Selection and delimitation

mostly managing the recording equipment. During the actual video recordings I did not intervene if I was not directly addressed, which for the most part I wasn’t. However, I do not consider myself as an

“invisible” or “unnoticeable” researcher; to the contrary, the students were well aware of my presence. Even though I did not interact directly with the students or intervene in their work, I interacted with them before the lessons started in situations such as attaching the microphone to one of the students. It was also to make my role as a researcher clear to the participants, and two weeks before the video recordings started I visited them at the school and informed them about the research project, explaining the purpose of the video observations and answering their questions regarding the project. My presence and role as a researcher is thus not to be considered in terms of “invisible” or “disturbing”, but rather as a crucial factor in orienting the research towards processes of understanding human meaning-making; an interpretive research approach “it accompanies the researcher’s physical, cognitive, and emotional presence in and engagement with the persons and material being studied” (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012, p. 98).

the phenomenon being studied (see e.g. Brown, 2010). Analysis builds on constant choices made by the researcher; choices of what sections to analyse and what framework to apply to the selected sections. Even the act of transcription is a matter of choice (see e.g.

Erickson, 2006; Flewitt, Hampel, Hauck & Lancaster, 2009). The delimitation of material and focus in analysis are important choices during a research process, which also means that ranges of perspectives are left out.

During the research process there has been a constant consideration of where the focus of the analysis should lie: on the video recordings, on the digital video – or on both. I ultimately recognised that in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the students’ multimodal designing, the process could not be separated from the digital video, and vice versa (see also Halverson, Bass & Woods, 2012). Analysing both the process of the students’ multimodal designing process and the resulting students’ digital video would give a thorough insight into the choices and negotiations made.

Since at the beginning of qualitative research, “the researcher does not know what will be discovered, what or whom to concentrate on, or what the final analysis will be like” (Merriam, 2009, p. 171), my decision to focus on solely one group of four students occurred during the process of analysis. Initially I gathered data from three different focus groups, but during the process of analysis the actual analysis was focused on solely one group. The decision to focus one group was motivated by the analytical choice of doing an in-depth analysis of both the videomaking process and the students’ digital video. This decision was empirically grounded and grew during the process of analysis.

The choice of this particular group of students, out of the three possible, was based mainly on the fact that the students in this group had granted their permission for the empirical material to be used as examples at research conferences, in teacher education, or in teacher in-service training. Also, this group of students worked mainly with the assignment they had been given, which was not the case with one of the other groups. The second group (group B) had trouble focusing

on the assignment and the digital video was mostly designed by one of the students, and therefore the negotiations around the interpretive and representational work remained concealed.

Regarding the third group (group C), there were minor audio errors on the video recordings, which made parts of the process inaudible.

Also, the digital video and the videomaking process by one group of students (group A) provided such “rich” material that I did not find it served the purpose to include the other groups. One group seemed sufficient for this detailed analysis of both the process and final digital video. I have, however, transcribed the recordings and digital videos of two groups, which also supported my decision to go use only one group for in-depth analysis. Consequently, from a large amount of empirical material, only parts were used for in-depth analysis, focusing on the video recordings and digital video of group A (see Table 1).

Table 1. Total production of data and processing of the data

P r o d u c e d d a ta P r o c e s s in g o f th e d a ta V id e o r e c o r d in g s o f g r o u p

A , a to ta l o f 7 h o u r s o f r e c o r d e d m a te r ia l d u r in g fiv e le s s o n s .

T r a n s c r ib e d a n d a n a ly s e d in d e ta il.

Video recordings of group B, a total of 6 hours of recorded material during four lessons.

Transcribed. Not analysed.

Vide recordings of group C, a total of 3,5 hours of recorded material during four lessons.

Viewed, but not transcribed or analysed.

D ig ita l v id e o 1 m a d e b y g r o u p A .

T r a n s c r ib e d a n d a n a ly s e d in d e ta il.

Digital video 2 made by group B. Transcribed. Not analysed.

Digital video 3 made by group C. Viewed, but not transcribed or analysed.

Photographs of storyboards, sketches, and synopsises.

Storyboard, sketches, and synopsis from group A are used to support the analyses.

The data used for analysis consist of (1) video recordings of a collective videomaking process and (2) the digital video made by the students. The video recorded material of the students’ working process covers about 7 hours recorded during five different lessons (once a week over five weeks). The students’ digital video runs for 2

minutes and 14 seconds. Additionally, photographs of the students’

storyboard, sketches, drawings, and synopsis are also included to support the analysis, but are not analysed specifically.

In the following section I will describe and elaborate on the different steps in the process of analysis. Initially, I describe and elaborate on the transcriptions of the students’ digital video and of the transcription of the video recorded material, after which I describe and elaborate on how I approached the two different types of material in the process of analysis: the analysis of the video recordings and the analysis of the students’ digital video.