Year 1 Course Pages

During this phase of the inquiry project, you will be developing a plan that will allow you to explore possible answers to your inquiry question. You will consider approaches to looking and listening (i.e., data collection) in your classroom and school that will help you to think about your inquiry focus. Some of these approaches will involve looking and listening in contexts that are familiar (e.g., the classroom), but in ways that are somewhat unique. Other approaches you consider might be all together new to you (e.g., interviews or focus groups). What is important is that your plan be purposeful, well-thought out, and intentional. 

How do I begin developing a plan?

It's important to keep in mind that the better you understand the concepts embedded in your question as well as the complexities of the question, the easier it will be to devise a plan for discovering answers to it. For example, suppose your question was, "What would happen if I started having my students engage in Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) every day for twenty minutes?"  Before deciding how to develop a plan for answering this question, you would want to consider what exactly you mean by it. Consider these questions:

1. What would happen to whom? With regards to what? (To your students' reading comprehension? To their enjoyment of reading? To their motivation to read? To their understanding of what it means to be a "good" reader? To your ability to assess how and how well they choose texts for themselves? etc.)

2. What is SSR? Is it really nothing more than having everyone read a text quietly for a given period of time? Is there more to it than that? If so, what? Why was it originally conceived?

3. Why twenty minutes? Did you read that twenty minutes is a developmentally appropriate amount of time for the age group you teach? Or does twenty minutes just feel right to you? Why? Is it possible that twenty minutes will be too long or too short? Would you learn something different about what would happen if your students engaged in SSR if they read for a longer or shorter period of time? In other words, how important is the "for twenty minutes" to your inquiry question?

4.  What does it mean to implement SSR well? Does "what would happen" depend on how you implement it?

5. etc.

Going through the process of truly considering the complexities of your question will help you think about what you want to look and listen for -- and how you will record what you see and hear.

What are some possible ways to look and listen?

OBSERVING AS AN OUTSIDER

One of the most valuable ways to identify the impact of a change, or to study a particular phenomenon is to simply observe. Observing as an outsider (as opposed to as a participant) allows us to focus more on what we're seeing and hearing, and to record it while it's happening. As teachers, we get the opportunity to do this when our students are engaged in student-centered activities, or when we're watching students whose work is being facilitated by another teacher. When you have the opportunity to watch from the outside looking in, you are not encumbered by fulfilling the expectations of your own role.  You can focus more on what others are doing and saying and how what you see and hear can help you make sense of your inquiry question. As an outside observer, take notes. In other words, jot down what you see and hear -- even if you're not sure at the moment whether it's entirely relevant to your question.  Don't make this note-taking more complicated than it really is. Literally take a pad of paper and a pen and start writing down what you're seeing and hearing. Record your observations in as objective a way as possible. (Now is not the time to interpret your observations. You just want the facts!)

OBSERVING AS A PARTICIPANT

Sometimes it's not possible to observe as an outsider looking in. If you are actively facilitating some aspect of the lesson, you'll be observing as a participant. For obvious reasons, this limits your ability to fully focus on what's going on around you. And you'll most likely not be able to record what you see and hear as it's happening. However, this type of observation information can still be extremely valuable. Be sure to jot down what you remember seeing and hearing as soon as you are able to. The more time that elapses between the activity or event you participated in and when you record what happened, the less accurate your notes are likely to be (and the more information you'll likely forget). 

TALKING TO KIDS

Never underestimate the value of talking to your students about their perceptions of or experiences with certain activities or classroom events. What they have to say can be very enlightening, and can cause you to think about things in ways you might not have otherwise. There are multiple ways to go about this. You might talk to students one-on-one or in pairs. You might also consider engaging some of your students in what is called a "focus group." In a focus group you have five or six students sit in a small group to discuss their thoughts. You prompt them with questions, but make it clear that you don't want to be part of the conversation. The discussion is theirs. And of course, there are times when a large group discussion with the entire class can provide insight into how your students have experienced something.

There are benefits and drawbacks to different size groups for such conversations. It's important to take into consideration the age of the students, and the purpose and nature of the conversation when deciding how best to have these discussions.

Whatever the size of the group you're talking to, be sure that you're clear about the intent of the conversation. While it may feel informal, it should be purposeful and well-thought out. Have questions prepared ahead of time (although don't feel bound by those questions if the conversation goes in meaningful but unexpected directions). This should not be a spontaneous, "Oh, by the way..." type of conversation. If you are truly to learn something from the experience, you have to have a clear sense of why you organized it and what you want to learn from it.

Don't forget to record students' thoughts either during or after the conversations. Recording ideas while students are sharing allows you to get more information down--including direct quotes. However, it can also intimidate students, particularly if you're talking to a student one-on-one. If you record student thoughts and experiences after the conversations are over, you may forget certain thoughts. Again, you'll need to weigh the pros and cons of jotting down ideas from the conversations while they are happening or after the fact. Another option is to do both. Record key words and phrases while students are sharing, and take time to further explain and expand on what students said about those ideas immediately after you're done talking to the students.

LOOKING AT STUDENT WORK

Student work can tell you a lot about how a change in your classroom is effecting student learning. It can also help you better understand the complexities of a phenomenon that you're trying to make more sense of. Before deciding on what and how much student work to look at, consider what you might be looking for first. What do you hope to learn from the student work? What might be present or absent in student work that would give you insight into your inquiry question? As always with inquiry work, make your decisions as purposefully and intentionally as you can. Very infrequently do answers jump out at us when we have no insights into what we're looking for or why.

Student work might be helpful if, for example, you're trying to determine what happens if you start using a particular strategy (such as think-alouds to improve comprehension) in your classroom. You might have students write journal entries in response to readings they do. You might look at those journal entries to try to identify new insights they are having or strategies they are using that they may have been struggling with before you began using think-alouds.

After collecting student work that you feel might help you better understand the focus of your inquiry, you might consider approaching the task of looking through the work this way:

1. Read the first paper and try to identify what the student is doing or is trying to do (or is saying or trying to say) that is related to your inquiry question.

2. Make a list of those skills, understandings, and/or messages on a sheet of paper and put a check mark next to each. (The check mark indicates that at least one paper exhibited these skills/understandings/messages.)

3. Read the second paper. Look back at your list. Does this paper exhibit any of the skills/understandings/messages that the first paper did? If so, put another check next to each that you identified. Does this paper exhibit any additional skills/understandings/messages that the first paper did not? If so, add those to the list and put a single check mark next to them.

4. Continue reading the papers as you did the first and second, checking off skills/understandings/messages that the papers exhibits that are already on your list, and adding skills/understandings/messages as you come across them for the first time.

The resulting list should give you some insights into what the student work shows that the students are doing/saying and what they are not yet doing/saying.

Shouldn't "data" include numbers and tables?

Your "data" may not look anything like what we often think of when we talk about research and data collection. We often think that data needs to include numbers that we can compare to one another. This is not necessarily so. Whether or not your data includes numbers depends entirely on whether collecting some type of quantifiable information (number data) makes sense considering your question. It is possible that your question does not lend itself to number data, but rather would be better answered through careful and systematic observation and/or conversation. Whatever your plan for collecting information, be certain that you're collecting it in different ways and/or from different sources. Being able to draw the same conclusions from various sources (as opposed to drawing conclusions based on just one source of information) lends credibility to your findings.