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• 1 2022-06-08T21:25:40+00:00 Participants 17 description of participant sampling procedure and characteristics of participants plain 2023-10-02T14:13:59+00:00 Vagle (2018) suggested accounting for the number of data moments rather than the number of participants as a primary consideration in P-lP research. For this reason, I tracked all data gathered, not just the totality of participant contacts. The sequence for contact with each participant was previously outlined in the research timeline section of this dissertation. Each data gathering moment allowed me to gain differing perspectives, explore the "yet-to-be-known" (Kinchin et al., 2010, p. 1), and clarify the elements of the TEds stories of becoming media and digitally literate within their OEPr.
  
            I applied purposeful sampling to identify potential participants. Decisions were based on my experience and knowledge of open educational practitioners and Canadian teacher education. One benefit of purposeful sampling was the ability to select teacher educators in Canadian FoE who best fit the established criteria for this research (Cresswell & Guetterman, 2019; Tracy, 2020). I selected participants who met a combination of two or more of these criteria:
  • the participant currently worked or had worked within a Canadian faculty of education as an instructor within the previous two years
  • the participant had an active and easily discoverable social media presence on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or other social media spaces (Discord, Linkedin, Soundcloud, Slack, TikTok);
  • the participant maintained an active presence on the web using a website, blog, wiki, or media curation space (e.g. Canva, Flickr, Pinterest);
  • the participant showed evidence of using social media in their teaching, as evidenced in their academic biographical information and/or course syllabi, where available;
  • the participant engaged in open educational practices as described by Paskevecius (2018) and Paskevecius and Irvine (2019) and evidenced in course syllabi (if available), academic writing, or the content of social media comments and contributions; and/or
  • the participant had written about open educational practices, media and digital literacies, or efforts to engage within educational social media networks, as evidenced in their academic publications and their social media outputs (tweets, blog posts).
  By establishing these criteria, I attempted to mitigate one of the weaknesses of purposeful sampling, that of inaccuracy or inconsistency in the selection criteria (Gay et al., 2012).  
  
            Despite having listing of over twenty-five potential participants from my known networks, fourteen of the sixteen teacher educators I contacted agreed to participate. The sample size in this research, as suggested by Cresswell and Guetterman (2019),  determined the depth and manageability of the data picture, with each additional individual adding to the research time requirements and complexity of data analysis. I resisted the urge to unquestionably establish the right number for sample size in this qualitative research since concrete quantities are reminiscent of "neo-positivist-empiricist framings" (Braun & Clarke, 2021, p. 202). 
  
            With the fourteen participants approached for this research, I had some flexibility should any participants become unavailable for the full research protocol. Finding additional participants was done through snowball sampling because participants revealed others who may fit the research criteria. In this way I was able to ensure a willing participant pool for the two research phases of this research and safeguard sufficient data gathering should any participants withdraw from the research. As the research evolved, I used a tracking spreadsheet to diligently manage the total number of data moments that encompass the totality for this research. 
  
            Although geographic and contextual information for participants was gathered, along with background information shared by the participants, this was not included in the research findings. This contextual information may have a bearing on the participants' lived experiences as they disclosed information about barriers and issues, my focus remained on the individual lived experiences not the institutional factors relating to MDL or OEPr. The contextual details also became a concern relevant to maintaining the confidentiality of the participants, since these details had the potential to be identifiable to the readers of this dissertation. For this reason, the contextual and geographic details were redacted and/or omitted.
  
           At the outset, the informed consent forms included the option for participants to indicate if they wished to be named openly in the research. Early in the research interview phase it became apparent to me that a consistent approach would best suit this research. Without needing to backtrack for subsequent permission to publish participants’ names openly, and in order to allow participants to speak honestly about their lived experiences, I opted to maintain confidentiality by applying a randomly selected set of names garnered from star charts as identifiers for each participant. This also allowed for gender to remain confidential. In future research, it may be advisable to be open about being open, and work beyond the constraints for anonymity or confidentiality as required for the research ethics board (REB) approval and as established on the informed consent form.
  
            As noted, anonymity of participants’ identities was achieved through the use of randomized selected names from star charts which supported me with participant identities when I started comparing and contrasting their lived experiences for the findings. I also created randomly generated avatar images to represent participants’ digital identities (see Figure 19). Characteristics on the avatar images were not representative of the participants’ persona or gender but added a human face and a humanizing element to the stories shared. I also consistently used non-gendered language (they, them, their) when describing participants’ stories as an equity consideration – the voice of each participant had equal importance in the findings. Additionally, as I wrote the findings I consistently applied an alphabetic listing of participants’ names to remove any potential privilege I may have applied to participants' accounts as unnoticed bias in my thinking.