FORMING AN INQUIRY:

FROM QUESTIONS TO
PLANNING THE PROJECT

(BY FREEMAN, D.)

1. Introduction

Inquiry drives the teacher-research process, although it may not necessarily be its starting
point. It is often only with the passage of time and the commitment of energy to the
process that the researchable questions actually distill themselves from the inquiry. []
Teacher-research is a great opportunity for Monday-morning quarterbacking. Once its
over, you recognize what it has been about. This attitude of Monday-morning
quarterbacking, or second-guessing ho the football game should have been played the
day afterwards, is what can propel the teacher-research process into another cycle.

2. Assumption, Understandings, and Developing

A Line of Inquiry

Inquiries, regardless of their nature, do not spring out of thin air; they are rooted both
directly and indirectly in who we are, what we believe, and the questions we are
socially positioned to ask. For instance, a first-year teacher may well have different
questions and perceptions of middle-school boys and classroom discipline from those
of a veteran teacher. [] The fact that inquiry is shaped by the assumptions by which
we live our lives suggest tow courses of action in embarking on a research project:

1. You need to think seriously about what you believe to be true in teaching and
learning
2. It is important to review your specific preconceptions about your line of inquiry
as it is unfolding.

This principle of challenging yourself to reexamine your assumptions and

preconceptions is also central to the notion of validity. Validity has to do with two
things:

1. Procedural: It depends on getting the research process right so the data responds
to the research questions.
2. Confidence: Can you, as the researcher, and others who will learn about your work
reasonably believe in your results?

When talking about research, people often think of validity as synonymous with
objectivity. Objectivity cannot be located in two separate people, the researcher and
the researched (Fine, 1994).
2.1 LOCATING THE INQUIRY

To think through a research plan, two alternatives are suggested:

1. Reflective writing. (see page 56)

2. A video prompt.

3. Purpose, Time, and Outcome

Doing teacher-research is about using your time as a teacher in different ways. The
irony is that even planning how to do things differently takes time, which many
teachers do not have.

PURPOSE: purpose raises basic questions: why am I interested in this inquiry? Where
does it come from in my experience as a teacher? Why am I asking these questions?
Who is this inquiry actually for?

TIME: The idea of doing teacher-research raises the question of how you use your
time as a teacher and to what ends. Seen from an external or etic point of view, most
of the time teachers are primarily engaged in accomplishing purposes set by others,
such as finishing the chapter or the unit because it is in the curriculum, or monitoring
the playground or the lunch room as called for in the labor agreement or job
description, and so on.

OUTCOME: In engaging in an inquiry into your teaching, you reestablish the primacy
of your intentions in the classroom. You are setting a purposethe inquiry and its
questionsand aiming for an outcomethe data and their analysisthat will
accomplish that purpose and respond to those questions. This process involves
carving out time from the fabric of your work life in order to achieve these ends: to
think through a line of inquiry to find its research-able questions and to plan the data
that will respond to them.

Caveats for research activities that take place with students in classrooms:

1. Not differ in any significant ways from the normal range of activities of the
classroom, school, or district.
2. Involve only customary and noncontroversial instructional goals.
3. Not deny any students educational benefits they would otherwise receive.
4. Promise direct benefits (at least in the form of evaluative information) to the
classroom, school, or district.
5. Incorporate adequate safeguards to protect the privacy (i.e. anonymity or
confidentiality) of all individuals who might be subjects of the research.
6. Involve only existing data on students that are, or can be rendered, in ways that
are non-identity specific.
 2.2 GETTING AT QUESTIONS

2.2.1 Teaching versus research-able questions

As you approach your line of inquiry, remember that not all questions are equal:

1. Teaching questions: some [questions] will pull you toward your role as teacher.
2. Research-able questions: other [questions] will pull you toward your work as a
researcher.

Research-able questions are open-ended; they capture issues or phenomena without

judging how they will be resolved. They are usually focused on otherson students,
for instanceand not on the questioner. Rather than solutions or courses of action,
they tend to produce understandings, principles, and further questions.

Teaching Questions:
- Seek answers to specific problems.
- Are focused on resolving particular instance through some course of action.
- They are based in the specifics of a teaching situation.
- Aim at solving teaching problems.

Research-able questions:
- Are able to be researched.
- Are open-ended and suggest multiple directions and responses.
- Take the phenomenon or the situation as a point of departure.
- Aim toward a broader understanding that is not context-bound.
- Are phrased without assumptions or preconceptions in order to steer the questions
toward inquiry and away from specific courses of action.

2.3 RESHAPING QUESTIONS

2.3.1 Looking at Questions:

First-order versus Second-order perspectives

Ference Marton makes the distinction between researching what people do, which he
calls first-order research, and researching how they perceive what they do, which he
calls second-order research. [] The difference is that first-order perspectives use
categories and forms of description that others outside the situation can verify if they
employ the same ones, while second-order perspectives use the categories and forms
of description the people in the situation use themselves.

Research-able Teaching Questions

Questions
QUESTIONS

First-order Second-order
Perspectives Perspectives
2.4 FIRST AND SECOND-ORDER QUESTIONS

2.4.1 Looking for data: Emic versus Etic Perspectives

1. Etic: is what outsiders see.

2. Emic: is what insiders know.

Emic and etic perspectives describe the point of view intrinsic to the information we gather.
Together these two sets of distinctions sensitize us to that fact that what we see and hear
will depend on where we sit, what we can ask, and what we can say.

2.5 MAPPING EMIC AND ETIC PERSPECTIVES

Although [emic and etic] often are characterized as a dichotomy, and I have presented
them here as such, that stark view can be misleading.
Emic and etic are always comparative. They contrast membership in a world of
meaning. That membership, no matter how transitory, creates a point of view on the setting,
activity, phenomenon, or even information. It thus establishes the distinction between those
for whom a world of meaning makes sense as insiders and those who see, label, and interpret
it from the outside.

2.5.1 Developing Research Plans: Guiding Inquiry into Action

In a sense, laying out a research plan is like a conversation, in which the questions are
one voice and the data are the other. If the questions ask for something that the data cannot
respond to, or if what the data say does not connect to the questions. Then there is a
mismatch between how the inquiry is conceived and how it is carried out, between the
research-able questions and the research plan.
Developing the research plan is like scripting the conversation. It is like outlining the
talking points in advance so that the individual parts connect and support each other to
create the larger argument.

THE FRAMEWORK OF A RESEARCH PLAN (Figure 4.3, p. 74)

2.6 DEVELOPING A RESEARCH PLAN DATA

This series of investigations can be done in three ways:

a) Individually
b) Individually in consultation with peers
c) As a group project

DATA: Experience, opinions, perceptions, beliefs (journals, surveys, interviews,

discussions, feedback cards, sociograms); visual images of classroom; diagrams of layout,
facts, history (classroom maps and diagrams, field notes, videotaping, documents);
curriculum, plans, materials (lesson plans, teaching logs, documents).
DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES ARE IN BRACKETS
2.7 DEVELOPING A RESEARCH PLAN DATA COLLECTION STRATEGIES

- Think about how many people you actually need data from.
- Think about where you can reasonably collect the data
- Less data well collected are more valuable than more data gathered haphazardly.

2.8 DEVELOPING A RESEARCH PLAN DATA SOURCES

2.9 DEVELOPING A RESEARCH PLAN SCHEDULING DATA COLLECTION

Often the data will reshape the questions, so it is crucial to plan ahead and consider
what you will do with data as youre collecting. This is what is called first-cut analysis.
You can think of first-cut analysis as similar to the process by which you review your mail.
When you pick it up, you find that you need to open some of the mail to read the contents,
while with other mail, like catalogues or supermarket circulars, which come already open
and accessible, you can flip through them.
First-cut analysis usually involves commonsense strategies such as reading through
the data, counting instances (how many people answered), listing and/or grouping
common themes or ideas together, sorting responses by some characteristics (all the girls
said), underlining similar words or themes, comparing X with Y.

2.10 DEVELOPING A RESEARCH PLAN FIRST-CUT ANALYSIS

FIVE DECISIONS

1. What kinds of data will respond to the question?

2. How can/will collect the data?
3. Where and from whom will I gather the data?
4. When and how often will I gather the data?
5. What will I do with the data? What is my first-cut analysis?