Updated: The goal is for individual members of our seminar to contribute some answers to our Project 1 research question, “How do school choice programs communicate with families at public events in the Hartford region?”
1) Begin with our compiled field notes of open house and school choice public events, which is a restricted Google Document [link removed] that we collaboratively created in exercise A.
2) Look for interesting themes that emerge across the field notes. In this exercise, themes are concepts about how choice schools and prospective families communicate, which appear in our field notes for more than one choice setting, but not necessarily all of them. Themes may be:
- literal (e.g. findable in a text search), and usually more interesting if you explore who raises it, or when/where/how it is raised, or its frequency in certain settings
- subtle themes (not a specific word, but a concept that requires interpretation)
- unspoken themes (the absence of a specific concept)
To help you detect themes, feel free to:
- Scan for concepts across all field notes, or subsets (such as open houses OR fairs).
- Insert > Comment to mark instances of a theme in our compiled Google Document.
- Create your own version of the field notes with File > Make a Copy or Download as. . .
- Keep track of possible themes in this public Google Spreadsheet, or make your own.
3) Write an essay about your two most insightful themes, supported with persuasive evidence from multiple field notes. Do not write only about your own field notes. The most insightful themes are those that dig below the superficial level, help readers to see patterns that are not obvious at first glance, and/or draw interesting connections to our syllabus readings (such as Debs, Welner, or others). Maximum length is 500 words.
4) Submit your essay for blind-review by the instructor, meaning that your name should not appear anywhere in the document. Instead, type your student ID number in the file name and at the top of the page, like this: 1234567ExerciseB.docx (or .rtf, .pdf, etc.)
Use this Jotform link to anonymously upload your file to my personal Dropbox by Tues March 3rd at 10pm.
You may discuss ideas on this exercise with anyone, and also ask for editing feedback on your draft, but you are expected to submit your own writing.
About data confidentiality: I have redacted our seminar’s compiled raw field notes from the public events you attended in order to maintain individual-level confidentiality (such as school staff and parents) in accordance with our approved Institutional Review Board (IRB) application for ethical research involving human subjects. Also, I have restricted the compiled raw field notes to members of our seminar and our research partners. You may quote extensively from the compiled field notes, and since we did not promise school-level confidentiality at these public events, you may refer to schools by name and/or type.
About direct quotations versus paraphrasing: For this exercise, I recommend using direct quotes to draw our attention to specific key words or phrases in the field notes, and paraphrase the rest of the story in your own words to save space. To define your theme and convince us of its presence in the field notes, it’s usually best to point out some clear and vivid examples, often by directly quoting specific words, and paraphrasing the rest.
About citations: You may use simple parenthetical citations in this short exercise, since we are working from the same set of source materials. When directly quoting or paraphrasing from a field note, insert the author’s initials in parentheses, like this:
. . .looking for a “more rigorous academic environment.” (CB, EK, AF)
Similarly, if you wish to directly quote or paraphrase from a secondary source on our syllabus, simply insert the author’s last name and the page number in parentheses, such as (Debs 15) or (Welner 3). No bibliography is necessary for this exercise.
Data sharing: Our seminar agreed to grant permission to our project partner, Mira Debs, to quote from our compiled field notes, and to cite them using Wesleyan students’ full names.
PS: At 675 words, these instructions are longer than the 500-word assignment!