It is hard to keep your mouth shut

Interviewing pointed out my I's especially my I can talk to anyone I, but then I realized I had to add an I can talk about anything I as I realized just how difficult it is to give over the floor to the interviewee. It is very easy to see how one's biases and one's interest in getting the information one wants that will support the research can get in the way if not checked, or in my case, handcuffed. I realized how difficult it really is to come up with big, broad questions that will allow the interviewee to speak what is on their minds without interrupting, not out of rudeness, but because it is very tempting to step in and ask questions that will lead the person along the path you want. It certainly is not the road not taken. Frost made the choice and stayed there even if he knew he was not ever going to return to the other path. It is very easy to want to act as a road guide and lead the interviewee down the well trod path. I did notice though that the benefit of a well designed broad question can elicit good information. In fact, I noticed that many of the questions I would have asked if my questions were smaller and more direct were answered through allowing the interviewee to speak. What was more difficult was to think of good questions to keep the conversation going when talking stopped. How do you get a person to continue talking without guiding and giving them too much information. I solved this problem by going back to my notes, repeating what the person said, and then asked them to tell me more. For example, our question was How do you feel about PD. When the conversation stopped, rather than asking a pointed question to get more information on a topic I wanted to hear, I simply said, "So you mentioned there was a gap between district driven pd and teacher driven pd" Now, as a teacher, I agreed with that statement, and it would have been easy to say "I agree and why do you think so? But this would have been subjective and leading because the interviewee now would have known my opinion and perhaps continue with an answer to please me. Instead, I simply said, Tell me more about that.

Interviewing was more difficult that imagined. I wanted the conversation to last for about 30 minutes, it lasted 20 and I found it difficult to think of questions that would push the interview longer. I am sure the interviewee could have said more, but as a beginning qualitative researcher, I did not feel I had the skills to facilitate more information in an easy flow. That will have to develop. Perhaps, I will now be able to better tailor my approach in order to fine tune the interviews I will have to conduct with my study. I wonder if anyone else experienced this. Let me know.

Finding Interviewees is Harder Than You Think....

Since class last Monday evening, I have been trying to secure a participant for our think tank's assignment to "Create an Interview Protocol." I thought this would be easy, since we chose, as our topic, interviewing a fellow teacher about their impressions of professional development in our school district. I spend my working days surrounded by other teachers, so I started my search by casually asking other teachers at my school if they would be willing to talk to me for 20 minutes about professional development.

As background, report cards and IEP progress reports are due to our principal at the end of next week, and annual reviews for special ed students begin the week after, so all teachers are pretty stressed right now about preparing all of these documents in time and preparing for parent-teacher conferences, so the first reaction I got across the board was, pretty much, "I don't have time to eat or sleep right now, and you think I have time to chat about professional development? Ask me again in a couple of weeks..."

After more begging and pleading on my part, those who were willing to reconsider immediately clammed up when they found out I would be taping the interview. Maybe they think the tapes may be used against them if they fall into the wrong hands? I don't know, but they were very uncomfortable with the taping. Maybe it would be easier if I knew the teachers better; this is my first year teaching at this school. I've been thinking it might be easier if I could go back to one of my old schools and find a teacher who knows me for a longer period of time and might be more trusting. I think I'll try this next week, though I'll still be up against report card and IEP deadlines. Oh well, I'll give it a try...

"Wow" Never use interjections in interviews

As I begin to think about data collection, I realize just how careful one must be in posing interview questions. And I now truly understand all the readings we have done in this class and in others about the careful wording one must use to elicit sound responses. I realize how easy it would be to pose a question to get the answer that one wants. For example, I am looking to see how the use of blogging affects student revision work in writing. I know that I want to hear wonderful things from students about this, but I also want true answers so I have to be very careful. I could say "Wow, isn't blogging great?" But this is tricky. Students may not feel it is great, but may pick up on my enthusiasm from the Wow, and might answer with a response that they think I want to hear over what their real impression is. I want to share my interest, but I don't want to color my participant's responses. I am also quite aware of the power differential and the fact that in qualitative research, the interviewer is or can be the significant power figure. This points to the importance of making sure participants are listened to and involved. Interviewing and the job of moderator as expressed in the articles is very key. One needs to know how to conduct and moderate a successful interview without letting power get in the way, but at the same time must control the environment so the goal is reached. Having an MBA in marketing really helped when I read the article that talks about focus group interviews and the move from marketing into social sciences, especially the part that talks about the business people watching the interviews. I liked the comment from one of the educators that mentioned that an IRB would have a field day with the silent-observation. Focus groups did help our business. I would like to conduct both private one on one and a group interview with the students in my project to see how their individual reports mesh with the group reports. From a socially constructivist perspective, it will be interesting to see how the sharing of information helps define meaning and importance.

The End of the Beginning...

I feel like the end of the beginning is in sight in regards to this course's mini-inquiry project.  I think that I've developed, with helpful feedback from Kristen and classmates, a good research problem, purpose statement, research questions, conceptual map, and narrative to go along with the map.  Of course I need to complete the IRB proposal but that will be this week's work...

So it's now on to the middle of the project.  For my case study, that will mean determining the participant pool and sampling that pool purposefully.  My method of data collection will be interviewing.  This method makes the most sense in terms of qualitative research in that I want to collect first-hand information from participants in an engaging and in the most authentic way as possible.

This kind of interviewing will be new for me.  Before I became a teacher, I spent years working in retail, mostly as a manager.  I interviewed prospective employees many times although I was never really comfortable at it.  I don't think I did it enough ever to really become comfortable at it.  But then again, as a teacher, I have interviewed.  Now that I think more about it, every time I sit down with a student (and now a teacher in my role as a literacy coach) and have basically a substantive conversation, I am interviewing.  I may not have a guide in front of me but I usually am following some sort of mental framework in what I am talking about with a student or teacher.  As I've participated in such encounters more and more, I've tried to work on being a better active listener, listening more, in other words, and talking less.  This happens to all of us...someone is talking to us and our minds wander, thinking about what we need to do or where we need to go and in the end, we have not usually heard a word that the other person has said.

In this blog entry, I was going to write about the deMarrais chapter and how instructive and useful I thought it was and will be as I prepare for the data collection part of this project.  The chapter does have some great information about creating an interview guide along with what should happen as the interview process unfolds.  I particularly like the "dinner with a close friend" metaphor that the author uses to describe how a good interview should progress.  But as I was writing and thinking, the entry became more about how I do have some valuable experience interviewing already and it's experience that most of us who are teachers already have.  If we talk with our students in ways that make them comfortable yet provide us (and them) with valuable information, then we are already conducting successful interviews and only need to tweak what we do a bit in order to be successful in our interviewing as a part of our qualitative research projects!

Conceptual Framework

In working on the diagram and narrative for my conceptual framework,I began to see more clearly why a study I began thinking about as a quantitative study, needs to be a case study. A week or two ago, when I wrote my research question and subquestions, the questions could have applied to either a quantitative or qualitative study. As I reworked my diagram, I realized that the 2 cases I am studying are so individualized (two of my high-needs special ed students), that much of the meaning that could be found in studying them would be lost if I approached writing about them in an impersonal style. In order to really tell their stories, I will need to include my own views and experiences as an educator and with these particular students, in a way which is only possible through qualitative research. An indepth focus on each of my two cases will be required to seek out the what can be learned, and possibly generalized, from studying them. Much would be lost in lumping them into quantitative study groups.

Now, to start reading lots of case studies and figuring out how this is really done!

My "eyes", not to be confused with my "I's!

Fellow bloggers and classmates,

I am sitting here at my laptop as I am at CVS awaiting a prescription for eye drops. I am not in class because I have pink eye. Yes, a 32 year old woman with pink eye. Perhaps this was my body's way of getting into the "spirit" of Valentine's Day depsite my desire to ignore the festivities of the day! UGH! I need to add another I to my post below and that is the spread way too thin, wondering will I ever get ahead I?
You see, I was so looking forward to tonight's class. I had my research questions ready to share with my peers and was psyched because I knew there would be an excellent dialogue for me. I also started working on my IRB. I felt pumped and invigorated, ahead of the game actually after last weeks class. And then, true to form, proverbial HELL breaks loose. My house, which I have been trying to sell last week had a flood. I came home on Friday to a bulging ceiling in my basement. Two weeks ago, a tree fell on the inground pool and tore the liner---causing ALL of the water to drain from the pool. It just seems like it is always something. And then I realized, that it is always something. There will always be something.And maybe part of learning is understanding that.

Why am I telling all of you all of this? Because you are my peers, because I value your insight, and mostly because I thought you all, more than everyone else,could probably relate!

My I's

Peshkin ( 1988 ) asserts that it is important for researchers to identify their own subjectivity as a step to understand how this subjectivity impacts their research. Reflecting on this subjectivity is an ongoing process, as often times our individual circumstances change and what we might identify with at one point in time will likely differ at a future point based on our present situations. So, who am I right now? This is a complex, yet important question for me to keep asking, particularly because I am in a period of huge transition and personal transformation.
After reading Peshkin’s article, there were several of his “I”’s that I connected with. Because I raised in a wonderfully supportive, loving, loyal blue collar family and am the only person in my family to graduate from college, I identify with what Peshkin(1989) calles the “Justice Seeking I” (p.19). I have been lucky to have tremendous opportunities that have provided me with the financial means to pursue several degrees. However, I am acutely aware that not all people are lucky enough to have these same opportunities and so my goal is to do what I can to “level the playing field” . I hope that at the end of this program, my research will improve the lives of students and provide them with the opportunity to excel. I have many ideas about possible literacy outreach programs I would like to implement with students and parents of lower socioeconomic status as well as students who have been identified as having learning disabilities and their families.
The “teacher of students with learning disabilities I” is another separate “I” that also fuses together with the “Justice Seeking I”. I have taught students with language based learning disabilities for ten years and have some pretty strong ideas, some based on personal experience, some on training I have received and all supported by research in the field. During my reading of Peshkin , I laughed as he describes his “Pedagogical Meliorist I”(p.19) and his desire to “remedy bad teaching” thinking to myself as I read and annotated the text with a huge “!!!” that his description perfectly applies to me!
My final “I” is the hardest to admit to as it is the most personal; however, it is the most important for me to acknowledge. I call this the “passionate about my beliefs and/ or (ahem)...the very stubborn I”. I must be really careful to monitor this I because it could very easily turn into “I know all the answers and am always right I”. I am sure that makes me sound like an arrogant, know it-all, but if this is really meant to be an honest reflection, then that needed to be stated.


I see myself as a mixture of all of these I's. Under some circumstances some of these I's are more prevalent than others. But together, they make up a large part of who I am at this moment as a researcher.
So, is this my “final answer” to the question of “who am I”? Absolutely not! This is a question that I will keep asking myself. I am looking forward to seeing how the answer might evolve over the course of this semester.