Data Analysis and Conclusions Memo

Qualitative Research Methods

Spring 2005

Erin Peters

The purpose of my investigation was to draw out ideas about the nature of science from a teacher who conducts scientific inquiry in her class. I interviewed the teacher in order to get a baseline of what she thought about scientific inquiry and the nature of science. Then, I observed three classes in order to document instances where she used inquiry and when the nature of science was implicitly or explicitly addressed. In the three observations, I was able to see the opening class of a unit, a student work session during the same unit, and the culminating activity of the unit. As part of the observation, I asked to get all of the handouts the teacher used during the unit so that I could verify the instances of inquiry and the nature of science. I then conducted a focus group with six of the students I observed after the unit was over in order to get their impression of how inquiry and the nature of science played out in their class. I ended the data collection with a follow-up interview with the participating teacher. In conducting two teacher interviews, a student focus group, document analysis and three classroom observations, I am starting to recognize some concepts that reoccur in the data collection and some connections they have.

When I conducted the first interview, I felt that I got short, “textbook” answers from the participating teacher. It was my first self-constructed interview and it was her first interview, too. We were both a little nervous and I think that contributed to the thin data that I got during that interview. I thought about the major topics that were discussed and came to the conclusion with the help of my classmates during consultation that I needed to be less esoteric and elicit specific instances. I transcribed the interview and made a large left margin on the word document so I could write notes in the margin. The notes I wrote were mostly about how the teacher has the students gather facts in order to make new ideas. Although using observations in order to create inferences is one of the attributes of the nature of science, it was only one of the seven attributes that I planned to inspect. By the time of the first class observation I was starting to doubt if I could use such an obscure topic as the nature of science for my first solo research project. I made a mental note to look for other connections during the observation that I might link to the information that I obtained during the interview.

The first class I observed was a Socratic seminar on genetics. I really didn’t know what to expect, but this class threw me for a loop. I was expecting to make notes of the teacher’s behaviors and interactions. Much to my surprise, during a Socratic seminar, the teacher only speaks to give the opening question. The remainder of the 45 minutes was a very good discussion among the students, but the observation did not elicit much about the behavior of the teacher, other than the notes she took during the seminar. As I made my field notes from the observation, I realized that I had a great deal of information about what the students did, but not much to connect to the information I obtained during the interview. I knew I had to look deeper than just the teacher’s behavior in the classroom. I began to realize that organizational structures that the teacher had in place allowed the students to operate with a very high level of responsibility. As I made notes in the margin, I began to see how the students were allowed to explore and make mistakes. Exhibit 1.1 shows some of the preliminary codes that occurred in the class. The teacher interacted only when she really needed and the students made good use of their time. A picture was beginning to emerge and I created a small concept map, Exhibit 1.2, to capture my current connections.

The second class I observed had more interaction between students and teachers, as the students were conducting independent research and took the opportunity to ask the teacher questions. During the second class observation, I cued in on the underlying organizational structures that allowed students to work independently. I saw several logistical opportunities that the teacher made for her students so that they could learn on their own. I began to ask myself “How does the teacher set up her classroom so that the students have the opportunity to inquire?” When I coded the field notes from the second observation I started to see that students asked each other questions before they went to the teacher. The teacher tended to downplay her innate authority in the classroom. She had retooled them to operate in a non-traditional public school setting. At this point I thought that I would only look at how she structured her classroom, but that changed by the third observation.

The last class observation I had was with all 100 of her students conducting a huge courtroom trial over the span of three class periods. I noted the intensity and quality of the information during the trial. Again, the teacher had set up an environment where students had a great deal of freedom, and were still using the time productively. In the coding for this observation, I started to see the connections between the student learning, science inquiry and the nature of science. I was relieved to see that my original idea was reemerging, but in a different light. I was no longer looking at the teacher understanding of the nature of science and inquiry, but how she structured her class activities in order for students to have opportunities to inquire and use the nature of science in their studies.

By far, the student focus group was the most delightful part of the data collection. I was a little wary of the circumstances which were evolving. The teacher changed her mind and asked me to pull the students from her class and interview them in my classroom instead of pulling them from lunch. I obliged, but was aware of how the location of the interview changes the relationship that the focus group had with me. Luckily, students are resilient, and they became very comfortable after I explained that they may have seen me around the building as a teacher, but I was studying to become a social scientist. They seemed more than happy to help me and they expressed a comfort in talking about the operations of their class to me. I decided to focus my questions on their perceptions of the structure of their science class, and from those questions, the students started talking about the nature of science and of inquiry. Of the seven attributes of the nature of science I started the study with, they hit upon six of them. I’m not quite sure how that fits into my conclusions yet, and I want to think about that aspect more in the next week.

Again, thanks to the comments I received during my last consultation, I was able to group my follow-up teacher interview questions into past, present and future. The data that were obtained were much richer and have many more connections to the concepts that kept occurring during the data collection. I didn’t really have much more experience than the first time I spoke to the teacher, but I felt more confident. I felt that the follow up interview was less jumpy and was more fluid than the initial interview. I had a better idea of the direction in which the conversation was heading and felt more adept in identifying important concepts. I was also more spontaneous about probing deeper into the important concepts the teacher spoke about.

The most important tentative conclusions I have come to so far include that there are mechanisms necessary for retooling the students to think for inquiry, the teacher encourages inquiry learning to happen through classroom organizations structures that are thought out before the activity, and students connect to the learning more through inquiry. When I didn’t get data that I was expecting in the first interview, I needed to rethink my research questions. I knew that asking about the nature of science was too broad and that teachers didn’t think in terms of abstract ideas. In order to manage the responsibilities that teachers have, teachers think very practically. It is like the abstract artist who develops a piece of work and only after the work is completed, realizes why she did the work in the first place. Many teachers set up structures based on intuition, rather than research. I began to search for practical structures that related to inquiry, such as how the teacher organized the student work for her activities. When I coded the interviews and observations in terms of classroom structure and inquiry instead of the nature of science and inquiry, it revealed a richer set of data. My follow-up interview questions tried to link the concrete classroom structures the teacher created to how she wants her students to think about science. After the interview, the teacher told me that she can really see how her concrete structures relate to abstract ideas, but she couldn’t see it before we had a discussion.

Based on these events, I have decided to change my research question to “How do teachers set up environments to foster inquiry learning?” An additional question will be “How do a teacher’s ideas of the nature of science translate into her classroom organizational structures?” My new questions are still related marginally to my old question, “What are a teacher’s conceptual frameworks of the nature of science and science inquiry?” My revised questions are grounded in a concrete idea of the opportunities created for students due to classroom organization. My shift has led to a recoding of my interviews and observations as well as requesting documents from the teacher. I will look for triangulation of the structures I perceive from the teacher handouts.

Exhibit 1.1

Important Coding Categories

First Teacher Interview	Students develop own ideas Science more than a collection of facts Test ideas Different paths to answer problem Teacher does not give exact steps
First Class Observation	Students adapt to environment Student responsibility built into class structure Few general rules Tolerance for different perceptions
Second Class Observation	Students responsible for learning Class structure builds in student freedom Teacher helps students only when students cannot find answers on their own Teacher give direction infrequently
Third Class Observation	Teacher gives direction infrequently Students responsible for activity Assessment relies on student responsibility Intolerance for lack of preparation
Student Focus Group	Freedom important for connecting to content Science shouldn’t tell you the ending (verification labs) Students learn better when they discover material
Follow Up Teacher Interview	Inquiry = students make new ideas from facts Science is creative Give students enough information to discover ideas on their own Students learn on their own

Exhibit 1.2

Concept Map Constructed After the First Teacher Interview and First Class Observation