Interpretation of Transcribed Lesson Observations. It is first important to explain how I chose the lesson samples for transcription and analysis. I chose three lessons from Y8 and three from Y10 for each school. Self-evidently, given that I was examining TL interactions, I avoided those lessons that were dedicated to tests, or happened to be writing-heavy. I used my field notes to help me in my decision-making, because, having spent a substantial period of time in each school, I had a sense of which lessons in my observation portfolio most represented the general pattern of teaching and learning in each community. Turning now to the quantitative element of my study, the aim was to provide a measure of how much the TL was used by the teacher and the students in the lessons. I was able to uncover this in some detail through the coding process that I carried out. Xxxxxxx and Xxxxxx describe the process of open/initial coding that I undertook as when ‘data are broken down into discrete parts, closely examined and compared for similarities and differences’ (1998, p.102). Xxxxxxx describes coding as ‘nothing more than assigning some sort of shorthand designation’ to give some shape and organisation and to provide some direction to subsequent collection and analysis (2009, p.173). Once transcribed, the lesson observations provided rich insights into matters such as turn-taking, interruptions and student or teacher initiation in talk. Xxxx et al. (2004) value transcripts of audio-recorded data for their focus on the specificities of the research context. In terms of the authenticity and value of participants’ voices, transcription also offers what Heritage (1984) describes as ‘an essential corrective to the limitations of intuition and recollection’ (1984, p.238). As such, it helps to mediate the risk of potential researcher bias. As the lessons were audio-recorded, the exact utterances of the participants would be transcribed at a later stage in order to capture the balance between student and teacher talk during lessons to glean a picture of how much students used TL. However, in the absence of video recordings of the lessons, I needed to find a way to capture the events, which would not be clear from the audio-recording, such as how many students volunteered for answering questions. In order to achieve this, I had my laptop alongside my field notes book. An Excel spreadsheet was used, where it was noted in particular when students were responding. During student responses a note was made of how many students p...
