Detailed Lesson Plans and Resources

(Interpretive Inquiry I)

The outline is a "living" one, continuous growing and changing to meet of students and instructor, though the overall framework [reading, assignments] will stay.

 

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[JAN 09] [JAN 16] [JAN 23] [JAN 30] [FEB 06] [FEB 13] [FEB 20] [FEB 27] [MAR 06] [MAR 13] [MAR 20] [MAR 27] [APR 03]

[Assignment] [Transcripts] [Abstracts]

 

JAN 09

Assignment

1. Students read the textbook in its entirety

Lesson topics

1. Introductions, instructor & participants; (photos)
2. Outline of the course--invite students to articulate possible topics that they want to see covered;
3. Presentation and discussion of course objectives:
1. Students will gain better understanding of qualitative research process,
2. Students will gain better understanding of how to design qualitative studies,
3. Students will gain better understanding of how to read qualitative studies in a critical way,
4. Students will gain better understanding of how to interpret data.
4. Presentation and discussion of the assignment;
5. Human research ethics--some basics and consent form [for sample form, click here] (For sample completed ethics application click here) (Has not been covered)
6. Quantitative versus qualitative research: (1) 5-10 min writing (2) minilecture (statistics; mixed methods [example, Roth & Bowen, 1995]) (Chapter 21)
7. Design of Group Investigation (Has not been covered)
1. Reading of newspaper article on water shortage
2. Discussion of topic
3. Brainstorming ideas for a study

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JAN 16

Assignment

1. Reading: Chapters 4 & 5 ;
2. Reading: Students find, read, and prepare to talk about 2 articles on the topic of water, water resources, scarcity of water, water in Victoria, etc.
3. Students email link and source information, and 100-150-word abstract to instructor (mroth@uvic.ca) so that these can be posted on this website.

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made;
2. Individuals, groups? for working on assignment
3. The dialectic of understanding and explaining
1. An unfamiliar task (5 min)
1. Analysis of answers
2. Analysis of experience
3. Summary: What did we learn?
2. MINI-LECTURE & Discussion: The dialectical nature of understanding and explaining (acetate)
3. MINI-LECTURE & Discussion: The continuum of research (acetate)
4. Discussion of Chapters 4 & 5;(Has not been covered)
1. Top down versus bottom up research
2. The role/danger of presupposition, existing, naive understanding
3. Grounded theory
5. Discussion of readings on water resources (Abstracts);
6. Design of Group Investigation
1. Reading of newspaper article on water shortage
2. Discussion of topic
3. Brainstorming ideas for a study (Has not been covered)
7. Framing of research question;(Has not been covered)
8. Designing interview questions and observations, visual data (Has not been covered)

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JAN 23

Assignment

1. Reading: Chapters 8, 12, 13 ;
2. Reading: Students find, read, and prepare to talk about 2 articles on the topic of water, water resources, scarcity of water, water in Victoria, etc.
3. Students email link and source information, and 100-150-word abstract to instructor (mroth@uvic.ca) so that these can be posted on this website.
4. Each individual/group comes with a complete list of interview questions
5. Each individual/group comes with sufficient copies of questions for all others

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made;
2. MINI-LECTURE Chapters 4 & 5
1. Top down versus bottom up research
2. The role/danger of presupposition, existing, naive understanding
3. Grounded theory
3. Discussion of chapter 8
1. FOCUSED INTERVIEW: Specificity, depth, range
2. SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW: List of specific questions (Sample); begin session with open questions (Sample Interview); structure-laying; (Problem: Assumption of essence)
3. Edwards & Potter (1992) on interviews;
4. CHEAT NOTES: Prompting questions: "Can you elaborate on...?" "How did you/he/she justify that?" "Can you explain..." "Where do you know that from?" ...
5. Relation between text produced by researcher/interviewer and researched/participant
6. (Yew Jin, comment on the process of your recent interview)
7. Researcher and researched: Ethics, existential experience; recording (video, audio, notes); checking content
8. Sample interview
4. Discussion of chapter 12, 13
1. Complete participant, paricipant-observer, observer-participant, complete observer; apprenticeship as method; coteaching as method
2. Records: note-taking
3. photos (Example), video (Sample in class only): objectivity & subjectivity
5. Presentation and discussion of articles, abstracts
6. Design of Group Investigation
1. Water shortage
2. Brainstorming ideas for a study
3. Framing of research question
7. Designing interview questions and observations, visual data (Has not been covered)
8. Discussion of one or two sets of questions (Has not been covered)
9. Small-group discussions of the remainder sets of questions (Has not been covered)

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JAN 30

Assignment

1. Reading: Chapters 6, 7 ;
2. Each individual/group comes with a complete list of interview questions
3. Each individual/group comes with sufficient copies of questions for all others

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made;
2. GOALS for the lesson in the overall context of the course
3. [Abstracts]
4. Human research ethics--some basics and consent form [for sample form, click here] (For sample completed ethics application click here)
5. Discussion of chapters 6, 7
1. Entering the Field: EXAMPLES from my own research; roles (stranger, visitor, initiate, insider); access to individuals and institutions (Ethical questions)
2. Sampling Decisions: Who to watch/ask (groups, individuals) and which cases to retain; during analysis (sampling within the material, presentational sampling); gradual selection; CONCEPTS: extreme, typical, cases; maxial variation; intensity of feature; critical cases, convenient cases; EXAMPLES from my research: How to videotape? (Oz, Kiel) Who to ask? (interviews about epistemology, nature of science, scientific knowledge); Ross Road studies;
6. What is the sample?
7. Entering the field in this study; Access?
8. Interview Questions; meta questions; sample?;
1. Discussion of one or two sets of questions
2. Small-group discussions of the remainder sets of questions
3. Listing of prompts
4. Practice session for interviews with peers

After this lesson, students conduct first interview; debriefing will be FEB 13

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FEB 06

Assignment

1. Reading: Chapters 9, 10, 11 ;
2. Bring revised questions for semi-structured interviews
3. Email revised questions for semi-structured interview to instructor (mroth@uvic.ca)

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made;
2. SITUATING todays lesson: OBJECTIVES
• Increase theoretical and practical understanding of Focus Group and Biographical/Narrative Interview techniques
• Theoretical and practical understanding of analysis of text
3. Discussion and activities relating to chapters 9, 10, 11
• FOCUS GROUP
• Minilecture
• Enacting a focus group
• Analyzing one focus group interaction
• Taking a look at "focus group" data (Sample)
• AUTO/BIOGRAPHY, NARRATIVE
• Minilecture: Representation and lived experience, narrative construction of Self
• 7 minutes of writing
• SAMPLE: "At the elbow of another..."
• SAMPLE: RISE Special Issue: Auto/biography in science education
• SAMISEBE Project: Auto/biography as method. (See my book review of the SAMISEBE project
• A book review that uses auto/biographical narrative and a reflexive approach to the dialectic of understanding and explaining: Grenzgänger.
4. ANALYZING Verbal Data
• We engage in small-group analysis, then whole-group discussion and refinement of categories of a text by Todd Alexander, a former student and co-author of a scientific article (Roth, W.-M., & Alexander, T. (1997). The interaction of students' scientific and religious discourses: Two case studies. International Journal of Science Education, 19, 125--146.).
• Examples of marking up transcript
• Writing assertions, claims
• Analysis of Jamie and Ted in the field (Sample)
• Analysis of verbal data from video tape in science lab (Sample)
• Analysis of verbal data from interview on graphs (Sample)
• Next level of iteration: Analyzing the analyses (Sample)

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FEB 13

Assignment

1. Reading: Chapter 21
2. Reading: Quality
3. Students bring questions, problems relating to their own research;
4. First interview transcribed, ready to be discussed and reflected upon
5. Copy of transcript emailed to instructor

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made;
2. Quality of Qualitative Research
• Writing 7 minutes
• Discussing students' writing
• MINI-LECTURE: Quality in qualitative research
3. Reflections on first interviews;
• What were things that did, did not work in your interview?
• What do you need to do to be better prepared for the next interview?
• What is the relation between your and the interviewee's amount of talk?
• Relate your experience to the textbook chapter on interviewing
4. Small-group and whole-class analysis of parts of one interview;
5. Whole-class analysis of student research questions, design issues, etc.

After this lesson, students conduct second interview; debriefing will be FEB 27

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FEB 20

!!! READING BREAK. NO CLASSES !!!

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FEB 27

Assignment

1. Reading: Chapters 14, 15, 16;
2. Second interview transcribed, ready to be discussed and reflected upon
3. Copy of transcript emailed to instructor

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made;
2. Framing lesson objectives, situating them in the course as a whole
• Theoretically, we are now at the point of considering what to do with data; practically, we begin analyzing data to gain practical experience in going from raw text to toward (grounded) theory. Ideally, students begin to develop an understanding of the theoretical issues raised in the textbook based on their practical experiences of doing coding.
• Students learn to code real data
• Students begin to build grounded theory
• Students appreciate role of (existential) understanding and reflexivity
3. Debriefing the second interview
• What were things that did, did not work in your interview?
• What do you need to do to be better prepared for the next interview?
• What is the relation between your and the interviewee's amount of talk?
• How did your experiences compare to the first interview?
• Relate your experience to the textbook chapter on interviewing
4. CODING
• ACTIVITY: "I just don't think people really think about [water]. Like I didn't until two years ago, I didn't really know...really think about how we got our water in Victoria? Because where I'm from it's glacial... From the mountains, so... It's snow run-off! So here, is stream, going into the reservoir. So, I didn't really have a concept of running out of water."
• Writing
• Debriefing: Content
• Debriefing: Reflective move: Understanding, explaining, reflexivity
• MINILECTURE: Coding, from raw materials to grounded theory; building individual cases
• Practical activity of coding: Interview
• Open coding in small groups
• Identification of themes (whole class)
• Writing assertions, providing an exemplary case (small group)
• Critiquing assertions (whole class)
• Using the existing themes, build a larger theoretical ensemble (small group)
• Debriefing the theoretical ensembles (whole class)

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MAR 06

The instructor is away. Students meet in small groups to work on their assignment at a location at their disgression

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MAR 13

Assignment

• Reading: Chapters 17, 18, 19;

Lesson topics

• Where we currently are: Relation of this lesson to the overall course
• Preparation for the lesson on March 20
• There will be three presentations by (future) graduate students, who already have extensive research experience under my supervision (Abstracts). (Dr. Robert Anthony will supervise the seminar.)
• Students prepare for the lesson by re-reading the Guba and Lincoln text on the "Quality of Fourth-Generation Evaluation" (Quality) and chapters 17-18.
• Final assignment: Students demonstrate their theoretical competence and provide evidence of their practical achievements as these pertain to the objectives of the course. The following are re-iterations of what a final assignment might look like. (Examples)
• INTRODUCTION: 1.5-2 pp. Introduction to the general problematic. Students show evidence that they have done background reading, and have perused the sources that we gathered initially
• METHOD: Students describe methods, process of research, from creation of question, refinement of question, entering the field, interview, revision of questions, second interview, analysis, refinement of concepts, etc. Evidence that students employ the methods described in the TEXT; quality criteria and how relevant ones were implemented and why others could not be implemented (Guba & Lincoln, Chapter 18). You may want to structure your narrative using standard headings such as "participants", "data collection", "data [types]", "interpretation"
• RESULTS: Presentation of a number of assertions, dimensions in the data, samples from the data, description of the phenomenon; evidence that students have also checked assertions in at least 2 other transcripts
• DISCUSSION: What did you learn with respect to the original research question? Discuss findings with respect to the issues raised in the introduction
• DEBRIEFING: What I/we learned by doing this research project
• REFERENCES: In-text: Students show consistent referencing (APA, Chicago); end-of-text: Complete listing of all references that appear in the text, consistent referencing (APA, Chicago)
• Discussion of chapters 17, 18, 19;
• MINI-LECTURE Chapter 18, Guba and Lincoln
• Practical activity of coding: Interview
• MINI-LECTURE: Sample research article: Step-by-step analysis
• Open coding in small groups
• Identification of themes (whole class)
• Writing assertions, providing an exemplary case (small group)
• Critiquing assertions (whole class)
• Using the existing themes, build a larger theoretical ensemble (small group)
• Debriefing the theoretical ensembles (whole class)

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MAR 20

Assignment

• Reading: Chapters 17, 18;
• the text on the quality of qualitative research

Lesson topics

• OBJECTIVES: 580 students have the opportunity to listen to their research projects, which are presented in much more detail than any research article could present the background of a project. The question and discussion period following each presentation will allow students to develop an understanding of the criteria for the quality of qualitative research, by attempting to apply the criteria as described to the concrete research studies presented.
• Dr. Robert Anthony supervises the seminar. There will be three presentations by (future) graduate students [Yew Jin Lee, Lilian Pozzer, Leanna Boyer], who already have extensive research experience under my supervision (Abstracts). For each of the three presentations, the following structure is proposed:
• PRESENTATION of the research (25-30 min)
• Motivation for the research (introduction)
• Methods, how was the research being conducted (rich description of how research was conducted, evidence from the data, how was analysis being conducted to assure quality of research)
• Some key findings: Assertion/data/discussion for each
• Conclusions & Implications: What did we learn with respect to the initial questions? and Where do we go from here?
• QUESTIONS/DISCUSSIONS: 580 students ask questions about (a) method and quality of research and (b) experience of doing this research as a newcomer, and how the presenter came to know (learning process) and have class discussion about the extent to which some/all criteria are being used or not used (20-25 min)
• GUBA/LINCOLN: Trustworthiness: CREDIBILITY (like internal validity: prolonged engagement, persistent observation, peer debriefing, negative cases, progressive subjectivity, member checks), TRANSEFRABILITY (like external validity, generalizability), DEPENDABILITY (like reliability), CONFIRMABILITY (like objectivity)
• FLICK (class text): Plausibilization, reliability, validity, triangulation, analytic induction, generalization (constant comparison, contrasting cases)

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MAR 27

Lesson topics

1. Questions about process, special needs, possible changes to be made; everything on track with final assignment?
2. From data to codes to assertions to writing: Review and discussion
3. Writing research: From theory to method and genre (Netscape may be optimal; Explorer may encounter difficulties)

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APR 03

Assignment

• Final assignments are due
• Prepare a 10-minute presentation in which you articulate what you have done, the research method (data collection, data interpretation, quality criteria) and the research results

Lesson topics

• Student presentations and whole-class discussion of study results: Each student gives a 10-minute presentation about their work

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