This paper discusses the power that qualitative researchers can hold in how participants perceive, structure, and interpret experiences, particularly through interviews. Examples from a pilot study illustrate how the author influenced participants' views, interpretations, and constructions of the text of the interviews. This paper also presents a…

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a researcher may conduct a basic qualitative research. This paper deals specifically with research of learning, older adults, and in a rural area. This paper became the foundation for the research of my dissertation. I discuss the sample and the criteria for the sample. I also describe the sources of…

This book explores strategies for building up a repertoire of techniques that allow teachers to develop effective explanatory skills. Though it focuses on elementary teachers, many strategies are appropriate for secondary teachers. The book uses a mixture of activities, discussion points, and classroom-based findings that have been proven…

This book is a guide is for school practitioners who want to know more about planning and conducting focus groups as an aid to decision-making. It emphasizes practical and cost-effective ways to ensure accurate results. After defining the focus group, chapter 1 offers ways focus groups can be used in schools and reasons for using them. Chapter 2…

What should the curriculum of a graduate program that focuses on education, technology, and society be? What would be the proper balance of skills, theory, and concepts? What should be the difference between such a program in the School of Education and a computer science program? What do students expect of such a program? These were questions…

This paper describes a qualitative study of seven alternative democratic program (ADP) students of a public high school in a suburb of a major city. The purpose of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how students in ADP reflect upon their transitions to become active members of the ADP community over time. The students were…

The fundamental question in creating coding categories for an open-ended questionnaire is how to transform a complete transcript into manageable pieces of data. This paper describes the methodology involved in coding qualitative data derived from an evaluation of the Cognitive Approaches to School Leadership (CASL) program. The first task was to…

A traditional introductory college astronomy course was restructured along constructivist lines to better foster a key component of science literacy: critical thinking about problems in science. The restructured course was lecture-free, problem-centered, and collaborative in structure. The Reflective Judgment Framework was used to better…

This paper develops an initial theory of teachers' conceptions of classroom discussion. The paper examines the thoughts of six social studies teachers from suburban and urban high schools concerning characteristics and purposes of classroom discussions and factors that seem to influence teachers' uses of these conceptions. In-depth interviews and…

Expanding on Ruth Sidney Charney's ideas in "Teaching Children to Care," this book addresses the question of adding a caring dimension to classroom practice. The book draws on case studies from six elementary classroom teachers as they incorporate some aspect of a caring curriculum to their students. The book is divided into three parts with the…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to develop a program evaluation template to be used for primary care residencies. Programs were reviewed by meta-evaluation, interviews, and a focus group. Interviews and focus groups were held with four primary care program directors, two medical educators, and one accreditation site surveyor. Survey…

This book describes how it feels and what it means to do qualitative research, and it provides support for doctoral students who choose this form of inquiry for their dissertation research. It serves as a guide to the processes and procedures involved in writing the qualitative dissertation. The reflections of research correspondents are the data…

This study used a qualitative research methodology to examine how four primary teachers used a district literacy performance assessment. Data were collected through observations, interviews, and documents. Grounded theory and NUD*IST software were used for text analysis and theory building. Findings show that a theory-grounded teacher-empowered…

A composition researcher collected stories from students with writing anxiety, using qualitative research tools of interview and interpretation. In literary theory it is not unusual to speak of anxiety of influence when referring to the torment of proving one is equal to a revered author. The critic Harold Bloom presented it as his theory of the…

This study examined the teaching methods of two Icelandic preschool teachers, their beliefs about early childhood curriculum, and the goals of their programs, emphasizing the connection between the context of the preschool teachers and their pedagogical work. Participating in the qualitative study were two preschool teachers from the city of…