language teaching was presented, describing the fundamental principles of language teaching from the point of view of critical pedagogy. In the quantitative phase, 180 valid questionnaires, obtained from 59 males and 121 females, were used to run the Confirmatory Factor Analysis using the software LISREL 8.5. This resulted in a 70-item, five-point Likert-scale instrument with satisfactory construct validity which was based on the 21 constructs of critical pedagogy. As a validated measurement, the Critical Pedagogy Questionnaire can be highly useful for the researchers and designers in the field of ELT, English teachers, and instructors to evaluate the perception of their learners on critical pedagogy.

Researchers’ thorough familiarity with the related literature together with the appropriate implementation of previous studies in academic publications is of crucial importance. Simply put, scientific studies need to address the related literature in a proper manner to get published. The main objective of the current study was to delineate citation patterns in applied linguistics. To come up with a citation framework/typology for applied linguistics, the researchers employed constructivist Grounded Theory. In order to present a comprehensive picture of citation practices, the researchers decided to investigate a corpus of five international and two local journals published between 2015 and 2020. Initial results revealed 20 themes which were then further categorized into five major themes. The results revealed considerable discrepancies between the local and international studies in employing various citation forms which can be attributed to journal polices, target audience and researchers’ expertise level. Furthermore, differences were detected in quantitative and qualitative studies in using various citation techniques which can be associated with the nature of such studies.