"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.

Qualitative researchers must be a flexible Gumby

Yesterday was one of those days in school that pinpointed for me some of the readings about how intune qualitative researchers need to be with what they want to do, how it colors their observations and what is really happening with the group being studied. I was teaching the class some strategies for editing and revising sections on the state tests coming up in March. It was boring work, but necessary and I could see the glazed over eyes. In response, I changed the presentation style and saw an improvement, but only a slight one. At that moment, a teacher who is training me on the Moodle, the on-line learning system we are putting into place entered the room to hand me some information on what I had learned the day before during the two hour pd. I had really enjoyed that pd. We learned how to create personal avatars. When he came in, I asked him if he was busy or could we stop for a moment and introduce the students to what we had learned. He was able to do it, so the lesson changed. He began his introduction and the class, at first, only marginally listened. It was just another teacher standing in the front of the room, but shortly into the presentation, I noticed a change. The doodling subsided, the room became more quiet, you could see the attention increase. Soon, there was an observable difference in motivation and engagement, and in questions. As the students saw just how interactive and immediate their work could be on the blog sites their interest soared as did my passion. In fact, at one point when I said let's show them the avatars I was so excited I slipped off the desk I was sitting on. They laughed, but they could see the passion I had. Shortly thereafter, one boy, AZ who asks every day do we have homework (even though he knows we will) because he is not always homework-compliant said "I can't wait to do my homework." Then it changed for me. Then I realized that maybe my idea of what to study shifted. Then I thought about the fact that what I wanted to study may need to change or may need to change in its intensity. I wanted to (and still do) want to look at writing on line to see how it changes, how it is different both in form and in quality to standard, formal paper and pen writing. I still want to understand how writing in a different medium will change writing, but I also decided that another very important arena might be how student motivation and engagement is affected by the online world of delivering instruction. We live in such an immediate world, instant oatmeal, instant breakfast, instant messages. Kids like immediate feed back and the idea that they can get immediate feedback, see their work, assess their work, get peer feedback etc almost immediately is enticing. I became acutely aware how I might be changing in response to what I was seeing. My Teacher-I kicked in as I noticed a potential teachable-moment, a venue that would not only interest the students, but keep them engaged. I began to wonder how inclass work and participation and interest might be affected by the work they do online and at home. Would inclass discussion be changed by the discussions they have with each other over the internet. Would their work increase in quality as they have more resources available to them? In my Teacher-I, my quest is to make them life-long learners and passionate human beings. Certainly, increasing their motivation and stimulating their passions might indeed create more active engagement and more passionate learners and human beings.

I also realized that I have to be careful with my Passionate-I because I have to realize that my passion might affect someone else. My passion is mine, but it shouldn't be a coercive tool to engender someone else's passion. It might be an I that has to be checked and monitored.

What Are My "I"s?

It appears that qualitative research can be greatly affected by the subjectivity and biases of the researcher behind the work.  As a qualitative researcher just starting out, I will need to explore my subjectivity, my biases, what Peshkin (1988) calls "I"s in his article, "In Search of Subjectivity - One's Own."  For this week's blog entry, the assignment is to explore one's subjective "I"s that could potentially affect future research work.  What follows is my current thinking on what my subjective "I"s are at this moment.

I think I need to start with the fact that I am a teacher at heart.  The "teacher I" is a strong one in that I have been an educator for about a decade now.  It is a career for me, a second one started later in life, but one that I had thought about pursuing since I was much younger.  As a teacher and coach of other teachers, I am sure that my future research will take place in schools and will involve the instruction of teachers and the learning of students for much of the time.  I will most likely want to make sure that the students in a particular study are learning and gleaning as much benefit as possible from the intervention or other work occurring with them.  I will most likely want to make sure that the teachers are instructing to the best of their ability as well so as to maximize student achievement.  Interfering though this way could affect the course of the research, that is unless the effect of such interference happens to be what is under study.

Another "I" to note is what I will call my "social justice or activist I."  This is the "I" that mostly drove me to becoming a teacher in the first place.  It involves my desire to make a difference in the lives of children and to make sure that each and every one receives the best education possible.  It is the reason for where I work (a public school in the South Bronx) and for why I deal with so many difficult issues in a field where the hours are long and the money could be better.  I tend to see what occurs at work through this lens and strive to advocate for students and their families who have very little voice in a vast bureaucratic system that seems to favor the rights of teachers over those who are most in need and who the teachers are employed to help.  I will need to work to keep this lens in check so that I am able to conduct my research without having the process and result be replete with biased judgments about the systemic dysfunction of education as most likely will be shown through the work at hand.  You see of course though that this paragraph alone was full of the very bias I am writing about here!  It will not be easy.

The last "I" of note for this blog entry is my "foster care survivor I."  I spent much of my childhood growing up in two different foster homes.  As a result, I can identify with many of the students with whom I work.  Some live in foster homes, others in shelters of various kinds, and still others are at home with either a single parent or grandparent or other family member/individual who happens to be the primary caregiver.  In general, the lives of these students are difficult.  Resources, financial and otherwise, are meager and consequently, these students have much more to worry about than your average typical student in a similar grade but who grows up in a more stable and plentiful environment.  Again as I work with such students in future research, while I will continue to feel empathy for them, I will need to make sure that this empathy does not cloud what I do or make me treat these students in a way that causes a particular perception of this group or the group of children not a part of this category, a perception that results in a flaw affecting the entire research process.

It is important for me to be aware of these "I"s as well as to be on the lookout for others as I embark on this endeavor to be a qualitative researcher.  By being aware of them from the start, I can strive to make sure that I will bring honesty and openness to the experience and see the participants and course of the study for what it is and not what it appears to be when viewed by my "I"s.