APA RESULTS GUIDELINES

· What have you learned about your question? What have you learned from your students about your question?

· What have you found out related to your question?

· What evidence has addressed or answered your question(s)? Events, student work samples, anecdotal notes, writing journal, student reflections, observations of or conversations with your students, interviews, surveys, questionnaires, test results, other kinds of student responses, parent feedback, your own reactions and reflections.

· What related explorations or questions have come to mind as you have analyzed your research and started drawing conclusions? Your research may have led to more questions than to definitive answers to your question. What other questions have you uncovered in the process?

Note from Vicki Holmsten:

“It is natural that elements will shift as you work on the study. In fact, if things didn’t shift around, I would be more suspicious. This tells me that you are in fact going in with an observational mind open enough to see things you might not have expected. There is no magic formula for any of this, but my solution when faced with this kind of situation is to write about it in the report. I think you can report how you started, the shift in focus, and then what you found…”

· How might you summarize the learning you have gained concerning your question(s)?

· How will you share the results, or what you learned? In other words how will you repackage this information to share with others to understand? Through lists, stories, charts or graphs, figures or diagrams, photographs?

· In your review of the literature, have others found similar results to the same or related questions? How do those results compare with yours?

· This research project is the capstone of your Master’s program. What have you learned in your courses that relates to your question(s)? How could you draw upon your course texts and content, class notes, interactions with instructors, or experiences in class to gain understanding of your question and the data you have collected? Correlating and connecting previous class work with your question is relevant and demonstrates your ability to apply, synthesize, analyze, and comprehend the knowledge base you have acquired during your master’s program. What understandings might now give you important insight?

Analyzing Data:

Coding data = finding or recognizing themes, categories, dimensions new levels of awareness through observation, anecdotal records, reflection, student samples, interviews, surveys, questionnaires

Winnowing process = not all information is used

Choreographed = not-off-the-shelf; rather custom-built; seen through your eyes and staged with your style of drama and narration

Learn by doing = intuitive relying on insight, intuition and impressions

Visual Representations:

Charts and diagrams offer other ways of seeing….”Researchers who think spatially work through their charts and diagrams in order to literally ‘see’ their students before them, whereas most of us are constrained by the regimented vision of prose. Some qualitative researchers conceptualize and work systematically through their studies with huge charts and diagrams drawn on inexpensive newsprint spread across their walls or floors” (Wolcott, 1987, pp. 63-64).

Wolcott, H. (1987). “On ethnographic intent.” In Interpretive ethnography of education: At home and abroad, eds. G. Spindler & L. Spindler. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.