3.2 Building a research design
3.2.4 Data gathering and analysis
The data for this study is qualitative and diverse in nature, which is typical for action research. The 51 written group assignments illustrate both the outcome and process of the client-based projects. The individual learning diaries that each stu-dent has written is another main source of data. The learning diaries include not only a description of what the students have done, but also analyses of their own learning. The diaries include feedback and feelings, stories of frustration and de-light. Some of them are only around 12 pages, but most are 20–30 pages and the best of them include open and sincere evaluation of self-learning. Both the depth and length of the learning diaries have grown over the years, as more emphasis has been put on them. All learning diaries are descriptive and analytical; many of them reach the level of critical reflection.
In addition to group assignments and learning diaries, the data consists of formal student feedback (both anonymous and signed) and more informal discussions with the students before, during and after the courses. Some students have also written extra feedback in the form of emails.
In some projects the clients and other parties involved in development projects have been interviewed. These organizations include the regional development organization Vasek and other universities such as University of Umeå, Institute of Design, (Sweden), Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of Sheffield, (UK), University Consortium of Seinäjoki, and the Tritonia edulab. Formal open-ended client feedback was collected in 2010–2012, the questions are included in the Appendix.
Finally, this study is not in isolation – at the same time, there has been an empha-sis on general curriculum development at our university and department. Concept factory has been a pilot project in a national curriculum development project W5W2 that focused on bringing learning objectives into all university
curricu-lums. All this has resulted in formal and informal discussions with fellow teachers and other colleagues and have affected how the interpretation has evolved.
The data was analyzed by the means of qualitative content analysis (Miles & Hu-berman 1984: 55–58; Spiggle 1994). Each essay has its own angle and thus the data has been analyzed according to that specific research question. The analysis has been guided by research questions (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2003: 94). The general analysis follows the guidelines suggested by Miles and Hubermann (1984) and Spiggle (1994). The researcher has first familiarized herself with the data through several readings of the data. As the data consists of group reports and learning diaries, this has been important also for the assessment of the student work. After this, with a specific research question in mind, the data has been categorized. Cat-egorization refers to the process of classifying the units of data (Spiggle 1994).
Thus notions concerning the chosen research question have been extracted from the overall text. Based on these the higher-order conceptual constructs, e.g.
themes have been created. This abstraction groups previously identified catego-ries into more general, conceptual classes (Spiggle 1994).
The logic of reasoning is mostly inductive, where the research proceeds from em-pirical findings to theoretical propositions (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008: 22–23).
This is most explicit in Essay 2, where students were asked to complete collages on their studies and they were interviewed afterwards. The interview transcrip-tions were read through several times and the data was coded inductively based on the meanings that emerged from the data. The coded data was then categorised into different themes and finally the categories were grouped together on the basis of similarity and difference (Spiggle 1994). The metaphor of safety-net was used to interpret the web of meanings.
The Essay 4 that focuses on making sense of professional identity construction follows more the logic of abduction. Abduction refers to a process of moving from the everyday descriptions to categories and concepts found in earlier litera-ture (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008: 22–23). In this case the empirical findings from the student learning diaries and feedback forms were analyzed aligned with the theoretical framework of identity construction. The data gave insight into the theoretical construct in this particular context and the theoretical understanding gave guidelines for analyses.
The interpretation aims at making sense of the data and analyses through more abstract conceptualizations. Thus interpretation represents a synthetic and holistic view of the data (Spiggle 1994). The integration of findings and interpretation is most explicit in Chapter 5 where my aim is to build more understanding of the
managerial challenges. While the essays have used different parts of the overall data, this phase looks back and covers the overall data.
Case illustrations included into Chapter 5 provide insight into teacher-researcher’s reflections and descriptions of the actions that have taken place. Spe-cific student data used in essays is described in each essay respectively. Student data from year 2012 is used to illustrate the findings in Chapter 5. Each extract is coded by sex, number and a year of evaluation (e.g. F6/2012)
4 SUMMARY OF THE ESSAYS
The essays illustrate the reflection and learning that has occurred during the dif-ferent phases of the research process. In this chapter I present the aims, theoretical underpinnings, methodological choices, main findings and focal contribution of each of the five essays.