Friday, April 25, 2008
Working with data
I just took a break to eat something and write a little about what I’ve been doing with the September and October data set.
While preparing the Data Appendix for this chapter I realized I had almost a hundred two-column pages of data. At first things went smoothly, since the analysis of the original posts of each threaded discussion was manageable. Thirteen threads meant thirteen messages to look at, analyze, and write about. Following Gee’s discourse analysis method, settings and catalysts showed me what authors of original posts were looking for. But when I started looking at the crisis, evaluation, and resolution sections of the threaded discussions, things got too complex. I was looking at how participants of the discussion forum negotiated meaning and understanding of mathematics concepts, at how they developed a discussion that led to different solutions, and how they supported each other.
My main purpose is to search for and analyze the activities participants engage in throughout the discussions, while negotiating mathematics meaning. I am also looking at the way they connect ideas within, between, and among the threaded stories. But data shows much more. Who are those participating in the discussions? Who are the ones that post a question and those that help them in different ways, negotiating mathematical meaning? How important it is for the participants to correctly use inter-textuality, or to correctly post a reply in order to follow-up on an idea? – which meant that the media turned out to be as important as the words participants used to interact with each other.
Nevertheless, I needed to focus. And for that, I started revising the data set once more, looking closely to the stanza titles (the ones I had already stated), those that represented clusters of ideas. According to Gee (2005), the stanzas are “tone units that deal with a unitary topic or perspective, and which appear … to have been planned together” (p. 107). One could think that a single message in a threaded discussion is a stanza, but in fact they may include several.
The stanzas give me the activities participants engage in when negotiating meaning. With them I should be able to find themes among the data set. To do this I am collecting the titles into a list. This helps me reduce the data into more manageable chunks and themes must be easier to identify. I am also able to revise my initial titles, checking for consistency. And finally, I should be able to write the end of Chapter 6. This method has also given me more assurance of the way I am analyzing the data. And then, Chapter 7 data will be much easier to work with.
Besides all this, I am working more on my dissertation these days. I really want to finish this summer and that means I need to spend more hours on it. Having a specific day to work with my research is good; it gives me the sense that even if I cannot do anything else throughout the week, I will get some work done that day. But then if something comes up, and I miss that day’s work, it will be two weeks until I get back to my research. So now, I am trying to find little spaces were I can fit my dissertation work. And little by little I should get more done each week. :)
While preparing the Data Appendix for this chapter I realized I had almost a hundred two-column pages of data. At first things went smoothly, since the analysis of the original posts of each threaded discussion was manageable. Thirteen threads meant thirteen messages to look at, analyze, and write about. Following Gee’s discourse analysis method, settings and catalysts showed me what authors of original posts were looking for. But when I started looking at the crisis, evaluation, and resolution sections of the threaded discussions, things got too complex. I was looking at how participants of the discussion forum negotiated meaning and understanding of mathematics concepts, at how they developed a discussion that led to different solutions, and how they supported each other.
My main purpose is to search for and analyze the activities participants engage in throughout the discussions, while negotiating mathematics meaning. I am also looking at the way they connect ideas within, between, and among the threaded stories. But data shows much more. Who are those participating in the discussions? Who are the ones that post a question and those that help them in different ways, negotiating mathematical meaning? How important it is for the participants to correctly use inter-textuality, or to correctly post a reply in order to follow-up on an idea? – which meant that the media turned out to be as important as the words participants used to interact with each other.
Nevertheless, I needed to focus. And for that, I started revising the data set once more, looking closely to the stanza titles (the ones I had already stated), those that represented clusters of ideas. According to Gee (2005), the stanzas are “tone units that deal with a unitary topic or perspective, and which appear … to have been planned together” (p. 107). One could think that a single message in a threaded discussion is a stanza, but in fact they may include several.
The stanzas give me the activities participants engage in when negotiating meaning. With them I should be able to find themes among the data set. To do this I am collecting the titles into a list. This helps me reduce the data into more manageable chunks and themes must be easier to identify. I am also able to revise my initial titles, checking for consistency. And finally, I should be able to write the end of Chapter 6. This method has also given me more assurance of the way I am analyzing the data. And then, Chapter 7 data will be much easier to work with.
Besides all this, I am working more on my dissertation these days. I really want to finish this summer and that means I need to spend more hours on it. Having a specific day to work with my research is good; it gives me the sense that even if I cannot do anything else throughout the week, I will get some work done that day. But then if something comes up, and I miss that day’s work, it will be two weeks until I get back to my research. So now, I am trying to find little spaces were I can fit my dissertation work. And little by little I should get more done each week. :)
Labels: Gee's Discouse Analysis
