Donna

Donna Dillahunty

Your profile graphic rocks!!! (deb)

This is my draft of the first three chapters of my thesis:

Ethnographic Case Study (As conducted by a Phobic Practitioner)





__**What Kind of Animal is a Case Study**__**?** A case study is one type of research that can be either quantitative or qualitative. This method tends to answer “how” and “why” questions and may involve a single case or multiple cases. A variety of sampling measures may be employed to determine the specific case or cases. Generally, the focus revolves around an issue that is current and occurs in a authentic situation. In such a real-time arena, researchers have little or no control over the events that happen within and around the phenomenon, thereby removing the possibility of the controlled aspects of true experimental design. Case studies can explain, describe, or explore. A case study may use several different types of data including surveys, interviews, fully quantitative data, etc., that are then analyzed for triangulations that direct researchers to understand why something is happening “here” and “now.” __** My Personal Case Study Animal **__

In my case study, I would like to better understand why I see a greater depth of writing among the boys in my classroom when a technology element is added. To collect data, I would need a survey, personal interviews, observations of classroom behavior, and writing samples. When these items are collected, I can analyze for patterns of triangulation to allow me to draw conclusions. To determine the cases, I would use a random sample from the particular class period I am interested in to select three boys. While this is a small sample, the case study method allows me to focus on such a specific moment in time with a specific group such as this. After reading the article I linked below, I decided that I would also use three specific writing assignments to generate writing samples. One assignment will not utilize technology in any way, another will utilize the current class blog, and the third will involve an animation/movie sample utilizing a website called xtranormal.com. While many would argue that this study would not generalize to all males or to females, I believe that my findings may provide information profitable for professional growth for fellow writing teachers as they seek to engage their reluctant male writers.

__** Another Case Study Animal From ASU Library **__

__**A Few Case Study Resources**__ [|Birmingham Grid for Learning (free case study templates)] [|TESOL site with explanation of case study formats...easy reading] [|Book review with previews of relevant chapters...truly worth the read]

__**Tentative Purpose Statement:**__ The purpose of this narrative study is to examine four teachers' perceptions of themselves as writers, both in and out of the classroom, and to co-construct a description of how these perceptions influence their writing instruction.

Love the Practice Survey, Donna. BTW -- you'll note that I listed you as the most badly behaved movie star. heheheheh ..... do LOL

Practice survey at surveymonkey. [] Please feel free to add your opinion.

**Who am I as a researcher?** I am qualitative with a constructivist bent. **How do I know this?** Well....


 * I am a writer of a definitive literary style and prefer to gift my readers with mental images of what I perceive rather than weight them with endless charts, graphs, and mathematical explanations that confuse even me.
 * I want to know why people think what they think and do what they do. I want to understand the individuals themselves. I'd like to crawl into their heads and understand how they tick. To see a memory and realize, "Aha! So that's why you react that way."
 * I believe that I am who I am because of 46 years of others' input in my life: parents, teachers, spouse, children. Each life that has touched mine has shaped me in some way and has impacted my choices. Everything that makes me "me" is somehow rooted in the people around me.
 * I'm not sure that anything is ever black or white. That's how quantitative research appears to me sometimes. I want to know the "what ifs" that might change that outcome; I want to look at all of the living, breathing, people related circumstances that might skew those lifeless numerical comparisons of clinical data.


 * [[image:qqresearch/Pen&InkWell.jpg width="35" height="45"]]NARRATIVE INQUIRY: For those who are interested, this article is written by Clandinin and Connelly, some of the leaders in narrative research **. **[|narrative inquiry]**

Al Otaiba, S.; Folsom, J. S.; Schatscheider, C.; Wanzek, J.; Greulich, L.; Meadows, J.; et al.(2011). Predicting first grade reading performance from kindergarten response to tier I instruction. Exceptional Children, 77(4), 453-470.
 * My first reaction to this text is panic because after the first few paragraphs, I was lost. As far as questions that I have, I wanted to know what interventions were used. I know that the teachers used Tier 1 interventions, but which ones? How did they choose those interventions? Why did they choose those particular interventions? I would also like to investigate what differences occurred in the first grade classrooms that might have contributed to the lower than expected outcomes. Were there potential affective or relational issues that could have caused the lower scores? In my opinion, the fact that there was no study of the instructional practices at the first grade level decreases the validity of the researchers' findings because I feel that they have jumped to a conclusion based on numbers without a complete picture. I see room for teacher interviews and case studies. Show me through a case study how one of these children is making this rapid progress in kindergarten (detail his social interactions, relationships, and behaviors as well as his numerical test data) and then follow that same child through first grade to continue building the case study. I feel that this would give a more complete picture of what is happening and definitely make it more understandable and therefore more meaningful to the average teacher. And that is the purpose of research, yes? **