Memo #3

My primary sources primarily consist of teachers but I also hope to interview a couple of students who have recently transitioned into college to get their perspective. To date, I have done two interviews, one with a private high school ELA teacher and another with a Coordinator of Learning Skills at a college. I will delve more into those interviews in a separate post. I have also scheduled an interview with a college professor who teaches college intro writing courses, and will be scheduling an interview with a public high school ELA teacher. I am mainly utilizing schools that I work with, for example the private school teacher is from the school my children attend, the public school teacher will be the one I am working with for SED 407, and the college professors are from RIC. I have contacted them via e-mail to request an interview and explained my project.  I have yet to receive a rejection., phew!

Some of the questions I have been using include:

• What do you feel schools/teachers should do or are doing to prepare students for college?
• Is there PD offered regarding this topic?
• What changes have you seen in the way students are taught writing?
• Some common issues I've seen with writing are organizational and grammar. Do you agree these problems are consistent with the gap between high school and college?
• Do you feel the implementation of Common Core has been helpful with teaching writing to high school students in preparation for college level writing?
• What do you do for students that struggle with writing?

After finding some differing information in my secondary sources, I may rephrase or add questions that will specifically focus on the types of writing done in high school versus college.  As mentioned in my previous blog post, there seems to be a lack of research writing and use of non-fiction in high school, which has had a tremendous impact on students in college.  I also hope to use my secondary sources to back up the information from my primary sources. 

Finding secondary sources has been a bit of a challenge. So far, I have found my secondary sources through the RIC library website, JStor, and ERIC. I have also noticed that sometimes my interviewees drop a source in the conversation so I may look more into those. The biggest hindrance I have had is finding sources that are from the past year or two.  The latest article I found is from 2010 and since I know there has been a lot of work done recently, I would like to find more current articles.  

I am pretty happy with the way my research is going and I can definitely see how this project can take you in a completely different direction.  I'm enjoying the ride and definitely learning a lot in the process. More to come...