Planning For My Primary Sources

My primary source for this project will be current high school students in Providence. They attend school in my district, the same one that served me as a high school student, so it will be interesting to compare the results to my personal experiences. I am not sure about how many students I will interview, though. I would assume the more, the better, but interpreting the data may result in insufficient information if I use open-ended questions.

I think by using open-ended questions, students will produce more genuine answers instead of choosing a suggested one. It will also provide me with a sample of actual student writing, which is a bonus. I wonder if their writing skills will coincide with their perspective on writing. I also came across an Attitude scale and a Self Efficacy scale when I was searching for secondary sources that I would like to incorporate into my interview. I think this will help produce more of a concrete result, even if my open-ended questions don’t.

My connection to these students is rather new. I assist in a classroom of ninth grade students so we met in September. We are pretty comfortable with each other so they will be my main pool of information. Other students in the building will also be my targets. I’ve been thinking of interviewing adults as well. Since I want to help nurture life long writers, I wonder what experiences adults have had with writing in school. I want to explore their attitudes towards writing and how high school may have impacted those feelings.

Creating interview questions is harder than I thought. There is so much I want to know that it’s hard trying to narrow my focus on select questions that will still provide me with the desired results. I’m also nervous because I don’t know if my relationship (or lack of relationship) to the student/adult will alter the results of my interviews. To get an idea of how to conduct the interviews, I will start slowly. I don’t want to do all my interviews in one day. I might learn something after a few interviews that will make me change how I handle it. Hopefully practice will make perfect.