Well here in Made-up County (a pseudonym), we have another snow day. I will take this time to update you on what has been accomplished so far in my research efforts. My research consists of five 5th grade participants who meet with me every Tuesday morning for about half an hour; of course we are not counting today due to the inclement weather. What I can do is fill you in on last week's meeting. Last week was my first experience as a true researcher! Quite exciting to say the least. After waiting for all of my participants' buses to arrive, we got to work. I took our initial meeting to introduce the project again and give more information about the project. I also had my participants sign a letter of assent, it is always better to have more than to not have enough, wouldn't you agree? After completing that part of our gathering, I moved on to having my participants complete the Garfield Writing Attitude Survey. I decided to use this survey to gather useful information about my participants' feelings towards writing (the writing process, what they write about, how they feel about heir own writing, etc.). This is also a good resource because it is kid-friendly! The survey is attached to an article, "Measuring Attitude Toward Writing: A New Tool for Teachers," (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, & Ambrosio, 2000). You can find the survey at the link listed below:
Garfield Writing Attitude Survey
For our next meeting, I plan to conduct an in-depth interview for my qualitative research. Khan and Cannell (1957) thought of the interview process as, "a conversation with a purpose," (p.149). My interview questions for the participants are structured to gain more information from my participants, without being too formal with, "predetermined response categories," (Marshall, 2006, p.101). More posts to come, along with further analysis of the Garfield Writing Attitude Survey results!!! Enjoy your snow day!
I am excited to follow your blog! Will you tell us a little more about the background of your research? What was the problem you were seeing? How did you chose the five participants? I love the whole idea of starting a school newspaper. I would think this would be very motivating and fun for the students. I also love that you are using the Garfield Writing Attitude Survey. I agree that this is a kid-friendly survey. I will be using the Garfield Reading Survey in my research. I am interested to hear how the interview process goes.
ReplyDeleteI have a new post, "Why a school newspaper???" that I think will answer your questions :)
ReplyDeleteGreat point about open-ended interview questions that are not too pointed. Sounds like a great structure.
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