Group+3+Case+Study

__Mixed Methods Case Study __
Clarice and Melissa B. ===Your local elementary school wants to know the reading ability of their schools 5th grade students. In all, the principal wants to make sure his students are reading at a level to be successful in middle school. The principle asked you to propose a mixed methods study and report your results. ===

===Choose a question related to the reading ability, and design a mixed methods study which will test your question. Think about what qualitative and quantitative information you will use. Keep in mind the steps you will take to formulate, plan and implement your design. Make sure you understand your design, and be able to tell us the steps you took and why. ===

CLARICE AND MELISSA B.: GOOD DESCRIPTION OF FORMULATING, PLANNING, AND IMPLEMENTING YOUR DESIGN. READ OVER MY COMMENTS BELOW IN ALL CAPS AND SEE IF THEY HELP YOU RETHINK ANY PARTS OF YOUR STUDY. WE CAN DISCUSS FURTHER NEXT CLASS PERIOD.

THANKS, HILLER

Potential research questions: Quant research questions... 1) What is the level of reading comprehension among the fifth-grade students in this elementary school?  2) What is the level of reading vocabulary among the fifth-graders? Qual research question: 1) What skills are necessary for fifth-grade students to be successful in middle school? Mixed research questions:  1) What is the relationship between the reading ability (comprehension and vocabulary) of these fifth graders and the skills necessary to be successful in middle school? 2) Which reading skills are most important in middle school?

MB's first thoughts: QUANT- this question obvously assumes that the principal in this school either is NOT in NC or doesn't know how to use the EVAAS tool that is designed to use EOG reading scores to place the student on the readiness continuum for the next EOG even making predictions that can guide teachers in how much acceleration may be needed. To reinvent the wheel so to speak, we would need a baseline measure and a comparable follow up reading ability measure to determine growth as well as identifying the student's current level rating. If growth is totally unimportant, then just one measure would be needed, but whatever measure is used must be calibrated to place the student along some predictable and expected developmental reading scale for 5th graders at the month of learning the student is in.

QUAL: one interesting piece of qual. data would be field notes of observations from reading instruction going on in all tested 5th grade classes. The lesson observation transcripts could then be open-coded for recurring practices and analyzed in terms of student reading abilities. HOW WILL YOU ANALYZE THE TRANSCRIPTS IN TERMS OF READING ABILITIES? PLEASE EXPLAIN. Follow up interviews would then be conducted with teachers of the highest achieving students (compared to comparable students in others classes that are lower achieving - not reg.ed student compared to an ELL or EC student, for example). Although clearly qual. and correlational, this might begin to reveal HOW some teachers get higher reading level results from comparable students who do not do as well in other classes. It might also be net resting to interview the teachers of the comparable lowest achieving student as to their perception of what they were doing well...

I like your idea of a baseline study with a follow-up to measure growth, as well as individual reading ability. I also like the idea of field notes from observations that are coded. Using your ideas and "plugging them in" to the design process outlined by Collins, Onwuegbuzie, and Sutton (2006), here is one design idea. Let me know what you think... __// Formulation stage: //__ 1) The mixed goal of the study is to determine the level of reading ability (comprehension/vocab) among these fifth grade students, as well as determine which skills are necessary for success in middle school. 2) The mixed objective of the study is explanation -- we need to "clarify the relationship" (Onwuegbuzie & Mallette as qtd in Duke & Mallette, 2011, p. 310) between the reading ability and the middle school skills. 3) The rationale for the study is treatment integrity, as we need to "assess the fidelity" (Onwuegbuzie & Mallette as qtd in Duke & Mallette, 2011, p. 310) of the reading ability and link it to the middle school skills necessary for success. ASSESSING FIDELITY REFERS TO WHAT DEGREE THE TREATMENT IS BEING IMPLEMENTED WITH FIDELITY--IN OTHER WORDS IS THE TREATMENT BEING IMPLEMENTED AS DESIGNED? 4) The purpose of the study is to allow for triangulation of the data, development, and expansion. 5) The mixed research questions are, potentially, as written above. __// Planning stage: //__ 6) and 7) The design of the study will be "identical" in that we will take quantitative and qualitative data from the same population. Our study will include a survey at the beginning of the year that gives us a baseline measurement of the fifth-graders' reading ability, as measured through comprehension and vocabulary. YOU SAY YOU WILL GIVE A SURVEY THAT ASSESSES READING ABILITY--DO YOU MEAN YOU WOULD GIVE A STANDARDIZED READING TEST TO ASSESS READING ABILITY? YOU COULD ACCESS PREVIOUS EOG SCORES, BUT THIS SCORE MAY BE TOO GLOBAL FOR THE READING ABILITY LEVEL THAT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN. We also will administer the same reading comprehension study to a randomly selected group of sixth-graders in the same state. We will be able to compare the reading abilities of the fifth-graders to the sixth-graders at the beginning of the school year. A follow-up study will be given at the end of the year to the fifth graders to assess growth and to determine if the students have come close to the ability of the previously measured sixth graders. This will be the quantitative portion of the study. WHY DO YOU NEED TO DO THIS? CAN YOU EXPLAIN YOUR REASONING FURTHER?

The qualitative portion of the study will include field notes of observation from reading instruction going on in all tested 5th grade classes. The observation transcripts will be open-coded for recurring practices and analyzed in terms of student reading abilities. HOW WILL YOU ANALYZE THE TRANSCRIPTS FOR READING ABILITIES? PLEASE EXPLAIN. We will conduct follow-up interviews with teachers of the highest-achieving students, as well as with sixth-grade teachers to determine what they believe to be the most important skills necessary for success in middle school. __// Implementation stage: //__ 8-13) We will collect the quant and qual data at the same time, beginning in August. We will analyze the study data using SPSS software to find the baseline average reading ability of the fifth graders in this elementary school. We will analyze the data recursively. We also will code the field notes and interviews, looking for connections and similarities in what makes a fifth-grader successful in middle school. When the data has been analyzed, we will write our report and reformulate our mixed research questions.

Would all of this make us a QUAN+QUAL ??? I I THINK SO. IF YOU ARE USING YOUR QUANT DATA TO DETERMINE WHO WILL BE INTERVIEWED, IT WOULD BE QUANT>QUAL.