P ARTICIPANTS

researcher were provided to the subjects in case they had any later questions about the research or its dissemination. All the interviews were conducted in Hungarian.

As for protection from harm during the data collection, steps were taken to ensure that the research caused no physical or psychological harms such as stress, discomfort or embarrassment (Ary et al., 2008). The research attempted not to disturb the normal course of a school day for participants.

In Hungary, data collection on ethnic origin is prohibited without explicit consent of the person concerned, according to the 1992 Act on the Protection of Personal Data and the Access to Public Data. As a result, no information was collected about participants’ ethnicity and special care was taken to avoid any form of discrimination.

to the larger population; the reason for using purposeful sampling is to select a few typical cases which provide in-depth understanding of the phenomena under investigation. As pointed out in section 3.2.2, single generalization in the statistical sense is not the goal of qualitative research; instead it seeks to make contributions to theoretical explanations (Lewis and Ritchie, 2003).

3.3.2 Sampling and site selection

The present research focuses on rural primary schools situated in the micro region of Jászberény or Jászság named alternatively. The aim of sampling was to select villages the schools of which were attended by a considerable number of disadvantaged children. The most important sampling criteria supported by the theoretical considerations of the decisive factors of disadvantaged situation (see Section 2.2) were educational level and unemployment of the parents. Education level refers to completed years of primary education and unemployment was determined by the rate of registered unemployment.

Based on the statistical data of the 2001 Census in Hungary (source: Hungarian Statistical Office), the 18 settlements of the Jászság were investigated which is shown in Table 2.

Table 2

Educational and Unemployment Characteristics of the Settlements of Jászság

Settlements of Jászság completed min. 8 years of primary education (%)

rate of registered unemployment (%)

Alattyán 81 4,42

Jánoshida 79,8 2,65

Jászágó 79,1 2,89

Jászalsószentgyörgy 80,6 3,36

Jászapáti 81,3 3,52

Jászárokszállás 85,1 3,99

Jászberény 88,6 2,08

Jászboldogháza 86,5 1,92

Jászdózsa 81,8 3,88

Jászfelsıszentgyörgy 78,9 3,33

Jászfényszaru 75,9 2,06

Jászivány 80,9 2,08

Jászjákóhalma 80,6 3,81

Jászkisér 80,9 5,78

Jászladány 76 5,55

Jászszentandrás 77,5 3,28

Jásztelek 74,6 3,89

Pusztamonostor 81,2 3,21

Average rate of Jászság 83 3,25

Statistical data indicate that larger towns of the region (Jászárokszállás, Jászberény) have lower unemployment rates than small villages and the educational level of the population is above the average of the region, consequently, these two towns were excluded from the research.

Figure 4 is a graphic representation of the number of registered unemployed per 1000 habitants (diagram made by VATI Interactional Settlement Analysis, www.vati.hu).

Figure 4. Number of registered unemployed per 1000 inhabitants in Jászság (Data source: Hungarian Statistical Office)

It can be observed in the diagram that the centre of the region (Jászberény) has the lowest unemployment rates, and the distance from the centre corresponds to higher unemployment rates.

Possible segregation processes (Kertesi and Kézdi, 2005) among public schools in larger towns due to the free choice school system of Hungary (described in detail in Section 2.3) might have distorted the data considerably as the distribution of disadvantaged children in larger towns’ schools is rather heterogeneous. This was an additional reason to eliminate larger towns where there are several primary schools from the research. In this way, ideal sites with a considerable number of disadvantaged children were ensured, which was confirmed by the school head teachers, teachers and school documents.

The following villages and towns can be regarded as the most disadvantaged based on educational and unemployment data: Alattyán, Jászalsószentgyörgy, Jászapáti,

Jászdózsa, Jászfelsıszentgyörgy, Jászjákóhalma, Jászkisér, Jászladány, Jászszentandrás, Jásztelek.

Jászladány was excluded from sampling as it was the site of research tool piloting. In order to decrease the sampling frame for the qualitative research to a manageable size, six settlements for the research were selected randomly out of the remaining nine most disadvantaged villages and contacted. These settlements can be regarded as socio-economically backward regions, with poor infrastructure and with a rate of unemployment considerably above the national average.

The participants for the interviews included the head teacher of the primary schools, the foreign language teacher(s) of the schools, and groups of children (5-8 children from grades 4-8) in each focus group taught by the teachers interviewed.

Children were selected for the interviews purposefully according to the following criteria:

- they had parents’ written consent to participate in the interview (distributed earlier by class teachers),

- they were classified by disadvantaged or multiple disadvantaged according to the legal criteria,

- they volunteered to participate in the interview.

The classroom observation concentrated on the classes taught or attended by the teachers and children who were interviewed. The investigations were conducted between February and May, 2008.

In order to preserve the anonymity of the respondents they were each assigned a code as presented in Table 3. The abbreviations stand for the following terms:

S=school, TE= teacher of English, TG=teacher of German, HT= head teacher, CH=children

The total number of interviews involves seven interviews with teachers of English and eight interviews with teachers of German. Ten focus group interviews were conducted with children in groups of 3-6.

Table 3

Summary of Codes of Interviewees

Number of school

Head

Teacher Language Teachers Focus groups with

children

1 S1HT 2 teachers of English: S1TE1, S1TE2 2 teachers of German: S1TG1, S1TG2

S1CH1,2,3,4,5,6, 7,8,9

2 S2HT 1 teacher of English: S2TE1

2 teachers of German: S2TG1, S2TG2 S2CH1,2,3,4,5,6,7

3 S3HT 1 teacher of English: S3TE1

S3CH1,2,3,4,5

4 S4HT 2 teachers of English: S4TE1, S4TE2

2 teachers of German: S4TG1, S4TG2 S4CH1,2,3,4,5,6

5 S5HT 1 teacher of German: S5TG1 S5CH1,2,3,4,5

6 S6HT 1 teacher of English: S6TE1

1 teacher of German: S6TG1 S6CH1,2,3, 5,6

Total 6 15 38

The respondent language teachers were all females, three of the head teachers were male and three were female. There were 21 girls and 17 boys among the children participating in the focus group interviews.