Research Question: How does a student's ability to regulate nightly homework affect performance and comprehension in mathematics? What can be done to improve a student's ability to self-regulate?
Participants: All of my students in the classes I will be student teaching. I am going to select four students from each class based on a stratified sample. I will divide the class into A students, B students, C students and D/F students and then randomly choose a student from each group.
Methodology: Both Quantitative and Qualitative measures will be used.
Observation: I would like to video/audio tape as many lessons as possible. I plan on videotaping one lesson a week and audio taping one or two more a week. For the lessons I do not video/audio tape, I will take note of any significant occurrences that may not have happened on a previous video/audio taping day. These recordings and notes will be coded for various types of student participation (on/off task, voluntary/non-voluntary).
Interview: I will use pre- and post-class surveys using a Likert scale (I feel like this is going to be a common theme), pre- and post- class one-on-one interviews with selected students. I will attempt to get a third party to conduct the interviews so that the students’ responses are not influenced by the fact that I am interviewing them. Interviews and surveys will focus around the students’ self-regulatory abilities as well as their attitudes towards my methods of improving these abilities.
Artifacts: I will collect homework periodically (once/twice a week). Photocopies of these homework assignments will be used and coded based on completeness, effort and correctness. I will also be using the students’ quarter test results.
Analysis: All of the data I collect will be used in some sort of comparison to the students’ self-regulation. The pre-class survey will include a section designed to measure self-regulation. The results of this initial survey will be compared qualitatively to the various observations, interviews and artifacts listed above. The pre-class survey will also be quantitatively analyzed with regards to the post-test survey and the quarter test results. The post-test survey will also be analyzed with regards to the quarter test results.
I think that these data sources are well-rounded and should provide for a thorough analysis of your topic. The homework collection and coding is definitely important to have as a frame of reference for individual students. And having a third party conduct the individual interview is a good idea for exactly the reason that you indicated. I was just wondering if any or all of these data sources are with regards to the whole class or just the students in the sample. It would seem that the artifacts and interviews would mostly be the sample students, but for the observations, will the coding and analysis be primarily focused on those students, or more on the class as a whole?
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