How We Gathered Data
For our methodology, we went about the project by collaborating to compile a list of questions to pose to the people we interviewed. We wanted our questions to have a focus on literary experiences in childhood and be broad enough to leave it up to the interviewee to determine how much information he or she chose to divulge, but specific enough to encourage the interviewee to focus on certain experiences relating to our questions. We wanted our questions to be concise and to the point, but still have room for one’s own perception. We eventually agreed upon the following six questions:
1. When growing up, were there any events you can remember in particular that led to you becoming a teacher?
2. Did you have a strong connection to any types of literacy growing up?
3. Did you dislike any literacy types?
4. Were there any school influences that led to your job choice?
5. Were there any influences outside of the school?
6. Did any jobs you had before your current job/aspired job inspire you?
With these questions we could figure out what (if anything they could think of) lead them to becoming a teacher, and if literacy played a role. We could see what strong literacy connection they had and compare that with how they became a teacher. As for analysis between interviewers, we can clearly compare literacy A with literacy B and how A chose to become a teacher with how B chose to become a teacher. We collected our answers using a mix of data from in-person interviews as well as online surveys collected via Survey Monkey. We thought this would be an efficient way to go about things because it would encourage a wide audience of education majors and educators to step forward. It also gave us the opportunity to ask specific questions to specific people we had in mind for the project. We hoped to get around 10 participants to analyse, but in the end we only managed 6. Not horrible, but more data would’ve been appreciated.
