5 - Researching Teacher Expertise in the Global South

Summary

This chapter begins by exploring the methodological challenges encountered when conducting a teacher expertise study, particularly those challenges that become more prominent when researching in the global South. It then presents a set of minimum requirements for an appropriate, ethical study of expertise in the South, also discussing a continuum of participation from non-participatory to fully participatory research, rather than seeing these as dichotomous. The chapter then summarises the design solution adopted in my own PhD study, including one preparatory stage and seven main stages. As well as discussing participant selection criteria, data collection and analysis procedures, the details of the eight participant teachers and their teaching contexts are also provided. Towards the end of the chapter, full details are given on the quantity and type of data collected, the varied outputs of the study – including the publication co-authored by the eight participant teachers – and the research questions that were investigated. The chapter concludes with a revised and updated overview of participant selection criteria for teacher expertise studies in all contexts worldwide, based on a review of studies conducted to date, supporting Palmer et al.’s (2005) call for multiple criteria selection, yet recommending somewhat different criteria to theirs.