Developing rigor with critical discourse analysis to examine educators' transition toward active learning

Abstract

This article discusses the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in the context of the research project investigating educators' transition traditional teaching to active learning. Engineering education researchers are increasingly interested in qualitative data analysis to study social phenomenon on teaching and learning. We describe the research design in phases that show the pragmatic approach to conduct FGD. This study employed FGD using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the methodology to develop an interview protocol. We present an analysis of a two-hour interview conducted with a group of lecturers at one of the university in Malaysia using a set of interview protocol. The interview protocol was developed following the principle of CDA to provide answers on the aspect of social practices surrounding the implementation of active learning. With CDA, the FGD interview focused on the issues, obstacles to solve the issues, role of issues in the broader context and ways for the issues to be solved. The findings revealed that FGD enables the data collection and analysis to investigate complex belief on the concept and implementation of active learning. The educators responded positively to interactive active learning activities as a medium for instruction. In addition, the analyses indicate that educators' resistance emerged from the conflicting imposter syndrome among resistance educators. Uncomfortable with the transition from teacher-centred to student-centred learning, many of them have self-doubt on what is meant by active learning. CDA shows that they have developed a feeling of competence despite evidence of being incompetent in active learning. Further to this, we begin to identify educators' epistemic knowledge on active learning which leads to the imposter syndrome.