Exploring Outcomes of Gaelic-Medium Education: Research Design and Analysis

Abstract

This chapter outlines the immediate context and parameters of the study that informs the book, including the research design adopted to establish validity and investigate the key social and linguistic questions identified in previous chapters. It firstly provides a succinct overview of GME in Scotland, outlining the system’s growth and identifying the expectations of parents and practitioners in its earliest years, before situating the present research within the wider experience of GME in Scotland. It subsequently summarises the overall design of the research, which employs both quantitative and qualitative methods. Semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire are employed to examine language use and attitudes and facilitate data triangulation of research results. The chapter then outlines and describes the pool of participants among whom the research is conducted. Lastly, it describes the various methods used to contact this group, and to analyse the quantitative and qualitative datasets. The chapter will discuss how the dual qualitative analytic focus on discourse content and form contributes to the validity of the analysis, by delving below the surface semantics of speech acts to consider speakers’ pragmatic meanings holistically.