Shew-we, that took forever. I have 6 transcribed interviews and I wasn't sure if I was going to code all of them. I just finished the first level of my grounded analysis. Pulling out the action that was happening was difficult for me since my questions were not surrounded around actions, more feelings. That led to many of my students just agreeing or disagreeing with the question that I had asked. I guess those were gerunds that I could have used! Honestly, I didn't think about that. I realize now that I didn't do what I have been asking of my students all year long! I asked many thin questions, for those of you out there reading this who are not in the education profession that means questions that can be answered with a yes or no. Or at least that is one of the ways I try to get this across to my students. Funny that I didn't create thick questions myself! Not so funny really, I think that I could have got a lot more out of the students I interviewed if I had asked thick questions. I plan on improving the questions that I have as well as adding some that another blogger posted in her study on homework (thanks for sharing Amy)!
In doing all of this coding, I have come to many "oh, why didn't I think of that" moments. One such moment was when I realized that I should have had interviews before I started the change in homework, or at least day one of my study. That way I could have seen a clear before and after picture. I have student surveys that I will hopefully be able to judge that from and parent surveys which will go out near the end of my study which will also hopefully assist in this, but I realize that I could have got a lot more rich data from the interviews done in the same fashion.
The data so far has me wondering how some students have been able to accomplish the homework I had been giving. After listening to students with different rates of completion for homework I see how busy my kids are after school. This reminded me of two parents who discussed this with me at a field trip during the start of my action research. They stated how much they liked the way that the 2nd grade teachers (last years teachers) assigned homework. I didn't have a recorder unfortunately, but I did ask for more details. The one mother said that her son has after school day care, sports practice and sometimes even games as well. At the time, I thought that was an isolated case. After coding my interviews I see that many of my kids have after school obligations. Some of them are not even for them, but for siblings and they just attend. These are things I had never taken into consideration as I am not a parent yet myself.
The data from my interviews did seem to answer my question about what students were enjoying. Overall, they students that I interviewed liked the spelling tic-tac-toe choice board. I can counter that with the fact that many students didn't mention reading unless to state their ill feelings towards it. Here is one of my interviews that I have coded.
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