S TUDY D ESIGN

Data generation and analysis for this study took place in several phases. I gathered data in all four classrooms at the same time. Though some scholars suggest completing, from data collection to write-up, each distinct case in a multicase study separately (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Merriam, 2014) to ease the management of data collection, collecting data at all sites simultaneously was important for three main reasons: 1) it allowed for a more prolonged look at each site which meant more time for gaining the trust of all participants, 2) it provided more authentic data from all the classroom

instruction of all teachers that can support the ongoing reflective inquiry group and vice versa, and 3) it afforded a more balanced look at the type of writing instruction that happens across a school year, including the beginning of the year when teachers and students were creating a community together, the spring’s lead up to standardized testing, and so on.

Reflective inquiry group design

In the last part of Phase 1, in October 2016, I began facilitating the reflective inquiry group. While I met with and interviewed each of the teachers separately, they did not know each other, with the exception of Paige and Zoe who worked in the same

building, before we began meeting. The top priority in the first few meetings was to get to know each other and begin building trust as a group of human beings and colleagues. Alongside getting to know each other and the different teaching contexts represented in the group, we also began discussing what it means to think and talk about writing as a design process. These meetings took place in the evening local cafés and on the university campus. The variation in bell schedules, locations within the city, and teachers’ commitments to after school projects made getting together face-to-face challenging, but not impossible. Chapter four provides a richer description of the inquiry group meetings and a table (Table 4.1) of meeting times, dates, and topics.

During Phases 2 and 3, the reflective inquiry group continued meeting, once or twice a month, depending on the group’s schedules and interests. Activities during these meetings included discussing plans for writing instruction, thinking through issues teachers or students were having during writing time, and looking at examples of student writing together. After I began audio and video recording in classrooms, we chose moments captured from the teaching of writing to look at and engaged in dialogic, reflective conversations about the teaching moves we were seeing, using the video as a generative tool rather than a tool for surveillance or documentation (Vossoughi & Escudé, 2016; Zellermayer & Ronn, 1999). We began looking at video by using the retrospective video analysis (RVA) method developed by Mosley Wetzel, Maloch, and Hoffman (2017) as a guide. Paige and Zoe were already familiar with this process because of the participation in another university project. While designed as a tool for mentor teachers who were coaching preservice teachers, RVA can be applied more generally for reflecting on any teaching practice. In the case of the reflective inquiry group, individual teachers—either independently or with my guidance—selected points in their writing instruction that highlighted some or all of the following: teaching strategies that we could notice and name; feedback from students based on their

engagement in teaching; surprising or challenging moments that disrupted the familiar; or generative spaces “in that the examination has the potential to lead to expanded learning” (Mosley Wetzel et al., 2015, p. 93). The goal of all of these different activities was to

reflect on current teaching practices, to deepen our understandings of what it meant to think about writing as design, and to formulate connections between instructional moves and the positioning of writing students.

Another goal of the group was to plan for instruction together, both sharing possibilities together and reflecting and refining ideas tried out in the classroom. Since each teacher’s context was so different, this kind of planning did not result creating a singular unit plan or intervention like some participatory design or formative design studies do. However, similar ideas and even similar units of study were proposed and tried out across multiple classrooms and grade-levels. During teachers’ individual mid- year interviews, I asked questions about the group and that data along with informal conversations with participants across the year helped us make sure the group remained a generative space for participants. The group had its final meeting in mid-May to

accommodate teachers’ busy end-of-the-year schedules in late May and early June.

Multicase study design

Taking place during August and September, the purpose of Phase 1 of the multicase study was to recruit and/or confirm teacher participants and begin getting to know them. I contacted administrators at the three school sites in spring 2016 and began discussing the study with a few teachers. Because teaching assignments change across the summer, the administrators at each school suggested that I wait until August 2017 to officially recruit participants to ensure I was able to work with my preferred grade-levels (one early elementary teacher and grade-levels where writing is tested). Before the beginning of the school year and after receiving final approval of my research proposal both from the university and the school district, I began contacting potential teacher participants. Once their interest was confirmed, I met with all four interested teachers together to explain the study in more detail and obtain informed consent from each of them. Penelope had a preservice teacher intern in her classroom during the fall semester, but we were not able to observe during the same class periods. Zoe and Paige both had interns and then student teachers working in their classrooms, so I also obtained consent

from them to gather data in those two classrooms. Neither student teacher decided to attend the inquiry group meetings, but consented to being observed and interviewed. During Phase 1 of the multicase study, I also arranged and conducted initial interviews with each teacher participant.

During Phase 2, beginning in late September, I began entering each classroom. Part of this process included figuring out logistics of when I would observe in which classrooms based on teaching schedules. Dependent on their schedules, I began by attending their classrooms during writing time in the elementary classes and during a focal class period in the secondary classes. The purpose of these first visits was mostly to begin getting to know the students and the classroom dynamics while the teacher and students started getting comfortable with me being in their space. Soon after my first visits, I worked with each classroom teacher to plan a strategy for how and when to talk with students about the study and begin the process of sending out and collecting parent consent and student assent forms. During this phase I also began collecting photos of teaching artifacts related to writing instruction including curriculum documents, student handouts, anchor charts, etc. I continued to gather these kinds of artifacts throughout the rest of the study.

By early November, I had a good feel for each classroom and had most of the consent and assent forms returned, so by this point I began collecting more focused data in each classroom. During this phase, I aimed to visit each classroom at least twice per week; again, individual teaching schedules and logistics determined the exact amount of time spent in each classroom. For example, in Zoe and Paige’s classrooms, I often tried to be in their classrooms for both word work/grammar and writing workshop to look for connections across those parts of their day that directly attended to language and writing. Gwen’s classes at Northtown Middle were only 47 minutes long, and between testing and her absences due to illness and professional development, we had to cancel several of our scheduled observations. During the fall semester, Penelope, like the other ninth-grade ELA teachers at Los Robles, was only teaching writing twice per week, but moved to

teaching writing every day after the beginning of the spring semester. Table 3.2 includes an overview of visits/time spent in each classroom.

Table 3.2. Classroom observations across 2016-2017 school year

Teacher Name Total Visits Scheduled

Total Visits Completed

Total Time Spent in Classroom (approximate hours)

Zoe Grey (1st _{grade) 80 63 105} Paige Douglas (4th _{grade) 87 62 106} Gwen Harris (7th _{grade) 75 44 34} Penelope Tipton (9th _{grade) 64 52 74}

Totals 306 221 319

In each visit, I took field notes and audio- and video-recorded any whole class instruction. During students’ writing work time, I split my attention. I set up one video camera to capture one or two groups of students working. Then, with the teachers’ assistance, I followed each teacher with the second video camera as they carried an audio-recorder to capture their one-on-one or small group teaching. At the same time, I used my own audio-recorder to capture short conversations with students while they were working. Throughout these classroom observations, I also began collecting artifacts of students’ writing process, including pictures taken of writer’s notebooks, written reflections on writing created during class, drafts of writing, and final written products. As the last few weeks of the school year tend to be full of interruptions, I began exiting the classrooms by the middle of May, decreasing my visits to once per week and scheduling final interviews with students and all teachers. All primary interviews and other data collection were complete by June.

Methods of data collection

Drawing on sociocultural theories of literacy, I recognize that writing and teaching are never individual, purely cognitive acts but instead are dialogic, creative actions that are situated within and dependent on the larger contexts, purposes, and

available resources. I also acknowledge the partialness of my own analysis and my inherent influence in the context of the study. Based on these epistemological beliefs, I called on ethnographic methods of data generation that utilized several different types of data, using multiple partial stories to get closer to constructing an understanding of the phenomenon. In this particular study, observations and field notes, audio and video recordings, interviews, and artifacts served as the primary data sources used to piece together the story of these multiple cases and the reflective inquiry group. Figure 3.1 provides a visual representation of the data collected in this study at different levels of the activity systems, including the reflective inquiry group. Together, these types of sources provided opportunities to analyze data at multiple levels across settings and contexts.

Figure 3.1. Data sources across levels of activity.

Observations and field notes

Throughout this study, I served as the primary instrument of data collection. While this is true across all methods of data collection, it was nowhere more evident than in my own observations and field notes. In each site of the multicase study, I took on an

observer as participant role (Merriam, 2014), meaning my participation in the class activities were secondary to my observations and note-taking. While I happily

volunteered to be a supervising adult if the teacher needed to step out of the room for a moment and fulfill other similar tasks to be helpful in the space, I neither took on a role as a teacher or co-teacher in whole class activities nor as a student participating in their expected activities. This role allowed me to take ethnographic field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011) during my classroom visits. I also had audio and video recordings to refer back to, so taking notes did not interfere with paying attention to what was happening in the classroom or talking with the teacher or students. Particularly when students grew more trusting and talkative with me about their writing, I jotted down noticings in the moment rather than trying to write down every detail or attempting to transcribe direct quotes from participants. After each observation, I spent some time filling in these jottings with more context (Emerson et al., 2011; Merriam, 2014). My observations and field notes included basic contextual information (e.g., how the room is set up, where people are in the space, who is present), but were primarily be guided by my research questions. My observations and field notes were mainly focused on the teacher during whole class instruction. During work time, I typically used the video and audio recorders to capture the teachers’ one-on-one or small group teaching while I audio recorded and took field notes about my conversations with and observations of students.

During the reflective inquiry group meetings, my role shifted to that of an

observant participant (Erickson, 2006b). This means that I focused my attention on being an active and contributing member of the group. While I occasionally stepped back to jot down a few words to aid my memory, I also had audio recordings as a back-up for my memory. Soon after each meeting, I listened to the audio recording and added, in real- time, to my jottings to create more detailed field notes documenting these meetings.

Audio and video recordings

Audio and video recordings were an important data source for capturing details about the physical and linguistic positioning of teachers and students across this study.

For whole class instruction, I used one, wide camera view to get a sense of both the teacher’s and students’ body positions. For one-one-one writing instruction, I moved the camera to better focus on the participants in the conference; the teacher, student(s) involved, and their immediate surroundings will be included in the frame. The video camera’s internal audio was complemented by with two separate, external audio recorders, that the teacher and I both carried in a pocket or moved to a surface nearby during both whole class and one-on-one writing conferences. In the reflective inquiry group, because the purpose of the audio recordings in this space was to document rather than to provide multimodal data for discourse-level analysis, I only collected audio recordings of these meetings.

Interviews

Across this study, I conducted several different interviews, including three

semistructured interviews with each teacher and one interview with at least three students in each classroom. Using semistructured interviews (Merriam, 2014) allowed me to plan ahead to ensure all important topics were covered while remaining flexible and open- ended enough to follow the lead of the interviewee to explore topics and flow more naturally from topic to topic. All interviews were audio recorded so I could actively listen and respond to the interviewees rather than attempt to take notes during interviews while still securing an accurate representation of the participants’ words.

The purpose of the initial teacher interview was to get a baseline understanding of the teacher’s history as an educator and writing teacher, beliefs about writing and

teaching writing, and tentative plans for teaching writing across the year. (See Appendix for teacher interview protocols.) Each of these interviews lasted between 25 and 30 minutes. At the mid-point of my study (February/March), I conducted a second interview with each teacher, asking them to check in on their perspectives on writing and writing instruction as well as to step back and reflect on how the inquiry group was working and what changes could or should be made. These interviews lasted 25 to 45 minutes. The final individual teacher interviews took place in late May to June 2017 and were similar

to the initial interview and the mid-year group interview to provide insight into changes in understandings about writing and/or writing instruction. These interviews lasted between 45 and 120 minutes each. In addition to these interviews, I also met with Zoe, Paige, and Penelope (Gwen was between full-time teaching positions at the time) in November 2017 to check in with them about their teaching and collect video recordings of their final reflections on the previous year. While this fourth informal interview was primarily to prepare for sharing our work at an academic conference that they were not able to attend in person, it also provided additional insight for me as a researcher.

Three to six students in each class also participated in semistructured interviews. These interviews took place in an empty classroom or isolated common area during study times or during lunch or recess so instructional time was not missed. The purpose of these interviews was to better understand students’ perspectives on writing in and out of school as well as both past and current experiences with writing instruction. (See Appendix for student interview protocols.) These interviews took place between late March and mid- May. These interviews lasted between 15 and 45 minutes. After attempting a couple individual interviews, students in first- and fourth-grade were invited to interview with a partner or small group. The group setting was more generative for the younger students, opening space to build on each other’s ideas and compare experiences. In the older grade- levels, individual interviews were conducted.

Artifacts

The collection of artifacts was another important data source across classroom visits and the reflective inquiry group. There were several types of written documents that mediate the activity of teaching writing, including curriculum documents, teacher-created lesson plans (formal or informal notes), student handouts, rubrics or scoring guides, anchor charts, and anecdotal notes. These documents were collected throughout all phases of the study, both during site observations and the reflective inquiry group meetings. These were shared electronically with me, when appropriate, or were

Along with these teacher-created artifacts, I also collected artifacts that documented students’ writing processes, including pictures of writing notebooks, written reflections on writing created in class, drafts of writing, and copies of final written products. These were primarily photographed during classroom visits, during the teaching of other subjects or while students were out of the room, so as not to interrupt the students’ writing process.

Methods of data analysis

Data analysis took place in phases, which could be described as ongoing and emerging, first and second cycle coding, micro-level discourse analysis, and cross-case analysis. While these phases are separated here in order to better organize my thinking across the analysis, unlike data collection which was somewhat structured and linear, these data analysis phases were less circumscribed and instead were messier, more recursive, and layered. Social science studies like those looking at teaching and writing, as they examine phenomenon that are “vague, diffuse or unspecific, slippery, emotional, ephemeral, elusive or indistinct,” often require thick, layered, even messy methods of analysis in order to make some kind of sense of the complex data (Law, 2004, p. 2; see also Fleckenstein et al., 2008; Geertz, 1973). Thus not only did the phases of analysis overlap and move in and out of the foreground, but analysis at different levels of activity did the same. As Spinuzzi (2002) and Russell (2009) note, many research designs are singular in their scope—either focusing on the larger, macro-level context; the meso- level, goal-directed actions of participants, or fine-grained, often unconscious, micro- level operations of participants. Yet activity is composed of all three layers, and because of the belief that each of these layers both shapes and is shaped by the others, studies