A Qualitative Research Study of Oral Communication Performance

Abstract

This paper focuses on the qualitative methods used to examine one teacher's instructional practice and his students' performance. The qualitative nature of this study reveals insights into teaching and learning through its focus on emerging themes and patterns that developed over time. Methods used included participation‐observation; collection of field notes and documents; administration of a pre/post‐survey; interviews with teacher and students; and analysis of analytic memos. Analysis of the data reveals interesting themes regarding preparation, practice, and performance. The participants included advanced‐level science students and their high school science teacher whose goal was to combine skills‐based instruction (oral communication) with course content (chemistry). Implications for this study provide one example of a qualitative research study of oral communication performance that outlines the various methods used to conduct research in a naturalistic and interpretive setting.

A Case Study of a Case Study: Analysis of a Robust Qualitative Research Methodology

“…In addition to those three formal steps, I employed member checking, cumulative analysis, and refinement of case study narratives throughout the research timeline. The participants also kept reflexive analytical notebooks (Charmaz, 2006;Gerstl-Pepin & Patrizio, 2009;Glaser & Strauss, 1967;Maxwell, 1996;Tuleja, 2002), which allowed me to explicate my thinking and trace ideas from one step to the next.…”

“…I underlined the coded statements and labeled them with the participants' pseudonym, an abbreviation of the document and the page number. Finally, I kept a running analytic memo (Carlson, 2010;Charmaz, 2006;Gerstl-Pepin & Patrizio, 2009;Glaser & Strauss, 1967;Maxwell, 1996;Tuleja, 2002) of my thinking in a notebook as I read the archived data. See Illustration 1 for a sample reflexive analytical memo page.…”

Pride Badly Shattered

“…The interviews were transcribed and folded into the analysis already underway with the archived data and photograph responses. Analytical notebooks (Charmaz, 2006; Gerstl-Pepin & Patrizio, 2009; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Maxwell, 1996; Tuleja, 2002) were kept throughout the 3-year time line.…”