Methods
To begin this study I decided to
conduct my research through a series of interviews on current teachers at an urban
school in New Jersey. I had access to a school where I was currently completing
my junior field experience. I decided that two interviews would be sufficient
for the length and time frame allotted for this project. The school has a total
of forty-four teachers, most of which I had not had one on one interaction with.
Therefore, I requested the opinion of my cooperating teacher in suggesting two
teachers who she thought might be willing and able to sit down with me for the
interviews. She suggested two teachers; a third grade teacher and a fifth grade
teacher. I approached each teacher in person, introduced myself, and introduced
the research study. I gave each teacher a copy of the interview questions for
them to read before deciding if they wanted to participate. After reviewing the
questions, each participant agreed to partake in the study. Meetings were scheduled
at mutually convenient times. The questions were designed escalate from easy to
medium to more intense/open ended. I wanted to start with easy and medium type
questions to open the discussion, so these sections only had four questions
each. The more intense and open-ended questions had a total of sixteen
questions and were the main basis of the interviews. The first interview was
with participant A, a fifth grade teacher, with thirteen years of teaching
experience. This interview took a total of twenty-nine minutes and fifty-two
seconds. The second interview was with participant B, a third grade teacher,
with seventeen years of teaching experience. This interview took a total of
sixteen minutes and forty seconds. Both interviews were recorded and
transcribed at a later time. Once the
data was transcribed, I analyze it to decode the information into categories.
These categories were influenced by Nancy Sommers’ research on the best
strategies to use by teachers when commenting on student papers. In some
instances, I applied the categories from the data as I analyze it further and
found supporting evidence.
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