Content theory to analyze data

Image taken from http://all-sorts.biz/

During the pedagogical implementation done with deaf students, they produced different pieces of written texts to “demonstrate” their learning process. As I had to analyze them in order to identify information trends and patterns which were useful to find possible answers to the research questions, I found Content Analysis technique appropriate to do this examination.

According to Krippendorff (2004 p.18) “Content Analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use”.

The following reasons support the choice of Content Theory to analyze the data.

1. It makes emphasis on meaning rather on quantification and helped me to build an interpretation of key data sources like gestures and non verbal communication details which are important aspects to analyze in the work with deaf participants.

2. Not only the written texts obtained with the students’ artifacts were analyzed with this technique, the recorded interview, my logs including the classroom observations and two written surveys were also useful to do the data analysis.

3. Content Analysis theory enabled me to make some inferences about the language acquisition process of deaf university students. In addition, the data obtained was analyzed in several levels taking into account the context, the natural occurrence of language and even the human interaction of deaf participants.

Reference

Krippendorff, K. ( 2004 p.18) Content Analysis: An introduction to its methodology.Sage Publications. London, U.K.

What to do with the collected data?

Any Action Research project involves reading and analyzing the data gathered by the different instruments. What to do with the collected data?

These were the steps followed to deal with the collected data.

First Step : Assembling the data

•Re-reading the data and beginning the detailed analysis process.

•Seeing if data are useful to answer the initial research questions

•Using a website to analyze the surveys qualitatively and quantitatively.

In order to do this first step properly, it was necessary to use the tools given by Encuestafacil.com to get an organized chart including the survey results. In addition, the interview was transcribed and some researcher's logs and some students' artifacts were chosen.

After analyzing the survey's questions, I noticed that some were not very useful; they just provided data about the participants' characteristics.

Second Step : Coding the data

•Examining the data and Identifying broad and frequent patterns.

• Applying a color-coding system.

For this process, the tutor's help was very effective to "recognize" the patterns and categories.

Thus, yellow color was used to identify the information about Internet in a blended course

(sub-question Nº1) and green color coded all the patterns that gave information about Collaborative work

( sub-question Nº 2)

Third Step: Comparing data

• Identifying the repeated patterns across the data gathering techniques.
• Analyzing the data gathered, its patterns and other data emerged from the process.
• Identifying the relationships and connections between the data and the research questions.

The tutor suggested me to design this chart which was useful to analyze the data by focusing on the research questions.

QUESTIONS

What does the use Internet resources in an English course tells us about the language learning process of deaf university students?

· What insights about collaborative learning can be identified in an English course for

deaf students ?

CATEGORIES

· The use of Internet resources in a blended course as an effective didactic strategy.

· The language learning process of deaf students and the use of activities linked to visual media and written text production.

· ·Positive incidence of the collaborative work on the English learning process of deaf students.

Fourth Step : Summarizing trends and building Interpretations

Judging the value of data regarding the research question and sub questions .

Identifying concepts, ideas and interpretations emerged from the data collected.

Drawing conclusions.

Fifth Step : Writing a data analysis report

The report shows the research systematic process and present its findings.

The last two steps were so difficult for me. This writing task demanded a lot of time and effort; organizing the results and building a coherent paper implied to re-read the data several times trying to find possible " connections" and new interpretations

Data Collection Instruments

February 17, 2010

This research project has involved the use of different data collection instruments such as an initial and a final survey, some researcher's logs, a recorded interview and some written products done by students that are called artifacts.



The initial survey
This instrument was applied to know students' motivation towards the English learning and their relationship with some instructional technology.It enabled me to have a general characterization of the participants.
See http://www.encuestafacil.com/RespWeb/Qn.aspx?EID=662546


The final survey
This instrument provided specific data about the particular process of the deaf participants and the effect of using some EFL Internet resources on the design and development of an English course for them. It was also applied to know the students' opinion about the blended methodology used during the course.
See http://www.encuestafacil.com/RespWeb/Qn.aspx?EID=662553

Sagor ( 2000 p.104) considers surveys popular instruments because they are efficient and versatile, useful for gathering data about different fields.

The researcher's logs.
These short paragraphs including my personal perspective of the learning process of my deaf students, they were useful to get some insights about the classroom interaction and the students' reactions during the face-to-face sessions.

The artifacts
The simple sentences or short paragraphs written by students during the process were useful to determine to what extent the deaf students writting skills have changed after the pedagogical intervention.

The video-recorded Interview
While doing the interview's transcript, I noticed the advantage of getting visual and verbal responses by means of a video-recorded interview. I could identify some aspects relevant for participants, their perceptions and their believes about the English course.

Reference
Sagor, R. ( 2000 p. 104) How to conduct Collaborative Action Research. Alexandria. VA, U.S.