FIN Commons

Plans for Data Collection and Analysis

 

A.        Zoom-Lens Inquiry: Focusing on Students

 

1)         What data will you gather and analyze on individual students? (e.g. student work, self-reflections, interviews, videotaped think-alouds or problem-solving)

 

·         extensive questionnaire of student as language learner including categories of  literacy and language background, educational history emphasizing language acquisition, how students use language(s) in their daily lives  (see attached)

·         writing samples generated at beginning of semester

·         writing portfolios that include three writing assignments common to all sections of English 50 in addition to self-assessments

·         student reflections

·         video-taped interviews (both targeted and randomly chosen students)

·         demographics

·         faculty perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs about individual students’ language acquisition and literacy/case studies

·         transcripts/educational history

·         English placement test scores

·         Reading placement test scores

 

 

2)         How do you imagine this data will help you understand the problem/issue you’re investigating? In other words, how does the data connect to and inform the overall focus of your inquiry?

 

·         confirm or contradict assumptions about the generation 1.5 student

·         clarify picture of the characteristics of generation 1.5 students

·         identify whether or not writing samples reveal characteristics of generation 1.5 students

·         identify what other tools may help to reveal characteristics of generation 1.5 students

·         identify what other questions need to be asked, what is missing from the questionnaire (for example, we have already discussed needing to find out what is the impact of other programs and student services upon students’ perceptions and motivations both of themselves and of literacy/language acquisition

 

 

3) When and how will you collect this data? (e.g. Which classes will you target? Where will you conduct interviews or think-alouds?)

 

Our target population is English N50, Introduction to Written Communication, three levels below the transfer-level composition course, English 101. Students place into it based upon their English Placement test profile. The course emphasizes basic skills in grammar and sentence to paragraph composition.

 

There are five sections being examined with approximately 30 students in each class.

 

Writing samples were administered during the first week of meeting; questionnaires were administered within the first three weeks.

 

Common assignments have been targeted for completion within each third of the semester.

 

Writing portfolios will be collected during the final week of classes.

 

Interviews will be held in the division office’s conference room and/or in anthropology lab.

 

Some video interviews will take place in class, some will be one-on-one by appointment, and some will be group interviews in the conference rooms.

 

 

4) When will you analyze this data? (e.g. mid-semester team retreat, after lesson-study session, at the end of the semester; )

 

We will be analyzing questionnaires prior to April 15^th and also at the end of the semester with a revised follow-up questionnaire based upon analysis of the original.

 

Writing portfolios will be analyzed at the end of the semester.

 

Lesson-study will be analyzed between the first and tenth of April.

 

Common assignments will be analyzed at the group meeting just following each assignment.

 

 

5) How will you analyze the data? (e.g. analyzing student work with a rubric or analytic frame like Polya’s method for problem-solving or Perry’s scheme for student development; analyzing themes in student self-reflections according to their performance in the class – how did the responses of students who did not pass compare/contrast with students who performed well?)

 

Perry’s scheme will be utilized in assessing the initial writing samples, which asked students to describe a positive learning experience.

Student writing will be analyzed using the departmental and group-generated rubrics appropriate to the English 50 level.

 

Questionnaires and self-assessments analyzing themes regarding language awareness, literacy, self-perceptions as students/learners and of whether they see themselves as making successful choices as students/learners in both the broadest sense of “learner” and in the narrowest sense of English language learner.

 

 

6) What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? How can your Inquiry Coach support you in this phase of your Inquiry?

 

What are we going to learn from the survey that will help us design the follow-up survey?

Another concern is that the demographics of our English 50 classes may be significantly different than our perceptions based upon our previous enrollments.

 

Is the placement exam that our college currently uses an appropriate tool to place students accurately into English 50, and can we identify the difference between generation 1.5 students and a truly ESL student to place the students correctly into an appropriate course sequence.

 

 

B.        Mid-Range Shots: Focusing on the Classroom

 

1)         Please name ONE specific lesson in a particular course that will give you a good vantage point for observing student learning relevant to your Inquiry.

 

Our first Lesson Study involves distinguishing the “insider” (emic) from the “outsider” (etic) viewpoint of generation 1.5 students. To accomplish this, the FIN team will read selected Academic/Professional literature on generation 1.5 students and identify/analyze what the academy claims about characteristics and abilities of this group—this will provide us with the etic point of view.

 

Then, to capture the emic perspective, students will be assigned a short article detailing characteristics and language/literacy abilities of the generation 1.5 student. They will discuss their reaction/response to the article in class. Discussions will be videotaped. Students will write a reflection on the article that will reveal if they accept, reject, modify, and/or challenge the official view of generation 1.5 students.  They will also write about how they think this description applies to them, personally.

 

2)         How do you imagine the Lesson Study will help you understand the problem/issue you’re investigating about students and their learning? In other words, how does it connect to and inform the overall focus of your inquiry?

 

One of our primary goals is to understand perceptions both of academics and of the generation 1.5 students themselves and how these perceptions inform what we teach and the way we teach it, not to mention the success of students in their language and literacy acquisition. Of course, this should lead us to identify potential strategies for curriculum overhaul or if we even need to change it.

 

     

3)         When and how will your team conduct this Lesson Study? Please detail the timeframes and participants for the three parts of the Lesson Study process (collaboratively planning the lesson, teaching/observing the lesson, and debriefing/analyzing videotapes & student work from the lesson).

 

Part one: collaboration/planning of lesson March 18^th at FIN team meeting.

 

Part two: teaching/observing will be done the week of March 23^rd.  Individual courses will be videotaped by students and faculty.

 

Part three: Debriefing will take place immediately after the Lesson Study, the week of March 29^th.

 

4)         What kinds of things will the observers be looking/listening for during the lesson? What artifacts of student learning and student experience will the team collect during the lesson? Will you videotape any portion of this process (pre-planning, lesson, debrief)?

 

From the etic point of view, we will be looking for both consensus on and challenges to perceptions of generation 1.5 students. Are paradigms about these students changing?

 

From the emic point of view, we want to know if students agree or disagree with the prevailing dogma regarding generation 1.5 students. We will be looking for what their perceptions of themselves as language/literacy learners. Also, part of our discussion will be to find out what label students would like to use to distinguish the group we are currently calling generation 1.5.

 

5) What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? How can your Inquiry Coach support you in this phase of your Inquiry?

 

A big question: How to challenge and avoid a deficit model of generation 1.5 students? What questions about bilingualism are we not considering?

 

 

C.        Wide-Angle Lens: Focusing on Larger Trends in Institutional Data

 

1)         What data from your Institutional Research Office will you integrate into your Inquiry? For example, will you look at patterns of student success, defined as grades of CR, A,B C? Retention rates (completion of semester without withdrawal)? Persistence from one semester to the next, or from one course to the next in a sequence? Comparisons of student outcomes disaggregated by race/ethnicity, gender, age? Data from surveys on student engagement? For a sample Inquiry using this kind of data, go to http://facultyinquiry.net and look for the category “Using Institutional Research,” then see the Learning Community Impact study posted there.)

 

• transcripts for patterns of student success (in what types of classes have they been in successful, patterns of withdrawal and/or success as measured by grades)
• persistence from one semester to the next
• retention rates in English N50
• comparisons with success rates in previous semesters’ English N50 courses
• disaggregation of data by race/ethnicity, gender, age, previous education history, nationality

 

 

2)         How do you imagine this data will help you understand the problem/issue you’re investigating? In other words, how does the data connect to and inform the overall focus of your inquiry?

 

They will help us appreciate the range of diversity among generation 1.5 students, and being able to identify that can inform teaching and learning differences. Also, they may help us determine which factors most impact English language acquisition and literacy (for example, a study showed that past math class grade most accurately predicted success in English courses).

 

3)         What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? How can your Inquiry Coach support you in this phase of your Inquiry?

 

How can we integrate, correlate, and interpret this data in conjunction with our student and classroom data?

 

D.        Video Footage

We are asking each team to collect at least 10 hours of video footage in the spring semester.

 

1)         Beyond plans detailed above, please describe any additional footage you intend to gather.

 

We intend to gather video tapings of student presentations regarding campus services available to them and of interviews with counselors (those who place students into courses or who identify which placement test students should take) and other faculty/administrators about what they know regarding generation 1.5 students.

 

2)         How will this footage inform the central questions of your Inquiry?

 

A central question is what perceptions of generation 1.5 students exist within the academic profession and within our campus, so this will help us get to that.

 

3)         What questions/concerns do you have about this element of your Inquiry? Is there any support you’d like from the FIN Leadership Team in this area?

 

We are concerned about how to be sensitive both to that boundary between artificial environment and natural classroom environment and to how the process of being observed and recorded will affect the participants and influence the data. We’re trying to mitigate it with a variety of data-gathering tools.

 

Naturally, we are also concerned about how to put together the actual footage from our various team members and how to keep all of the raw footage in addition to what gets edited. None of us is an expert in the entire video-making process, so it is a concern—not a problem, just a challenge.

 

We are also concerned about how to integrate student inquirers into as much of the process as possible and empowering them to see themselves as co-inquirers.

 

E.         Inclusion of Student Voices

 

As noted during the Kick-Off Convening, an additional $1,000 will be made available to each team to support making student voices a central part of each Inquiry. We encourage you to be creative and draw upon students as co-inquirers who can provide expertise in helping you understand the problem/issue you are investigating. Please describe how you plan to include student voices in your Inquiry (e.g. hiring students to capture video footage, interview other students, review data from your inquiry and tell you what they see).

 

One way of integrating student inquirers is by utilizing an English 103Honors cohort, which is the Critical Thinking and Composition course (above the transfer-level English course that is a prerequisite for this class). These students are going to be doing theme analysis of the interviews and reflections and writing samples in addition to creating surveys of their own and doing research of existing studies and data on generation 1.5. They want to be involved in the questioning/follow-ups of the subject students.

 

Perhaps, a few of these students will be able to continue through the grant’s lifetime.

 

Some of these students, when we discussed generation 1.5, self-identified with that label. This will add another dimension to the inquiry and results.

 

Students in each of our English N50 classes will be co-inquirers by participating in:

 

·         videotaping individual and classroom activities

·         reviewing interviews and assisting with analysis

·         reviewing and analyzing student reflections

·         end-of-semester presentations about what they have learned about generation 1.5

·         preparing and presenting a generation 1.5 workshop at a high school in the Santa Ana Unified School District

 

Timeline/Calendar

So that we can visualize how the work will proceed over the next several months, please give a timeline for when the above components will occur. It can be in either calendar or outline format.

 

February 2009:            Common writing prompt/assessment in all sections of 

                                              English N50

                       

                                    Administer language and literacy questionnaire

 

                                    Revise Inquiry Plan

 

                                    Plan Lesson Study #1

 

 

March 2009:                Lesson Study #1

                       

                                    Classroom videotaping of lesson study

 

                                    Common assignment on student services

 

                                    Videotaped interviews

 

                                    Student questionnaire data analysis

 

 

April    2009:               Debrief and analyze lesson study videotapes and

                                           student work

 

                                    Site visit with FIN coach

 

                                    Generation 1.5 workshop with Dr. George Bunch,

                                             UCSC

 

                                    Attend CATESOL Generation 1.5 session

 

                                    Plan Lesson Study #2

 

                                    Continue videotaping classrooms and interviews

 

 

May 2009:                   Continue videotaping interviews and classrooms

 

                                    Lesson Study #2

 

                                    Administer follow-up student questionnaire

 

                                    Interview faculty, counselors, and administrators

                                              about their knowledge and perceptions of

                                              generation 1.5 students

 

                                    Plan student presentations for Santa Ana Unified high

                                              school

 

 

Summer 2009:             Early June –   FIN team meeting to reflect on the

                                              spring semester

 

                                    Decide whether or not to include summer classes in

                                              our inquiry

 

                                    Final data analysis and write-up

 

                                    Plans for Fall 2009

 

                                    “Cabo San Lucas getaway” ( dream on)