ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews and examines different ways of conducting inquiries on teachers’ classroom practices through a broader education system perspective. This chapter also discusses the idea of obtaining a bird’s eye perspective of how teachers teach in a given education system. By analytically moving from the micro video data to a macro analytical lens, a bird’s-eye perspective can be constructed to provide a big picture that allows us to see patterns that we don’t usually notice in close range. Obtaining this bird’s-eye perspective and insights is dependent not only on the method of the study—what and how to observe and measure, what units to analyze, sampling plan, data collection methods, and data analysis methods—but also an overall framing that is also cognizant of the educational habitus and its fundamental goals. These key design decisions that underpinned the studies that informed this book are described and discussed in this chapter.
