Application of a Case Study Methodology on Smart School Trained Teachers’ Thinking

Hamzah Bin Md.Omar

School of Education and Social Development
Universiti Malaysia Sabah
88999 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah
hamzahmo@ums.edu.my

Abstract. The case study methodology has been subjected to scrutiny and criticism at
various times since the 1930's. As a research tool, it has not been a choice that is listed
in the major research texts in the social sciences. However, as this researcher has
shown in this paper, case study is a reliable methodology to study teacher thinking
when executed with due care. The literature, while not extensive, contains specific
guidelines for researchers to follow in carrying out case studies. Yin and Stake have
designed protocols for conducting the case study, which enhance the reliability and
validity of the investigation. The instruments for the purpose of gathering data on the
teachers in this study included the interviews, documents/record, observations, and
reflective essays. The instruments were administered within the period of three weeks
and the data collection was completed, the study was conducted on three Smart
School trained teachers teaching in the normal secondary schools. Three weeks after
the initial data collection period, a visit was made to these teachers to confirm the data
collected. The analysis followed conventional analytic techniques using anecdotal
analysis. Differences between the responses of the teachers were explored using
cross-case tabulations. These differences were examined within the themes and
categories that appeared in the analysis. Chenail’s (1995) suggested that when
presenting the qualitative data interpretatively, the data should be aligned and
juxtaposed by first coming up with a section heading, then presenting the distinction
or finding, followed by introducing the first data examplar of this distinction,
supported by display of the first data examplar of this distinction and finally
commenting further on the first data examplar of this distinction. This is then
followed by the next data by making transition to the next data distinction.

Keywords: case study, teacher thinking, smart school

Introduction
The study is on discovering teachers’ thinking as revealed in the excerpts on concerns
portrayed by the Smart school trained English teachers in the normal secondary schools, after
attending the professional development i.e. Smart School Teacher Training Programme.
Citing Guba and Lincoln (1981). “It is concerned with understanding (the) actualities, social
realities, and human perspectives that existed untainted by the obtrusiveness of formal
measurement or pre-conceived questions … To present ‘Slice of life’ episodes documented
through natural language and representing as closely as possible how people feel, what they
know and what their concerns, beliefs, perception and understanding are.” The dilemma for a

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concise study description surfaces in the early stage whether it is an evaluation or a case
study. The researcher was going for an in-depth study and was trying to understand a
particular. It was in fact an understanding of the real state of affair of the case so it renders to
be a case study.

The full period of data collection covered 12 weeks (July – October, 2001) during Teacher
Education Division's Research Methodology course fieldwork. The method of data collection
included a blend of qualitative techniques: open-ended interview, classroom observation,
document analysis and reflective essay. The qualitative data gathered by these different
complementary methods were designed to capture the teachers’ knowledge at two levels,
theoretical and classroom activity as well as to enable a researcher to triangulate between
different aspects of the same thing. For example, a description of teacher thinking can be
developed from various viewpoints from different data sources. The word qualitative here
implies an emphasis on process and meanings that were not rigorously examined or measured
(if measured at all), in terms of quantity, amount, intensity, or frequency. It stresses on the
socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between what is studied and
the situational constraints that shape inquiry. ‘They seek answers to questions that stress how
social experience is created and given meaning. In contrast, quantitative studies emphasize
the measurement and analysis of causal relationships between variables, not processes.
Inquiry is purported to be within a value-free framework’. (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994, p. 4)

At the theoretical level, they aimed to elicit teacher’s ideas about language learning, teaching
and Smart School’s elements through interview and reflective essay analysis. At a classroom
level, they focused on the activities and learning experiences in a lesson observed as carried
out by the teacher, and how these were used within the teaching-learning process (Richards
1990), together with the “definitions and process by which they are manufactured”(Bogdan
and Biklen 1982:33). That is the “qualitative nature of teacher's thought and actions.” (Butt
and Raymond 1987:71). The protocol suggested by Yin (1994) was adapted that include the
following sections:

• An overview of the case study project

• Field procedures

• Case study questions

• A guide for the case study report

The data gathered consisted of transcribed interviews, transcribed classroom teaching

observation recording (both were videotaped) and reflective essay. Data analysis consisted
of, first coding the teachers’ data (GP1,GP2 and GP3) both deductively by using the general

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categories derived from the literature and research guide questions, and inductively by
identifying the concepts that formed these categories as they emerged from the data. The data
do not fit categories neatly because human consciousness is far from neat and has many
implicit and ill-defined connections. Modifications and expansions of original categories
took place throughout the analytical process until the material was arranged in a meaningful
way.

A second analytical stage was an inductive process of defining, and redefining the initial
broad based categories, after new readings of the data. These made up the context of each of
the categories, for example, ‘language learning’, ‘smart school’s elements’, etc

Third, the researcher revised and modified the a priori themes based upon the five research
questions that had formed the guide in the interview, observation and reflection essay.
Following the traditional “cut-and-paste” techniques, the researcher gathered all the chunks of
data belonging to the same category. This was completed by written summaries of each
different category (Hewson and Hewson, 1989). This served as a way to validate the
categories and themes, which emerged from the data.

Four main themes were finally clearly identified (teacher’s intention, transfer of Smart school
pedagogy, teacher’s teaching method and relationship between students’ knowledge and
teacher pedagogy); by means of which the researcher described the teacher’s thinking and
actions, and how it developed in teaching. These became the organizing themes of this case
study. The analysis was tied to the reformulation of research questions made to fit into the
data gathered.

Case study method

Case study research transfers some control of the research process to the researched that is
fundamentally different from the kind of information given to them during in-service
education programmes or through journal publications (Eisner, 1998). With this brief opening
statement about case study, we will now explore how case study as a research or evaluation
method emerged and why such a method has been formulated. The account which the teacher
practicing solely in his/her classroom might not share the same intentions of the trainer as
well as that of programme developers. So, case study was a rational proposition due its
holistic ability to portray the complexities of participants’ actions and contexts within a
classroom. Furthermore, according to Louis Smith (1980: 7), case studies offers a quality of
desirability, it shows someone is doing something. Secondly, the case studies are totalities
i.e. ‘holistic’ and ‘systematic’. Thirdly, a cluster of element seems summarisable as a
particularistic quality i.e. vivid, concrete and detail. Fourthly, it can be individualized as in
this study and, finally, the feature of accent process, changeover time i.e. data are revealed on

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where and how one begin, implement and terminate. In addition, case study is close to the
real world of the administrator. So, case study is a viable method to be employed in this
qualitative research.

Why and how have the researcher used case study?

Case study seems to be the most appropriate means to study as it offered a better
understanding and empathy to participants of an innovative programme through its detailed,
impartial, accurate and authentic reporting. It gives a voice to the powerless and the voiceless
(Tellis, 1997). Yin (1994) presented at least four applications for a case study model:

• To explain complex causal links in real-life interventions

• To describe the real-life context in which the intervention has occurred
• To describe the intervention itself
• To explore those situations in which the intervention being evaluated has no clear
set of outcomes

In order to gain an understanding of teachers’ experience of Smart school Pedagogy, rather

than exploring how students adapt to this pedagogy. This study is concerned with how Smart
school trained teachers in normal schools slot the Smart school pedagogical element into their
teaching of English Language in the classroom. To achieve such an aim, I have to search for a
suitable research method and case study as a research method has the qualities to satisfy my
intention. In this study only the last two categories applied. As previously stated, the
researcher intends to explore Smart school trained English teachers’ thinking without
imposing any prescribed criteria. Therefore, it was necessary to adopt a research method that
is able to capture its rich environment and culture. Case study is suitable because it “…is
rooted in the practicalities and politics of real life situations”(Adelman, et al., 1980:56). The
diversity of views and experiences that are idiosyncratic of this study would most probably be
lost if it is undertaken in other research methods. Furthermore, case study “recognize(s) the
complexity and ‘embeddedness’ of social truths” (p.59) because it deals with social situations
and is able to represent the idiosyncrasies, discrepancies or contradictions of the participants’
viewpoints. The features mentioned fit well in this study. First of all, it is about a teacher and
the on-going business of teaching. The data gathered from the interview, observation and the
reflective essay represent the realties of the thinking and actions in teaching. These can be
easily summarized into themes, concepts and categories. Case study enables me to
individualize the report pertaining to the respondent. Finally, at the present stage of Smart
school implementation in Malaysia, it can be used to answer the question pertaining to its

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implementation process. Hence by using case study method, the complex real life situation of
these teachers can be understood in the context of the case.

Case study is the decided choice of the methodology after scrutinizing it closely in term of the
directions and concerns in the study. Basically, I was interested in the case study
methodology because of its potential in enhancing the examination of Smart schools’ trained
teachers’ thinking. What interests me most in the case study methodology was its close up
account, a thick description of an instance within its realistic context. The instance was
studied as it was. MacDonald and Walker (1975) considered case study as a method that can
capture “…the experience of the participants, and at the nature and variety of transactions
which characterize the learning milieu of the programme. There seems to be a need to find
ways of examining this experience and…can relate them to their own experience,
circumstances, concerns and preferences.” (MacDonald and Walker, 1975:1). Teacher
thinking cannot be evaluated through numerical and experimental analyses, so as “Many of
the quite legitimate questions that are put to evaluators, especially by teachers,…”

Yin (1994) asserted on the suitability of case study as one of several ways of doing social
science research, “ … In general, (they) are the preferred strategy when “how” and “why”
questions are being posed, when the investigator has little control over events and when the
focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context.” (Yin, 1994: 1).
Kemmis, (1980), one of qualitative expert, also mentioned the ability of case study to capture
the real situation of human experience based on “common sense understanding of social
sciences”

Adelman, et. al (1980), defended case study methodology in sense of its data which is
“strong” in “reality”, case studies are down-to-earth and attention-holding “… recognise the
complexity and “embedded ness” of social truths … present research in a more public
accessible form of presentation than other kinds of research reports …. The language and the
form of presentation are hopefully less esoteric and less dependent as specialized
interpretation than conventional research reports. … (It) is capable of serving multiple
audiences. It reduces the dependence of the reader upon unstated implicit assumptions and
makes the research process itself accessible.” (Adelman, et.al., 1980: 59-60)

Defining Case Study

Case study methodology which is deeply ingrained in qualitative discipline has gained
momentum in Malaysia of late. Reading research works conducted by Pillay,(1995), Lim,

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(1997); Marzita, (1998), Chow, (1999); and Tan, (1999) on education) had attracted me a
great deal. But a study carried out by Mohd. Sofi (2000) on English Language Panels using
case study method had proven case study as a viable empirical instrument for research on
teacher thinking. Case study is the ‘in-thing’ in educational research today, it is a well-
established research methodology in United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. In the
ensuing pages, I cited the dominant case study methodological literatures in order to
substantiate the research methodology that he has embraced for this study.

According to Adelman, et. al. (1980: 48) ‘Case Study is ‘an umbrella term for a family of
research methods having in common the decision to focus an enquiry around an instance”
which “may be simple or complex,” Stake (1995), further elaborated on the definition
whereby he stated that. “It is one among others. In any given study, we will concentrate on
one. The time we may spend concentrating our inquiry on the one may be long or short but
while we so concentrate, we are engaged in case study.” He emphasized case study as
making a concentrated inquiry into a single case that involves both the process of learning
about the case and the product of our learning. The strength case study methodology lies
therefore in its ability “catch the complexity of a single case” (Stake, 1995: ix). The
researcher studied the case because he had a special interest in it. Consequently, the
researcher looked for detail of interaction with its context. As case study “(It) is a study of
particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity within
important circumstances.” (ibid, pp.ix). Stake (1995:xii) stated that case study “(It)
emphasizes episodes of nuance, the sequentially of happenings in context, the wholeness of
the individual”. Based on Adelman and Stake’s critical discussion about case study has
further reinforced his research type to be clearer now as the study about teacher thinking need
an in-depth research procedure.

Besides Adelman and Stake, Hitchcock and Hughes (1989: 124) add further to the viability of
case study method chosen. They stated that: “The case study evolves around the in-depth
study of a single case, events or a series of linked cases or events over a period of time, the
aim being to try and locate the ‘story’ of a certain aspect of social behavior in a particular
location and the factors influencing this situation so that themes, topics or key variables may
be isolated and discussed”. MacDonald and Walker (1975: 1) further refined case study as
‘…the examination of an instance in action.”

Yin (1994:13) gave a clear and concise understanding about case study as “…an empirical
inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially
when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident … you

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deliberately wanted to cover contextual conditions – believing that they might be highly
pertinent to you phenomenon of study … It copes with the technically distinctive situations in
which there will be many more variables of interest than data points, and one result relies on
multiple source of evidence, with data needing to converge in a triangulating fashion, and as
another result benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data
collection and analysis.”

Case study is not unitary in essence, it consisted of three types as mentioned by Stake (1995:
3) which is worth considering when refining the focus of this study, they are namely:
intrinsic, instrumental and collective case study. Firstly, intrinsic case studies, “the case is
given. We are interested in it, not because by studying it we learn about other cases or about
some general problem, but because we need to learn about a particular case. We have an
intrinsic interest in the case”. The task was to understand the case. It would “help us to tease
out the relationship, to probe issues, and to aggregate categorical data” aiming to understand
the case. The instrumental case studies “helps to understand something else The case helps
us to understand phenomena or relationship within it.” (Stake, 1995: 77)

A collective case study deals with several cases rather than one. Each case study is
instrumental to learning about the case but there will be important coordination between the
individual cases. “A collective case study,” stated Stake (1995: 5) “may be designed with
more concern for representation but, again, the representation of a small sample is difficult to
defend.” “The more the intrinsic interest in the case, the more we will restrain our curiosities
and special interests and the more we will try to discern and pursue issues critical to the case.”
(Stake, 1995:4)

Looking for the format for the case study methodology too entailed a great deal of reading on
the area. Yin (1994: 52), stated that case study design, “is not something completed only at
the outset of a study. The design can be altered and revised after the initial stage of a study,
but under a stringent circumstance”. Stake (1995:ii), put it down metaphorically as ‘a palette
of methods’ that opens up many, many ways to do case studies. As for this study, researching
on teachers’ thinking is a journey that is full of uncertainty, irregularity, complexity, and
unpredictability especially in the case of professional activities like teaching. Therefore, case
study methodology has the ability address the dynamically changing context of conscious
deliberation in specific acts of teaching (Tomlinson, P. 1999)

The researcher used mixed strategies to collect the data, namely interviewing, observation,
and document analysis. On top of that, the researcher kept my own research journal (see

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samples of journal entries in Appendix K), which the researcher recorded the field-notes and
observation, and the researcher did literature review on various issues the researcher
encountered in my research. The use of multiple data sources is one the ways employed by
me in this study to draw conclusions that can be structurally corroborated (Eisner, 1998).

Design and Conduct the Case Study

The main data gathering instrument, however, was through the means of interviews and
observations. The interview technique was semi-structured; it wasn’t possible to have
structured interviews. Though the researcher had a fixed number of questions, the
interviewees determined what and how to answer them. The focus and questions kept on
shifting as they felt the needs and the issues that they wished to pursue.

Analyze Case Study Evidence

By the end of the transcribing stage, the researcher had a fair representation of my issues and
themes which the researcher displayed using case matrix method suggested by Miles and
Huberman (1994). But they were still “crude”, and the researcher believed that the issues
could be refined and polished, and indeed they were as the researcher began to build up my
cases.

At this juncture, the researcher was faced with a methodological dilemma. Should the
researcher build the case(s) first, or to ‘validate’, crosscheck the interviews with the actors?
To crosscheck the interviews would involve sending back the transcripts to those teachers in
Seberang Prai, Penang, and that would take time. The researcher didn’t have the time.
Moreover, the researcher had carried out a fair triangulation in the field. The researcher had
compared and contrasted the views of the Smart school trained English teachers themselves.
Occasionally, the researcher sought the views of the students (especially on the students’
activities organized by the teachers). In fact the researcher spent lot of my time seeking views
from the various parties during my visits because the researcher was aware that it would be
quite prejudicial the teachers to go back to do that later.

Analyzing qualitative research is confusing, chaotic and full of dilemmas. Data had to be
analyzed, interpreted and assertions made. The researcher reflected on the data analysis the
researcher wrote in my journal. The researcher went back to literature to understand further.
Miles and Huberman (1994) mentioned three linked sub-processes of data reduction, data
display, and conclusion drawing/verification in the analysis of data. These processes could
occur during data collection, during study design and planning, and after data collection as
final product are approached and completed.

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In data reduction, Miles and Huberman (1994:180-181) clarified that “the potential universe
of data is reduced in a anticipatory way as the I chooses a conceptual framework, research
questions, cases and instruments. Once actual field notes, inter-themes, clustering, and
writing stories are all instances of further data selection and data condensation.”

Data display was, they continued, “an organized, compressed assembly of information that
permits conclusion drawing and/or decision taking. The researcher needs to see a reduced set
of data as a basis of thinking about its meaning … structured summaries, synopses, vignettes
networking or other diagrams, and matrices with text rather than numbers in the cells.”

On the final process, Miles and Huberman (1994) wrote: “Conclusion drawing and
verification involve the researcher in interpretation: drawing meaning from displayed data …
compare and contrast, noting of patterns and themes, clustering and use of metaphors to
confirmatory tactics such as triangulation, looking for negative cases, and checking results
with actors” (Miles and Huberman, 1994:180-181). “Analysis is a matter of giving meaning
to first impressions as well as final compilation,” wrote Stake (1995:71). “(It) essentially
means taking something apart. Almost certainly there will be many more data collected than
can be analyzed,” mentioned Stake (1995). “After getting lots of good observation it is
important to identify the best and set the rest aside.” “The critical task,” Wolcott (1990, cited
in Stake, 1995:84) said “is not to accumulate all the data you can, but to “can” (i.e. to get rid
of) most of the data you accumulate. This requires certain winnowing. The trick is to
discover essences and then to reveal those essences with sufficient context, yet not become
mired trying to include everything that might possibly be described.” Finally “each
researcher needs, through experience, and reflection, to find the forms of analysis that work
for him.” (Stake, 1995, p.77). Walker (1980) argued: “The task of research is to make sense
of what we know. The investigator dismantles and reassembles conventional or common-
sense meanings, altering the balance between what seems strange and what is familiar,
striving to find new ways of looking at the world.” (Walker, 1980:224).

In this analysis, the researcher relied on “ordinary ways of making sense” and “by watching
closely as I can and by thinking about it as deeply as I can.” (Stake, 1995). It was the most
logical and practical approach; it was a continuous search for patterns for consistency within
certain conditions. “Keeping in mind that it is the case we are trying to understand, we
analyze episodes or text materials (i.e., the data) with a sense of correspondence. We are
trying to understand behavior, issues, and contexts with regard to our particular case. If we
have very little time, we try to find pattern or significance through direct interpretation, just

9
asking ourselves “What did that mean?”. For more important episodes … we must take more
time, looking them all over again, looking over again and again, reflecting, triangulating,
being skeptical about first impression and simple meanings. For the evidence most critical to
our assertions, we isolate those repetitions and those correspondence tables more pertinent,
challenging ourselves as to the adequacy of these data for the assertion.” (Stake, 1995:78).

The first step, as mentioned earlier, was to understand the state of affair of the individual case
within the three case studies. The second step was to cross check, the cross-case analysis, and
the three cases for multitudes of issues, similarities and differences, to compare and contrast
across the three individual issues, to arrive to a multitude of issues pertaining to the single
case, the Smart school trained English language teachers in action. It wasn’t an easy task
judging at the voluminous raw data, the researcher had from the fieldwork; the interview
transcripts, the documents, the observation field-notes; the researcher had to ‘reduce’ the data
so as to access them more conveniently and quicker. The researcher created “case records”,
“an edited primary … a theoretically parsimonious condensation of the case data, produced by
selective editing without explicit comment (except perhaps about editing dilemmas).”
(Stenhouse, 1997:33) Moreover, the case study “is and interpretative presentation and
discussion of the case, resting upon, quoting and citing the case record for its justification”
(ibid, 1977:33). The aim in interpretation is not “telling as it is” but it is an attempt at “telling
it as it feels to be in it that is to say, telling it as it phenomenologically is.” (ibid, 1977:28)

Yin (1994) suggested that every investigation should have a general analytic strategy and he
presented some possible techniques: pattern matching, explanation-building, and time-series
analysis. In this case study, the researcher had used explanation-building for the single case,
and pattern-matching for cross cases.

Develop Conclusions
The case records were a composite of my subjects, individual profile of transcripts of
videotaped interviews based on the issues and themes. The researcher studied the whole
transcript over and over, giving themes ands sub-themes for each several utterances. Having
created the individual profile for all his subjects, the researcher looked for recurring themes
and patterns across the individual profiles within the case against his issues/conceptual
structure. Then, the researcher created case matrices (see appendix) for the case, namely:
Intent, transfer of pedagogical knowledge, teacher pedagogy and its relationship with
students’ level of English proficiency. It was indeed a gruesome and laborious task. Some
probably would say the researcher could come up with another easier way, a more practical
way. That was how the researcher could do it, and relied on it. “There is much art and much

10
intuitive processing to the search for meaning,“ Stake (1995:72) wrote. Indeed, the researcher
depended on the intuition to create the cases.

Summary
This study primarily looked into the teacher thinking of Smart schools’ trained English
language teachers in secondary schools using case study method. The researcher had
attempted to see as things were happening. The researcher had tried to investigate by letting
the Smart school trained English teachers themselves talked, how they perceived their roles in
the teaching and learning process. The researcher tried at times to let the “data speak for
themselves,” but most of the times, the researcher was doing his own analysis and
interpretation. The researcher had his own biases in the analysis, though the researcher had
tried to be more scientific in my interpretation. At some juncture of the analysis, the
researcher lost the direction and got mixed up which is common phenomenon under case
study method.

Still, it was the cases, the English language teachers teaching using newly acquired pedagogy
in action in the secondary schools, that the researcher was trying to understand. The case
existed within its context. The researcher thought he would start and end it there. It didn’t
end there. “Portrayal” brought along complexity to the case; the subjects brought along issues
with their experiences in the interviews. It tends to resume a management issue; a policy
issue, and even a curriculum issue.

Progressive focusing helped me to narrow down his case; it became more focused. The
researcher probed and triangulated the issues in the search for meaning. The researcher
searched for themes for the issues, looked for recurring themes, formed patterns, and came up
with interpretation. Intent, commitment, understanding, materials, skills, front-end training,
planning, school administrative support, and relevant prior experience seem to dominate these
teachers concern in implementing Smart school English pedagogy.

The conclusion might not satisfy everybody, not the quantitative conventionalists. The
researcher didn’t involve statistical jargons, the language of the quantitative research, the
accepted norm in Malaysia. The researcher used the “portrayal of persons” (MacDonald,
1977:50), “a bridging concept between the arts and the social sciences” to “render educational
programmes more knowable to the non-research community, more accessible to the diverse
patterning of meaning, significance and worth through which people ordinarily evaluate social
life”. Narratives, descriptions, profiles and dialogues became my tools, and they were meant
to “tell it like it is.” And case study attempted to do it all.

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Reflecting on the multitude of issues gathered in the field, the researcher was aware that he
was dealing with pedagogical issues – the actual teaching of English language via Smart
schools’ pedagogy itself. The researcher began to question myself, within the context of the
study and the field, the purpose of learning and teaching English in Malaysian secondary
schools. Not only that. The researcher was also dealing with some pedagogical content
knowledge-related issues, especially with the implementation of the Smart schools’ pedagogy
in the English language classrooms. On top of that some management issues cropped up.
These were some of the fundamental questions the researcher had to understand before he
could understand his case. Indeed a case exits within its context, and to understand the case,
one must understand its context.

We have seen case study offer a quality of undeniability, it shows someone is doing
something, conduct in totalities i.e. ‘holistic’ and ‘systematic’, it is summarisable as a
particularistic quality i.e. vivid, concrete and detail, and finally, it can be individualized as in
this study with its features of accent process, changeover time i.e. data are revealed on where
and how one begin, implement and terminate.

So, the four stages recommended by Yin (1994) for case study methodology were followed
i.e. design the case study, conduct the case study, analyze the case study evidence, and
develop the conclusions, recommendations and implication to enable case study to function as
a viable method to be employed in this particular qualitative research on smart schools’
trained English Language teachers. Case study is not merely a new way of doing research but
an innovation of values. Case study empowers the less powerful i.e., the poor teachers, who
seems to be at the receiving end.

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 APPENDIX

Table 1. Checklist Matrix: GP1 Conditions Supporting Thinking of

Smart Schools’ pedagogy
Dilemmas, Underlying issues (as seen How coped with? How resolved? Type of
strains, by Adriana) resulting change.
difficulties
encountered
1. Practicing Smart It is also time consuming. I found that I can only do a Direct teaching
school pedagogy Too much time is needed to little bit of this Bestari
complete one teaching teaching in my classes
procedure.
2. Integrating repetition of teaching and carry out this pedagogy
Smart school thinking, not just responding learning strategy over a long on selected students
pedagogy elements mechanically period until her students based on their
were able to recognise its communicative ability:
pattern
teaching procedure
3. Nana’s belief embedded in her unique Repetition and timing are Repetition and timing are
about teaching and rationalization. It is a tested her main focus, especially in her main focus
language learning and pre tested over the years relation to her perception of
of experience in teaching the effective teaching
language

4.Minimal students’ minimal linguistics induce students the use of L1 i.e. Bahasa
proficiency of competence is important in involvement using B.M Melayu in the class for
English and Use achieving effective teaching enabling comprehension
of Bahasa Melayu or whenever
understanding was
impeded in classroom

18
 Table 2. Checklist Matrix: GP2 Conditions Supporting Thinking of
Smart Schools’ pedagogy

Dilemmas, Underlying issues (as seen How coped with? How resolved? Type of
strains, by Gupta) resulting change.
difficulties
encountered
1. Practicing Smart “I think…I was using…if Motivate the students the students, are required
school pedagogy you look at…presentation…I to practice
think I used…more of on
directive…Directive and may
be a lot of mediative and
anything if you look
at…individualised learning
and all
that…(T2/Int/3/8/2001/38
& 40).
students’ learning discipline
2. Integrating
Smart school Try to introduce or put in discovered the interest
pedagogy elements whatever that have been and willingness of his
and I just bring, play with acquired during the Bestari
whatever generic skills, I just students to use their
brought in the lesson and I privately own internet
get the students to focus on services or commercial
that. Basically my lesson are run internet centres,
like that now.” outside school hours
3. Gupta’s belief (T2/Int/3/8/2001/101).
about teaching and time constraint Allow the students to
language learning
approach him during the
the students may not be students’ free time
good, but I can see the
4.Minimal students have an interest in
proficiency of the subject , induce students the use of L1 i.e. Bahasa
English and Use involvement using B.M Melayu in the class for
of Bahasa Melayu
enabling comprehension
students’ minimal linguistics or whenever
competence is important in understanding was
achieving effective teaching impeded in classroom

19
 Table 4. Checklist Matrix: GP3 Conditions Supporting Thinking of
Smart Schools’ Pedagogy
Dilemmas, Underlying issues (as seen
strains, by Sonia)
difficulties
encountered
1. Practicing Smart Oh, you know, actually
school pedagogy Bestari is something like
KBSR. I have been doing it
when I was I the primary
school, many years back.
2. Integrating
Smart school we are..are supposed to be
pedagogy elements facilitator…more facilitators
but we come to school, eh,
…depend on the class if it is
a very poor class, we have to
be more…like direct
teaching, like if it is a better
class…like there should
be…(interrupted)
3. Sonia’s belief
about teaching and
So, that means I know, so it
language learning
is either, number one, you
don’t understand what I have
been doing all this while on
the board and playing or you
are plain lazy.
4.Minimal
proficiency of
English and Use
students’ minimal linguistics
of Bahasa Melayu
competence is important in
achieving effective teaching
How coped with? How resolved? Type of
resulting change.
I don’t know whether basically the same thing
approach because it is like
going down, to them, you
are going down to primary
teaching, oral first and you
give them simple stuff to do
May be because I stress, I Repetition and timing are
give it poor her main focus
students….basically, it is
like repetitions lah. You
repeat it (3X) by the end of
2 weeks or third week that
fellow can do it already.
basically, repetitions,
Whatever I have taught I repeat it (3X) by the end
just get it be evaluating oral, of 2 weeks or third week
reading, writing and pretend
I know whether you have
done it or not,
the use of L1 i.e. Bahasa
induce students Melayu in the class for
involvement using B.M enabling comprehension
or whenever
understanding was
impeded in classroom
20