Microsoft Word tojqi 2 Makale docx

Research Design and Research Process

This study aims to examine the qualitative and quantitative studies about cultural awareness in EFL / ESL classrooms in a systematic way. Therefore, the meta-synthesis procedure is used as a research design (Lachal, Revah- Levy, Orri & Moro, 2017). Meta-synthesis is defined as the gathering of a group of studies to understand the vital components of a particular subject and present these studies with original review results by stating new conceptualizations (Schreiber, Crooks & Stern, 1997). This technique helps the researchers to get information from different studies and discover a particular topic from different points of view. Thus, it affords assistance to develop recommendations (Tong, Flemming, McInnes, Oliver & Craig, 2012).
Electronic search is conducted with the following databases; EBSCO, Eric, Sagepub, Scopus, Proquest, Google Scholar, Taylor & Francis, and Jstor. The keywords as (inter)cultural awareness & ELT & EFL”, “awareness & ELT”, “(inter)cultural awareness & ELT & EFL & implementation & application” were used during the search process. The words of “cultural awareness” and “intercultural awareness” were used for each combination not to miss any related study which can be included in this review. Furthermore, four criteria are identified for deciding on the studies. According to these criteria;
Criteria 1: Studies related to the cultural and intercultural awareness published in and after 2002, since the Common European Framework (CEFR) which contains cultural awareness issues was published in 2002,
Criteria 2: Studies that are published in peer-reviewed journals,
Criteria 3: Studies written in English or Turkish languages,
Criteria 4: Studies including cultural/ multicultural awareness issues in EFL classrooms are included in this study.
After searching stated databases, the acquired studies are included by applying the specified criteria indicated above. As a result of adopting the relevant key terms, 19300 studies were found about cultural and intercultural awareness in EFL / ESL classrooms. Thereafter, 50 studies were found in total by restricting the studies according to the relevant years (criteria 1), restricting language (criteria 2), including studies published in peer-reviewed journals (criteria 3), and considering the aim of the study (criteria 4). Therefore, 50 studies are included in this meta-synthesis about the cultural and intercultural awareness of EFL classrooms.
Each article is read by the researchers in the beginning. Afterwards, every researcher creates her own codes and themes. These themes and codes are discussed and finalized after reaching a consensus. Codes are the short phrases that are assigned to explain and summarize the language-based data (Saldana, 2008). After the coding process, patterns of codes are considered and these repetitive patterns are created the ‘theme’ for the recurring issue. However, there are some differences and variations occur under the same theme but these differences are not the patterns that can create a theme or subtheme during the data analysis. Therefore, these variations are indicated under the related theme as codes.