Methodology

I love numbers; I love quantitative research.  Science and math...math and science!  My undergraduate degree is in Biology.  I enjoy the technical, scientific writing that comes with that field of work.  To me, those types of studies seem straight-forward; they cover more breadth and provide a greater sense of generalizability.  However, the types of data needed to support the things I have always been interested in are generally off-limits.  Achievement test data, SES data, and student interview data are all types of information that is virtually unavailable to me.

I have had a difficult time understanding how to approach a research project when I don't have access to K-12 teachers and students.  This is what I know, and this is realm I am in.  And I don't have access to pre-service teachers or any online group to use for data collection.

Once I decided to return to the program, I began looking around my "environment" for potential research problems.  I toyed with several ideas related to librarianship, but I never really settled on anything that was noteworthy.  The digital video recording is just gearing up for the year, and seems to be a viable option.

But the nature of the research problem seems to lend itself more towards a qualitative methodology. 

Qualitative...ummm...I don't like that word.  See first paragraph!  And to be honest, I didn't really care for the professor that taught Qualitative Methods.  Qualitative research seems more exploratory, more in-depth. It usually tells a story more than a t-test.  The method that I would choose to use would be a case study. Leedy defines a case study as, "a type of qualitative research in which in-depth data are gathered relative to a single individual, program, or event, for the purpose of learning more about an unknown or poorly understood situation" (p. 100).  

I have been gathering different case studies and thinking about different instrumentation techniques.  I feel like I am just in the beginning stages of how this should all look.  I think I would benefit from discussing my thoughts with a professor!