Chapter 7-- Gathering through Observations, Interviews, and Documents
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Introduction
An Assistant Principal's Story
General Lessons
Observation Lessons
Interviewing Lessons
Document Review Lessons
Summary
Additional Readings
Questions for Consideration
Suggested Activities
You have probably already conducted some interview or observation sessions for the
study you are doing in connection with your reading of this book, because you can not
help doing so if you are involved at all in doing a study. Gathering information is what
most people normally think of as doing research. Hopefully, by the time you read this
chapter, you will agree with the theme of the book, that none of the inquiry activities
stands alone. The acts of observing, interviewing, and using documents or artifacts
involve all the other activities too-*asking questions,
*interpreting experience,
*sharing what is learned with others,
*building on relationships with others,
*keeping a record,
*acting out assumptions and beliefs about the nature of the world, and
*developing your unique inquirer's role.
This presentation will focus on the explicit data collection activities of observing,
interviewing, and reviewing documents. But please keep the holomovement metaphor,
gutlined in Chapter One and rehearsed in every other chapter, in mind as you read this
chapter.
Many authors have written about ways of collecting information in schools and other
educational settings from "outsider" and professional researcher perspectives. Books by
Gay (1987) and Borg and Gall (1983) include chapters on the use of questionnaires, tests,
and experimental design, in addition to observation, interviewing, and document review.
Their audiences are educational researchers, other than the educators involved. Gther
authors (e.g., Bogden and Biklen (1982), Lincoln and Guba (1985), Spradley (1979 and
1980)) have focused on the latter three gathering approaches which are more
"naturalistic" but they too have rarely assumed that the teachers, principals, or other
"insiders" who are not professional researchers in the school where the research is being
done would be the main inquirers.
There has been an increasing number of authors (see Boody, 1992 and Burgess, 1985 for
several references) who have promoted the notions of "action research" and "reflective
practice" which are very compatible with the educator-as-learner approach to eductional
inquiry being promoted in this book. These authors seem to agree that educators should
use data gathering techniques that are compatible with their teaching and other regular
activities and which will yield information and experiences they can use to improve their
practice. Although many of the methods reviewed by general texts on educational
research could be used by educators to yield useful information, the need for specialized
skills in test and questionnaire design and selection, statistical analysis, and manipulation
of curriculum and instruction are often prohibitive for busy educators. Therefore, the
focus of this book is on those procedures that seem most natural for educators-observation, interviewing, and review of documents.
The challenge for educators is to translate the good ideas for collecting information that
educational researchers promote into procedures that are workable for educators-asinquirers, in concert with all the other activities they engage in as teachers and
administrators. We will take this challenge by showing an example of one educator who
used her position, relationships, and purposes as an assistant principal to invite others in
the school to join her in conducting a research study. This study, in conjunction with the
others illustrated throughout the book will be used to note several practical ways
educators can adapt the data collection procedures of naturalistic inquiry by full time
researchers to their unique purposes. We hope you will see these as possibilities, not
boundaries on ways you could collect information in your own setting.
An Assistant Principal's Story
An assistant principal, Judith Hehr (1992) conducted a study in her elementary school for
a doctoral dissertation. As in the other stories told in this book, her study was an
outgrowth of questions and experiences she had before the study was even proposed. She
mostly interviewed students, teachers, and parents associated with retention of children in
first grade. She also observed the students in various activities throughout the school and
examined records and school work produced by the students& An article-length version
of Judy's study is presented in Appendix F: An Example Study by an Assistant Principal,
along with selections from her dissertation that give more details on the gathering
procedures she used. After you read her story there, please continue in the remainder of
this chapter to consider an analysis of her experience in terms of information collection
issues.
What can we learn from Judy's experience about observing, interviewing, and reviewing
documents? What can you use from her experience in your owf setting? We will examine
her study for some general lessons and for specific guidance on observing, interviewing,
and reviewing documents.
General Lessons
One of the most obvious lessons to be learned from Judy's experience is that her data
collection activities and those used by other inquirers reviewed in this book used natural
human skills such as talking, listening, seeing, and thinking that were tailored, focused,
and combined differently for particular purposes depending on the nature of the
situation under study. The customized nature of data collection procedures in naturalistic
inquiry makes it difficult to discuss information gathering techniques in a standardized
way. But keep in mind that you should tailor your collection activities to the requirements
imposed by the questions you are asking, the relationships you are developing with
people in your study, the kinds of records you are keeping, and by otherwise meshing
collection with the other naturalistic inquiry activities.
4BR>For example, Judy spent more of her energy interviewing because she wanted to
understand the experience of retention from the viewpoints of the participants. And she
interviewed the children differently than she interviewed their parents and the teachers.
She also observed the children in classes and at recess to confirm what they were telling
her. In terms of document review, she used students' products (e.g., artwork, writing) and
documents the school kept (e.g., report cards, cumulative files, exams) as supporting
evidence. She also used journals kept by the teachers to confirm what she was learning
through other means. This was not an observation study like K's was (see Appendix D)
and it was not a document review study like Marné's was (see Appendix B). It was
essentially an interview study that used other sources of information and means of
gathering to confirm what was learned through interviews.
Another obvious lesson from Judy's experience is that she recognized and welcomed the
fact that she could not conduct this study alone. She needed the help of what she called a
"research team" and involved teachers in the school with her in collecting and
interpreting information about the lived experiences of the children targeted for this
study. Clearly, each of these inquirers had different interviewing styles. They played very
different "participant-observer" roles, and they had access to different kinds of artifacts
produced by students to use in making sense of what they were hearing and seeing. As
she says in the article, "The researchers were constantly intepreting, thinking, and acting
as members of a learning community." (p 101) Judy was thrilled to have alternative
perspectives to compare to her own perspectives as she worked with the teachers in
making practical decisions about advancing the students after retaining them and in
interpreting the experiences of the participants for her dissertation work.
Judy understood that an inquirer can not see and hear everything! As humans, we learn
to focus our attention and disregard sights and sounds that we believe are less relevant to
our focus. We don't notice temperatures or body language or colors or whatever because
we are concentrating on the implications of what someone is saying or on the time we
have left to talk or on a person's accent or on how we are looking as a teacher, observer,
or interviewer. Just recognizing our limitations doesn't solve everything. We will still
miss a lot of what is going on; but at least admission of this fact makes us humble and
more teachable, which enhances the likelihood that we will learn something-- the whole
reason for being inquirers in the first place. Judy demonstrated this realization by inviting
the teachers to join her in a team of researchers so she could learn from what they might
hear or see. She also acknowledged throughout her reports that what she was concluding
was tentative and based on this limited experience. She was willing to go to the literature
to see if others could help her. She made it clear that the students and their parents could
teach her a lot about the experience of retention.
Judy demonstrated that whatever inquirers see or hear is filtered through their
experiences, dispositions, biases, energy levels, relationships, roles, time, other resource
restrictions, and on and on. We do not just take reality in but create our version of reality
through the hearing and seeing experiences. Judy provided some details about who she
was and why she was doing this study that could help us understand something about her
filters. She acknowledged that she has dispositions and roles that affect what she sees,
hears, and thinks. It is easy to imagine that her study would be very different if she were
Garry, Marné, or Kyleen. Her story about these five students and the adults associated
with them is her story.
Judy's study is an example of the fact that the inquirer's presence makes a major
difference in what it is possible to hear or see in others while you are there listening and
watching. The roles you are developing with people and your relationships with them
have something to do with this, but the roles they are playing and the nature of the
situation you are in makes a big difference too. If Judy had been a graduate student from
a neighboring university, she would have developed very different kinds of relationships
with the participants in this study; they would have told her a different story, and she
would have heard a different story. Likewise, if she had been a fifth grade teacher or a
district curriculum specialist or an interested citizen and not the assistant principal, she
would have had a very different experience. The roles she and the others played together
would have changed. She would have heard and seen different things and come up with a
different story.
As an administrator, Judy was able to spend some time hanging around, getting to be part
of the world she was inquirying into before she asked any specific questions. Give people
a chance to get to know you so they will be willing to let you get to know them. This
involves evolving a role in the situation that is legitimate from the participants' point of
view and that also puts you in a position to learn from them about their ways of
experiencing the world. Judy had a legitimate role from the beginning. She had been a
teacher and a assistant principal before she began this particular inquiry. She had been
"hanging around" the school and was trusted by people with whom she was working.
When she talked to parents, they knew that she would be influential in retaining or
promoting their children. The teachers knew that she could move children from their
classroom to another if she chose to do so. Her role was legitimate and inside the
organization she was studying. This is generally the case for educators who decide to
become naturalistic inquirers. They are already insiders. Certainly, they can choose to
conduct inquiry outside the situations in which they are already insiders. For example, a
teacher could investigate the principal's office and activities or the experiences of another
teacher, even within the school and that would involve some adjustment while they
became part of the "world" outside their normal context. A good place to begin doing
naturalistic inquiry is within your world as it now exists so you can build from the
relationships and roles you have already established.
Although it is difficult to discern from her report, it is likely that Judy recorded as much
detail as possible. Particulars are essentiad to understanding and interpretation. As
Hunter and Foley (1976) note, the statement: "The woman behind the drugstore counter
was angry," is a label, while the statement: "The woman behind the drugstore counter
became red in the face, began to tremble, gestured back and forth with a clenched right
fist, spoke quickly and much more loudly than she had been speaking," is a better
description. (Pp. 46-47 Rather than filter details into highly abstract labels for readers and
for your own later review, record the particulars in as much concrete detail as possible.
Such records will be much more useful to you and others in the long run. Also be very
explicit about the questions you are asking at each step of the inquiry since these
questions reveal much about the filters you are using to sift the particulars from the
experience into your inquiry. It is difficult to see how well Judy did this from the
materials included in Appendix F. A review of her fieldnotes would help considerably.
The detailed stories she tells in Chapter 4 of her dissertation are evidence that she did
gather lots of particulars. She also presents there the specific questions she asked. These
details are rarely presented in written reports because of space restrictions. But each
inquirer can certainly answer these questions about detail and particulars in their own
inquiries. Doing so will enhance the quality of insights into the objects of study.
Observation Lessons
As others (Berendt, 1985 and Dillard, 1985) have noted, good observation includes all
the physical senses (particularly hearing and seeing, but also touch, smell, and taste),
empathic human sensitivities, mastery of the language, and spiritual awareness you are
capable of using. Observation is a whole person activity. We listen and watch for signals
we can relate to our experiences, words, thoughts, and feelings. Anything we can not
relate to will probably be ignored. Do not discount any of your abilities to perceive or be
attuned to the experiences you are having and the experiences of the people you are
trying to understand (such as studefts, parents, other educators, etc.). Whatever you can
do to develop and strengthen your sensitivies, observation, and listening skills in all these
dimensions will enhance your abilities to take in valuable information quickly. Judy's
first theme about the vulnerability of the educators on the inquiry team and their
responsiveness to the plight of the children they were studying is evidence that she and
they used their humanity to develop an empathic understanding of the children. They
were able to see more deeply into the experience of the children as they listened to them
and their parents, watched them with a desire to understand, and reviewed the children's
records with a desire to hear messages that were written between the lines of those
records.
Observing as a participant-observer is different than observing as a participant only.
Spradley (1980) notes several differences between an ordinary participant (like a teacher)
and a participant observer (like a teacher-as-researcher). For instance, he claims that
participant observers not only participate in the appropriate activities for the scene they
are in, they also observe themselves and others engaging in activities and note the context
of the setting in which these activities take place. The participant observer works
carefully to overcome habits of inattention, bias, and simplification so their awareness is
accutely greater than a regular participant. The participant observer is also more
introspective and thoughtful about the experience and goes to the trouble of writing about
what he or she is thinking.
Bogdan and Biklen (1982) discuss a continuum from total observer to total participant
and note that each inquiry requires the inquirer to find an appropriate role to play along
that continuum. Most educators who see themselves as inquirers begin from the "total
participant" end of the spectrum. But taking the inquiry seriously means you will have to
change your role and associated relationships with others somewhat. You are not only a
teacher or administrator in the school, you are someone who wants to stand back from
that experience in various ways and at different times to take stock of what is going on
and to comment on what you observe. The people you work with may resast. You may
find that this takes a lot of extra work. It is so easy to stay in our patterns of behavior.
Judy found that as an assistant principal, she and others in the school agreed that her
participant role included lots of observation activity. She didn't look much different from
a regular "participant" assistant principal who walks around and watches and listens. But
Judy added several of the participant observer habits to her style. She used that base to
include teachers as part of her research team and built on their natural opportunities tg
observe. She invited them and herself to do a lot more writing than they normally would
have done as full participants, moving them more and more toward the observer end of
the participant-observer continuum.
Interviewing Lessons
Altbough much of what has been said about observation applies as well to interviewing,
most observation can be done without ever explicitly asking another person to answer a
question generated by the inquirer. The teacher can listen to the students ask each other
questions and learn much. Or an administrator can observe faculty members conversing
and sharing their insights without asking them anything. But sometimes educators are in
excellent positions to ask questions of one another and of students, parents, or other
participants in the inquiry setting. This is when interviewing becomes useful. In the
course of a naturalistic study, researchers usually conduct several interviews with many
different participants. These interviews range from formal, tape-recorded interviews
(sometimes following a pre-defined format) to informal "conversations" in which the
researcher takes no notes and does very little to direct the format of the interview. It is
through interviews that participants' perspectives are gathered most directly. Asking
questions that will help them express those views requires the several skills reviewed in
this chapter.
Similar to the participant observer use of the natural participant role, the inquirer builds
on natural conversational experiences to create a new kind of conversation, the
interview. Spradley 1979) lists several differences between a friendly conversation and an
interview, suggesting that "It is best to think of ethnographic [naturalistic] interviews as a
series of friendly conversations into which the researcher slowly introduces new elements
to assist informants to respond as informants. Exclusive use of these new ethnographic
elements, or introducing them too quickly, will make interviews become like a formal
interrogation [like the typical structured interview]. Rapport will evaporate, and
informants will discontinue their cooperation. At any time during the interview it is
possible to shift back to a friendly conversation. A few minutes of easygoing talk
interspersed here and there throughout the interview will pay enormous dividends in
rapport." (Pp. 58-59) Spradley then notes that unlike a typical friendly conversation, the
inquirer has more explicit purposes in carrying on the interview, asks most of the
questions, encourages the interviewee to do most of the talking, expresses interest and
ignorance more freely, repeats what is said to clarify what was meant more often, invites
the interviewee to expand rather than abbreviate, and pauses to let the interviewee think
about what to say.
As you think about teachers interviewing students or administrators interviewing patrons,
it should be clear that doing an inquiry interview is very different than the typical
conversations educators have with people they need to understand (like their students and
patrons). The inquirer can not be defensive about what is being said; you must be open
and willing to hear their views. It is not clear from the material we have from Judy that
she used all these elements in her interviews. But her findings suggest that the people had
a chance to tell her what they really thought and that indicates that she probably used
many of these tactics.
Interviewing adds a different kind of social dimension to observation that goes beyond
listening to them in their own conversations to asking people to talk in response to your
direct questions. Work your way into this new activity by initiating the questions around
common experiences you have shared during observations. Ask your questions in the
language you have heard your interviewees using. Invite them to talk about the
experiences without putting your boundaries around their responses so they are able to
define the questions they think ought to be answered first. Spradley (1979) suggests you
build rapport with interviewees by letting people talk about whatever they want at first,
then moving into an exploration of the relationship and what questions are okay to ask,
then shifting into a cooperation phase in which the interviewee values the inquiry as
much as the inquirer does and they are working together to teach the inquirer about the
interviewee's world and the interviewee helps originate questions rather than only
respond to the inquirer's questions.
For example, if Judy's first interview with a child had been a formal affair with a tape
recorder, sitting in chairs at a table and based on questions like, "How did it feel to be
retained a year?" or "How would you like to be advanced to second grade next term?" I
would predict that she would either get confused responses from the students or they
would simply say what they thought she wanted to hear. On the other hand, if she were to
watch them interacting in the classroom or out on the playground and then informally talk
to them in those same settings about what she saw them doing there, they would be much
more likely to talk to her from their own perspectives and in their own ways and
language. She would get information that comes from the participants rather than getting
them to simply give her what they think she wants.
Keep asking for more details and other insights from your interviewees without "putting
words in their mouths." Let them know both directly and by your non-verbal
communication that you really are their student when it comes to their own experiences
and interpretations of those experiences. Listen attentively and be interested. Let people
say what they want to say in the ways they want to speak. Watch how they are expressing
themselves so you can pick up on the 80% or more of their message that is communicated
non-verbally. Never presume to understand them before they have a chance to really
explain themselves. You may want to ask them to give you overviews or grand tours of
their experience (e.g., Judy might have asked the parents to give her an overview of their
child's life to that point) and then mini-tours (see Spradley, 1979 and 1980 for extensive
use of these procedures) to delve into issues discussed during the grand tour in greater
detail (e.g., Judy could then follow-up on a particular experience in the child's life to
probe into it for information regarding their grade retention experience). You may ask
them to give you examples and then ask more questions based on those real life
situations. The intent is to get them to do most of the talking and you do most of the
listening. They are the experts!
Judy's whole study was organized around the belief that the children and their parents
knew more about their experience of retention than did the educators who made the
decision to retain the children in first grade. She wanted the teachers and administration
of the school to be silent in their professional authoritarian roles and to listen to the
people involved. Once again, the material in Appendix F does not provide the details that
demonstrate how this was done, but the preface to her dissertation reveals the fact that
Judy and her colleagues changed their views of retention dramatically based on this
experience. They learned something they did not know. They did not just find
confirmation for their own beliefs. They were willing to hear that they were wrong.
Document Review Lessons
In addition to participant observation and interviewing, Bogdan and Biklen (1982) have
identified several other sources of information in educational settings that are commonly
used in naturalistic inquiry. There are usually a large number of documents written by
participants that are available to an educator in the school setting. The main task for an
educator turned inquirer is to identify, locate, and gain access to such materials.
Be on the lookout for artifacts, documents, photographs, records, and so on that are
available in your inquiry setting or that you, students, or others at your site could generate
as part of their normal activities. Consider anything that might be used to explore a
different perspective on the questions your inquiry raises and the tentative answers you
are reaching through observations and interviews. Examples include journal entries by
students and other staff members, records of attendance and performance on assignments
and exams, video tapes and photographs of classroom interactions (produced by the
inquirer or by the participants the inquirer is trying to understand), letters sent home to
parents, portfolios of students' work, grade reports, logs teachers or others keep, official
statistics, and so on. These "documents" can provide independent checks on your own
perceptions and readings of what you hear and see. They are not necessarily more
accurate or correct than your observations and interviews. But when they confirm your
hunches, you will usually be more confident that you were listening and seeing
insightfully. If the conclusions you draw from existing records or documents counter
your ideas from other activities, you are more likely to look harder and listen more
carefully before making final choices. As an insider in your school, you are likely to have
access tg many of these documents as part of your responsibilities there. Be sure to ask
students and others for permission to read and share journal entries and other private
documents, even if you have access to them as a staff member.
Judy read journals kept by the teachers for her project, looked at assigned work the
students were generating during the period of the study, and reviewed the children's
cumulative records. She could have been more open in discussing how she used these
documents in this case; but she seemed to be reviewing them to see how closely they
independently supported her conclusions.
Any literature on the topic you are interested in can be viewed as documents to include in
your review. The documents do not have to be produced by people at your site. Often,
other teachers, administrators, or educational researchers are dealing with some of the
same issues as you. When you read accounts of their inquiries and recommendations,
summaries should go into your fieldnotes as you make mental connections between the
academic and practical worlds. Conducting your own research in your educational setting
can make you much more inquisitive about what others are doing and saying about the
same issues as you. Relating what you read to what you are finding is a satisfying way to
build confidence in your own inquiries. Judy had reviewed the literature extensively in
preparation for conducting her dissertation. This literature turned out to be very relevant
to what she observed and heard during data collection. She also became aware of other
literature sources during data collection and responded to them in her reports. Using the
literature is not often thought of as a data collection activity; but it serves that purpose
well.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) note that other important sources of information which are
often overlooked are "unobtrusive informational residues" which accumulate without
anyone's intent that they be used as data. These can be collected in the absence of the
person(s) who created them (as archeologists collect artifacts left by ancient cultures).
The main challenge you face is discovering residues in your own particular setting which
might provide useful insight .
Lincoln and Guba give some examples of such traces that might be used by inquiring
educators: "shortcuts across lawns as indicators of preferred traffic patterns, . . . worn and
smudged condition of books as indicators of their use, number of discarded liquor bottles
as indicators of the level of alcoholism in an apartment complex, number of cigarettes in
an ashtray as an indicator of nervous tension, amount of paperwork that accumulates in
the "in" basket as an indicator of work load, number of books in a personal library as an
indicator of humaneness, presence of bulletin board displays in a schoolroom as an
indicator of the teacher's concern with children's creativity, and many others."
Summary
These ideas about how to collect information apply to teachers as well as administrators,
to teacher educators as well as student teachers. Any educator who wants to be a better
inquirer or learner can use their role as insider participant to gain access to activities and
people that outsider researchers would have difficulty even knowing about. Likewise,
educators-as-inquirers can conduct informal and formal interviews and use creativity in
identifying artifacts, literature, and unobtrusive indicators that will be serve as
information sources.
Looking back to Chapters One through Six, it should be clear now that all the questions
discussed in Chapter Six can be asked in different ways through these various gathering
approaches. And the collection procedures you use will vary depending on the level of
trust you have developed with people you want to observe or interview, as discussed in
Chapter Four. What you choose to record, as discussed in Chapter Three and your
assumptions about yourself as an inquirer and your relationship to what you are inquiring
into also shape what and how you collect. The point is, that you are designing your own
study as you make all these choices and as you act out your beliefs as a person.
Remember to keep track of all these decisions in your audit trail so others can decide how
credible your work is.
Additional Readings
Berendt, Joachim-Ernst (1992). The third ear: on listening to the world. New York:
Henry Holt.
Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1982). Qualitative Research for Education, Allyn and
Bacon
Boody, R. M. (1992). An examination of the philosophic grounding of teacher reflection
and one teacher's experience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young
University, Provo, UT.
Borg, W. R. and Gall, M. D. (1983). Educational research: an introduction, New York:
Longman.
Burgess, R. G. (Ed.! (1985). Issues in educational research: qualitative methods.
London: Falmer.
Dillard, A. (1985). Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper and Row.
Gay, L. R. (1987). Educational research: competencies for analysis and application.
Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Hehr, J. (1992). Moving ahead: a naturalistic study of retention reversal of five
elementary school children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young
University, Provo, UT.
Hunter, D. E. and Foley M. B. (1976). Doing anthropology2 a student-centered approach
to cultural anthropology, New York: Harper and Row.
Spradley, J. P. (1979). The ethnographic interview, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Douglas, J. D. (1985). Creative interviewing. Volume 159, Sage Library of Social
Research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Questions for Consideration
1. Why is it important to observe yourself as the observer as well as to observe the
situation you want to study?
2. Do you agree that no two observers can ever observe exactly the same things? What
are the implications of this statement?
3. Do you agree that observing is a creative rather than a passive act? What are the
implications of this statement?
4. If we are selective in what we observe and in what we record based on those
observations, is there any such thing as objective data? What are the implications?
5. How can you discover the patterns of selectivity that you use in observing and
recording data?
6. Do you agree that information taken out of context is meaningless? What are the
implications for doing a study?
7. How can you pay more attention to context?
8. What is the difference between labeling and describing? How can you learn to
describe rather than label when recording your observations?
9. Why is nonverbal information just as important as verbal information? How can you
obtain both?
10. Why is emic information just as important as etic information? How can you obtain
both?
11. How do ordinary participants and participant observers differ from one another?
What are the implications for your own research project?
14. What are the different levels of involvement in which a participant observer can
engage?
15. Why does this presentation concentrate on descriptive observations?
16. How are observations and questions related?
a. If you are observing, rather than interviewing, of whom do you ask questions?
b. What kind of questions should you ask?
17. What are some differences between grand tour and mini tour observations and
questions?
18. When should descriptive questions be asked in a naturalistic inquiry?
19. How often should a particular informant be interviewed?
20. How can interviewers encourage informants to reveal their emic perspectives rather
than use the researcher's etic views?
21. Why is it important to pay attention to the rapport process during interviewing? Can't
rapport be taken care of through gate keepers before even meeting with the informants?
22. Why should a naturalistic inquirer try to go beyond interviews and direct observation
to gather the other kinds of data described in this chapter?
23. What are some possible documents, records, artifacts, etc. that might be available to
naturalistic researchers in educational settings?
24. How would you go about gathering such materials?
25. How would you combine the information gathered from such materials with the
observation and interview data you collect?
26. How could photographs and/or videotaping be used in studying educational
problems?
27. Are the suggestions made in this chapter regarding photos and videotapes feasible or
would the people under study be too distracted by the equipment?
28. Are the ideas presented in this chapter applicable in your situation?
29. How are you using or planning to use the ideas in this chapter in your own
naturalistic inquiry project?
Suggested Activities
1. (This activity is adapted from Hunter and Foley (1976) As part of your study, observe
a social situatiof in the following ways:
During a 15 minute period, do not take any notes or attempt to record the situation in any
way.
During another 15 minutes, record your observations using paper and pencil while you
continue observing.
Based on this observation exercise, answer the following questions in your fieldnotes:
a. Where was the scene you observed?
b. Where were you in relation to the scene you observed?
c. Why did you choose the kind of scene you chose to observe?
d. Why did you chgose the particular scene you observed?
e. Attempt to recall and describe in writing your train of thought-- both about yourself
and the scene-- during the first 15 minutes you were observing (when you weren't taking
notes).
f. Did you move around? Stay still? Why?
g. Were you interested in the scene? Easily distracted? Both? Why? What are the
implications for what you saw?
h. Were you bored? How might that affect your observation?
i. Stop a moment. Think about the scene you observed. Did you notice the:
time?
temperature?
weather conditions?
materials of which things were made?
colors of materials?
clothes people wore?
sounds in the background (e.g., cars going by)?
person speaking each phrase?
people's positions in relationship to one another?
way people moved their bodies?
gestures?
spatial arrangements of people and objects?
Answer these questions. Then try to think of other items to which you now know you did
not pay attention. Include these items with the list above.
j. What things about the situation can you remember now that you didn't record in
writing during the second 15 minutes of your observation activity? Make a list of those
items too.
k. Carefully review the two lists in "i" and "j" above. What kinds of things are on the
lists. What kinds of things do you tend to overlook when you are observing? When you
are recording your observations? Why do you think you didn't record or observe these
things? What similarities and differences there are in your observation and recording
selectivities.
2. Select one situation you want to study as part of your project and write out a series of
questions that will lead to both grand tour observations and mini-tour observations for
that small project. With these questions in mind, conduct a period of participant
observation in which you make both grand tour observations and mini-tour observations.
Write an expanded account of these descriptive observations in your fieldnotes.
3. Review the examples given in this chapter of the various kinds of descriptive questions
and prepare several of each type for informants in your project setting.
4. Conduct an interview with an informant, using descriptive questions and taking
condensed notes during or immediately after the interview.
5. Expand the condensed notes taken during the interview into full fieldnotes.
6. Write about this interview in your audit trail.
a. Did the interview have an explicit purpose? What was it?
b. Did you give any explanations to the informant regarding the purpose of the interview,
the fact that responses were being recorded, that native language was needed, the kinds
of questions that were being asked, etc.?
c. Were descriptive questions asked? If so, which of the five types described in this
chapter were used and how useful were they?
d. Did you do most of the asking and the informant most of the answering? Who did most
of the talking?
e. Did you express interest and/or cultural ignorance in what the informant was saying?
How?
f. Did you repeat back what the informant was saying to show understanding of the
responses?
g. Did you repeat questions several times to give the informant plefty of opportunity to
say all they wanted?
h. Did the informant expand or abbreviate what he or she was saying? What did you do
to do encourage expansion?
i. Did you ask friendly questions, especially at the beginning of the interview? Were the
greetings and ending comments appropriate?
7. You should think about the naturalistic project you are conducting in terms of the ideas
presented in this chapter to identify existing documents, records, or unobtrusive residues
you might use to gather data. Make a list of such artifacts, pick at least one item from the
list that you need, and obtain access to it. Summarize information from that data source
into your fieldnotes.
8. You should also think about how you might appropriately use photographs, audiotapes
and/or videotapes in your project. How would you use these techniques and for what
purposes?
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