Megan Little's Instructor Page

As we start diving into our own research projects (our focus for the rest of the semester!), we will build a sample study on student mothers.

We will interview two student mothers--one graduate student, one undergraduate student--and compare their experiences and perceptions of the different social roles they occupy as caregivers and scholars.

Planning phase: Here's a student moms mindmap of possible topics to cluster interview questions around (difficulties, history, support). This mindmap also contains conceptual categories that might drive interpretation later (social roles, impression management, mothering in different cultures). I can envision this study engaging Behar and Mead, perhaps Foley. Oh yeah, maybe Shostak.

Because we will be interested in our participants' reflections on their personal lives and experiences, a comparative oral history approach best describes our research method.

Our beginning research questions: what conflicts exist between value systems in our culture about what it means to be a good mother, and what it takes to be a good student? How do our participants perceive and address these conflicts?

Our beginning "so what" argument: "While we believe that our culture is open and flexible enough for women to do what they want, a closer look at the lives of two student moms reveals the embedded conflicts in cultural values they have to manage..."

Proposal phase: Click here to see the sample proposal as a Word document. In this document, the proposal moves I'd like you to emulate are highlighted as comments.

Data collection: Our class interviews are scheduled for Monday, November 2 and Wednesday, November 11. Click here to see the consent form we will be using. Our approach to interviewing will be to ask the questions from our study proposal in the first interview, and then reflect on questions we may need to tweak for our second interview. Both interviews will be conducted in our classroom, audio-recorded using Audacity (via my laptop), lasting between 15 and 20 minutes.

Data analysis: In the class example for FP7, we will begin considering a relevant transcribed portion of our first interview. This means looking at a rich moment, or a complex moment, or even a "that's weird" moment, and considering the themes and insights it might suggest in regard to our research question. In FP7, we will also reflect on the efficacy of the interview questions.

In FP8, I do the same thing for the second interview. Uh-oh, I've got two different "that's weird" interests: one on the concept of decision, and one on keeping things separate when something is so pervasive.

Write-up and interpretation: To start my write-up, I started thinking about the two areas of the interviews that seemed really interesting to me: where L talks about a series of events and her "lack of decision," and where C talks about how much she has to regiment her life, to "keep things separate." I could find a different focus that seems more parallel across these two interviews. But I'm stubborn. And I like these ideas. My instincts are telling me to stay with them, and I tend to trust my instincts. For now, I'm going to leave the connection between these two things a question mark and just start writing. I don't really know how I'm going to reconcile them, but I'm pretty sure a connection will emerge (that seems to be my style/process. What's yours?)

As I started drafting the formal paper, I've started deciding what to foreground and background in my discussion of each interview: what to paraphrase and what to quote in detail? This is likely going to be the same paragraphs I chose to focus most of my attention on in FP7 and FP8.

to be continued!