How To Make Data Collection And Analysis

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As a means to understand the role of literacy and identity formation in the lives of these adolescents, I generated and collected 10 sets of interviews, each consisting of a middle school or fifth-grade student, one of his or her parents, and the students' homeroom teacher. The interviews were carried out in person or on the telephone and not in the presence of other participants. I asked each of the participants—students, parents, or teachers—about both their own and their corresponding students' reading interests and habits and other current interests outside Breitling Replica Watches and inside of school; the choice of reading material the students and adults read (or chose not to read); reading habits of students and parents; abiding interests outside of reading and over time; availability of reading materials and where they were generally found; time and place for reading; reading practices that are not in books but perhaps involved with church, cooking, instruction manuals, video games, or other practices; perceptions about social ...
... configuration and friendships among peers; and self-perceptions as readers and feelings about reading.

Using a combination of open-ended questions and follow-up questions to clarify meaning or expound on themes, I inquired into possible motivations and uses for reading. I asked whether students were motivated to read based on an assignment that was given to them, or whether they read because they enjoyed reading, or because it was connected to another practice or interest. I asked about reading habits during the school week and over the weekend, in school itself, and over the summer months. I inquired into what "counts" as reading and what genres of reading are valued in school and at home. I asked about kids' feelings about reading and how these may relate to their future goals. Each interview lasted from one half hour to an hour. Recordings and later transcripts were made of each interview. Names of people and places Breitling Replica were changed to protect the anonymity of participants. In the case of the two teachers interviewed, I sent via electronic mail and before the first full-length interview a list of questions, so teachers could prepare student data, which may have been relevant to the interviews.

Data analysis involved a generative process of reviewing transcripts in search of patterns and significant issues (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003). Coding was built on Compton-Lilly (2003) regarding sociocontextual views of families, Noguera (2003) regarding connections between reading habits and identity, and Gee (1996) regarding potential tensions between student relationships with adults and peers. Gee's conception of Discourses was chosen as a theoretical framework for this study because it provided relevance and explanatory power for the set of issues raised in the study.