Scherr & Wittmann, PER Conference Proceedings (2002)

The challenge of listening: The effect of researcher agenda on data collection and interpretation

R. E. Scherr & M. C. Wittmann, in Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, S. Franklin, K. Cummings & J. Marx (Eds.), (2002). (frame html version)

Abstract: A researcher's interests dictate which student statements in a clinical interview are considered to constitute data. To the extent that our research agendas are unexamined, they may control our attention inappropriately, limiting the effectiveness of both data collection and data interpretation. We describe an interview in which the interviewer paid nearly exclusive attention to the student's conceptual understanding of charge flow, thereby missing information about her epistemological stance that might have made the interview itself more productive. We also present our initial collaborative analysis of the same interview, in which we judged a particular interview excerpt to contain relatively little information, and show that our judgment reveals more about our implicit research agenda than about the quality of the interview data itself. The data presented in this talk is analyzed from two other perspectives in the other two talks in this session.