The major way in which a naturalistic inquirer keeps track of what she or he is seeing,
hearing, thinking, feeling, learning, and so on is through regular creation of fieldnotes.
Therefore, high quality fieldnotes are an important key to successful naturalistic studies. The readings and activities described in this chapter will help you
learn to take good fieldnotes. Inquirers keep their own unique kinds of records
of t`eir experiences, the information they gather, and their thoughts. Each person
needs to feel his/her way, a personalized system that is comfortable and useful. I will
share my way; but know that many ways are possible.
As a visitor from the university to the high school (See Appendix A: A Sample Study), I was free to
take extensive notes during the class on a laptop computer. I also tape recorded
and video taped sessions for later analysis. I had much more flexibility than Sid
and Cheryl for keeping notes; though they also kept some records in journals, as did the
student teachers and the students.
In addition to their journals, the teachers kept files of reading materials, class
activities, some of the better student products, and an extensive slide library.
They also memorized certain moments for future use. They tried to remember the
feelings, sights, smells, sounds, and other details associated with particularly memorable experiences
so they could relate them to other students and relive the experiences themselves.
Cheryl talks of these moments as her celebrations. 4BR>
About the second year I was doing my study with them, Sid and Cheryl decided to take
more extensive notes themselves and they invited their students to expand the one
page journal entries they had been taking after various activities into ROCs or "Records
of Celebrations" to include details about what they were seeing, hearing, feeling,
and thinking. They have continued this process in subsequent years, of taking notes
and requesting students to do the same As indicated in Appendix A, the student
teachers have also kept fieldnotes as an integral part of their experience each year.
Although it was difficult for teachers to continue writing as much after they left
their student teaching internships, several were able to take a few notes after hours
on school computers, tape record their comments while driving home, video tape their
classes and take notes while watching the video tapes after school, or write about their
experiences in letters to friends and family. They shared these tapes, notes, and
letters with me on a regular basis and I wrote responses and questions in reaction.
One of these teachers noted that just being able to talk to someone who had read about
her experiences and concerns helped her sort out many of the issues that she was
not able to voice or probably would not have taken the time to think about otherwise.
Several examples of fieldnotes student teachers, a cooperating teacher, and I wrote
are presented in Appendix A. The story in Chapter One came almost directly from
my fieldnotes as well. Other examples will be presented throughout this book to
illustrate various points. I want you to see that there are many different ways to keep records
of inquiry activities and that keeping a record is an integral part of doing the
other inquiry activities such as developing relationships, asking questions, narrowing
a focus, analyzing and synthesizing, collecting information, and sharing what one learns
with others.
Keeping a journal or fieldnotes may seem overwhelming to some educators. Meeting
200 to 300 students a day in the upper grades and just keeping up with 20-40 children
all day in the lower grades seems like a big enough challenge for most people. When
would they ever fifd time to keep notes on the experience? Yet I and several other teachers
and administrators have found that keeping such a record brings rewards that make
the extra work more than worth the effort. The story written by Marné Isakson about how valuable journal keeping has been for her is presented in Appendix B: Another Sample Study to illustrate
these points. Please read her account before continuing on with the analysis and
discussion in the rest of this chapter. An Analysis
What can we learn from Marné's piece? I am sure you noticed dimensions of her experience
that related to some of what you are already doing in your practice. Does it appear
that she is super human? Or could you imagine keeping a journal of thoughts and
experiences in your classroom and thinking about what you had written using tools such
as Spradley's analysis procedures or others?
Let's look more closely at what this high school teacher was doing when she kept her
journal. She did not write descriptions of everything that happened every day.
She sometimes wrote only one or two observations about one student. At times, she
wrote more; but her focus was often on the anomalies, the perplexing questions, the concerns
she had. So, it is not necessary to take "exhaustive" notes that capture the entire
experience for all participants. That would be impossible even if you didn't have
your educator role to worry about. Everyone filters what they are seeing and hearing,
what they are thinking about their experience, the roles they are willing to play
in a given social situation, what they are willing to share with others. Filtration
of experience into your record is a given; how you filter relates back to the assumptions
you make about your inquiry purposes and possibilities which are discussed in Chapter
Two. Your major obligation to yourself as inquirer, as well as to your potential
audiences, is to be as clear as possible about your assumptions and your filtration
processes. You need to reveal yourself as inquirer through your writing. Marné
does this throughout her paper and the list of assumptions she discovered she was
making while analyzing her journal makes many of these assumptions explicit.
What about the quality of Marné's journal and subsequent analytic fieldnotes? She
uses some concrete language, quotations from students, and details which make the
scenes she is describing rich and realistic for the reader. She does this better
in her later writing, indicating that she has improved with practice and increased attention
to including specifics in her accounts that will not only communicate better with
readers but will remind her more powerfully of her own experiences when she returns
to the journals in later years.
Marné's writing contains descriptions of some of what she saw and heard and experienced,
as well as her thoughts, feelings, and reflections on those experiences. She is
present in the accounts but does not obliterate the others by only presenting her
views on what was going on. The reader can almost imagine being with the people Marné
describes, seeing and hearing what she saw and heard in addition to reading what
she thought about during her participation in these scenes. She does not often describe
the physical settings and contexts associated with the people and activities she relates.
That would be a helpful addition at times but is not always necessary.
Marné summarizes some conclusions she made about her experience but does so in a context
of describing how she conducted her inquiry. She leaves an "audit trail" of her
activities while being a teacher-researcher that allows the reader to independently
assess her filtration processes, her sampling, relationship building, question asking,
analysis, synthesis, and information collection strategies, her thinking, her blind
spots, and her biases. She is not trying to hide anything behind a method. It is
clear to the reader that she was simply learning all she could from the experiences she
was having with students in several classrooms.
Some Ideas about Keeping a Record
Doing naturalistic or interpretive inquiry is a systematic way to learn about the
world we live in. This process builds on the natural ways most of us learn already.
As indicated in Chapter One, the inquirer participates in several activities repeatedly, simultaneously, and continuously throughout the learning process. The inquirer:
a. participates in a social situation (the world) and develops relationships with
others there;
b. asks questions about what is going on in that social world;
c. collects information to address those questions (using observation, conversations,
etc.);
d. makes sense of the information gathered in order to ask deeper questions, collect
more information, interpret that information, and so on; and
e. shares with others the experience of being involved and learning, often through
writing.
Keeping fieldnotes or an inquiry journal is a common way to maintain a record of the
naturalistic inquiry experience. These notes are most commonly written records;
but they may also be video or audio tapes, drawings, student work, memoranda, minutes
from meetings, or any other artifact that contains useful information. Fieldnotes should
be kept consistently up to date because every and any experience you may have could
be relevant to your interpretation of any particular event or idea.
4A NAME="Fieldnotes">
Kinds of Fieldnotes
According to Bogdan and Biklen (1982), fieldnotes usually consist of two broad kinds
of writing: descriptive
and reflective
.
Descriptive fieldnotes
is the longest part of most inquiry journals. These are detailed and accurate descriptions
of what the inquirer sees, hears, and experiences. Detailed, concrete and vividly
specific words should be used instead of abstract, superficaal, summary, or evaluative language. Quotations are included when possible. It may be helpful to think
of your making of this record as the creation of a library about your experiences
as a teacher, and administrator, a parent, or whatever roles you play. You want
the richest library holdings possible to fill your record so you have access to these details
when you want to interpret your experience, share it with others, or otherwise learn
from your ongoing inquiry. Include as many of the following types of descriptive
fieldnotes as possible or necessary. You would rarely include all<'EM>
these kinds of notes in any one day's entries and you may discover other kinds of
fielddnotes you would rather include.
Descriptions of the people
involved with you in your inquiry and the nature of your relationship with them.
You might want to include what you have learned of their history, details about
their appearance, mannerisms, style of talking and acting and so on. Your working
relationship with them should definitely be documented, at least from your perspective but also
from theirs if they are widling to share that information with you. Thorough portraits
should be made at least once for each person involved in the social situation and
then brief update descriptions may be made in later sets of fieldnotes as people and
details about them change. An example of a description Marné made is of Tom as she
observes him barely being able to sustain three minutes reading at the beginning
of a seven day period and ending when he bursts into her room to announce that he stayed
up until 3 A. M. reading.
Descriptions or representations of communication
which include direct verbatim quotations of verbal
statements you hear people make, literal transcriptions of interviews and informal
conversations you have with people, as well as paraphrases in your own words if you
were unable to obtain the exact quotations. The more you can get in their own words,
the better. Do not
translate the words and actions of others into your own personal "professional" language
when recording them into your fieldnotes or you will lose much of the information
you need to interpret their experiences.
These notes also include non-verbal
communications you observe people making (such as body language) which will provide
important context for understanding the emotional and circumstantial settings for
interpreting the content of oral dialogue. Most people pay close attention what
people say; but how they say it with their emotions and bodies in holistic communication is
mostly noted at a subconscious level. The task of the naturalistic inquirer is to
bring these details to their own conscious awareness so they can interpret what is
said more openly and accuratelq. The use of video tapes can greatly facilitate this work.
But educators, such as Marné are in excellent positions to develop their sensitivity
to the intents and meanings students are communicating along with the words they
speak. She listened to what Tom was saying about reading and not only wrote down his exact
words but also his facial expressions, intonation, and perceived emotional state
to help her make sense of what he was really saying and to help her share this understanding with her readers (actually only herself when she first wrote these notes).
Descriptions of the physical and historical setting
include drawings, maps, photographs, videotapes, and verbal descriptions of the settings
in which you are participating and learning. Such descriptions provide important
contextual information that may not have to be repeated every time you observe in
the same setting. Of course, settings do change from time to time and particular physical
or historical changes most likely influence the events and experiences participants
have. The inquirer should be sensitive to these changes and include descriptions
of them in the record. As noted earlier, Marné did not include descriptions of physical
settings in her report. She doesn't have such a description in her fieldnotes and
apparently didn't feel that was a critical detail to include as she was sharing her
learning with readers. However, the historical setting is of central importance to
the story she is telling about her use of journal keeping over a five year period.
It would have helped to know more about the historical context during each of the
periods from which her sample journal entries were drawn.
Accounts of particular events and actions in the setting
including listings of who was involved, what the event was, how participants were
involved, the nature of their actions, historical details that provide context for
the event, etc. Marné's notes were essentially of this type, though the short excerpts
she included in this report lack a lot of the detail readers might want. The story
that began Chapter One is another example of this kind of descriptive account. Events,
activities, afd particular actions of participants in a classroom, school, or any
setting reveal how people live their lives; and the meanings they attribute to their
behaviors are implied by those actions. Combined with what participants say about
their activities, descriptions of the events they experience provide helpful insight
to the inquirer about the value and nature of those events in participants' lives.
Description of the inquirer's
behavior, actions, and experience in relation to the experiences of others
. As an active participant in the social settings you explore, your own behavior,
words, relationships with others, assumptions, and physical presence in relation
to all else you are describing should be made apparent in your notes to help you
and others understand how you have helped create the information you collected and conclusions
you reached. In a very real sense, you are the inquiry instrument through which
all other information will be filtered through your recordings and into your sharing
about your experience. So it is critical for others to understand the nature of your presence
in the settings you describe. These notes form an audit trail
of details about how you are doing the inquiry.
These notes may include descriptions of adjustments to the design of the study (could
include the design itself here), sampling decisions, problems to be dealt with in
conducting the study, etc. They also include comments on how well you are developing
relationships with other people in the social situation, reminders of things you need
to do to continue the study, ideas you are having about how to solve problems and
the eventual decisions you make. If these method notes are recorded regularly, they
provide an excellent account of how you conducted the inquiry and may form an audit trail
that would allow you or anyone to audit or review your study. Marné included an
audit trail in her study as well as a critique of how well she met certain standards
for doing naturalistic inquiry (these are discussed in detail in Chapter Five).
Reflective fieldnotes
build on the descriptive fieldnotes to reflect your more personal account of what
you are learfing. These notes go beyond the descriptions presented above, to include
your speculations, feelings, problems, ideas, hunches, impressions, prejudices, analyses, plans for future inquiry, clarifications, syntheses, connections, and other ideas
about what you are learning in the inquiry.
Recording your reflections may be therapeutic for you and should also help you clarify
what you are thinking and experiencing during the inquiry experience, as Marné said
the keeping of a journal was for her. This written record of your reflections also
provides a contextual framework for interpreting your descriptive fieldnotes. Understanding
you as the learner through your reflective notes will help readers (including yourself)
better understand the descriptions, analyses and conclusions of your study. All fieldnotes must necessarily reflect the influence of the inquirer who created
them. Reflective notes provide a way to take into account that influence by clarifying
who you are, how you think, where your ideas came from, etc.
Reflective notes may be set apart from the descriptive notes in your record through
the use of notations such as "OC" meaning "observer comment", through the creation
of separate sections of your fieldnotes for more extensive analyses (such as memos,
essays or draft reports), or they may even be kept in a separate "field diary." Though
you would rarely include all
these kinds of notes in any one day's entries, some of the different types of reflective
notes include:
Analyses and syntheses
that include your speculations about what you are learning, the themes that are emerging,
patterfs that you may be seeing in participants' experiences, connections between
experiences, your new ideas, your interpretations of the meanings of events and people's comments, etc. These may be short notes written during participation in an
event, or afterward while reading through a particular descriptive fieldnotes; or
they may be longer "analytic memos" which incorporate information from many descriptive
and reflective fieldnotes. They may be reports or articles developed to communicate to
others what you are learning (such as the reports in Appendices A and B). Analyses
and syntheses constitute the ongoing process of clarifying meaning and interpreting
the information being gathered in light of the relationships being developed between the
inquirer and other participants, in light of questions being asked, and in light
of stories the inquirer wants to share with others about the inquiry. Marné used
a particular approach to analysis and synthesis that Spradley (1980) recommends. She could
have used several other approaches (some will be discussed in Chapter Eight of thas
book); but whatever approach is used, the record of how the inquirer interprets his
or her experiences and those of other participants in the study should be kept in the
fieldnotes.
Reflections on your frame of mind and feelings
. Everyone has a point of view and a fairly unique way of seeing what is going on
around them. You should record your
preconceptions, prior experiences, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, changes
in perspective, moods while conducting the study, etc. as they relate to the people
and situations you are studying. These reflections should be initiated before you
even begin the data collection activities and should continue throughout the study to
help you clarify how you are reacting to the experiences and people involved. This
type of reflection will not only help others understand your perspective but will
also help you sort out how your views differ from those of other people. Marné's poem about
Crowther tells the reader much about her emotional involvement and frame of mind
at that point in her study. She revealed her personal involvement through many other
entries as well, facilitating her interpretation of her experience in the paper she wrote
and in other settings in which she has shared her inquiry with others.
Selections from the two kinds of reflective notes described here can be combined with
the descriptions of the observer to form an audit trail
, which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter Five. The intent of the audit
trail is to document how the study was conducted, methodological decisions the inquirer
made along the way and the involvement of the inquirer as he or she shaped the study.
It isn't likely that any educator-inquirer could take all
of these kinds of fieldnotes during a single session of naturalistic inquiry. There
is just so much going on when you are participating in a social situation that you
will have to focus your attention on certain parts of the experience. But over time,
you should look at what you are writing and ask yourself if you are including all these
types of fieldnotes or if you are systematically ignoring some of them. Gathering
information in all categories during subsequent visits will strengthen your fieldnotes and make them richer, more insightful, and useful to you in your learning activities.
Example
To illustrate the points made above, the following excerpt is included from a set
of fieldnotes I created as part of the study of Unified Studies. I have labeled
the entries with codes to indicate the kinds of fieldnotes they are. I don't usually
do that when I take the fieldnotes because it takes extra time to think about what kind each
entry is. I do often label the two kinds of reflective notes while I am writing
them though, using the code presented below. Other naturalistic inquirers use different
systems for categorizing their work. For instance, see Appendix B to review how Marné
Isakson did it. DP-D
escription of a p
erson in the situation
DV- D
escriptive reconstruction of v
erbal dialogue (quotation if person's name is followed by a colon, otherwise it is
a paraphrase)
DN-D
escription of n
on-verbal communicatiof
DS-D
escription of the physical or historical s
etting in which the action is taking place
DE- D
escription of e
vents and actions
DO- D
escription of the o
bserver (me) and my relationship to what was going on, including audit trail notes
on methods of doing the study
RA-R
eflective a
nalysis or synthesis note, searching for patterns and relationships
4BR>
RF- R4/EM>
eflective notes on my f
eelings and frame of mind as the inquirer Aug 31, 1989
DS
This is the first day of class in the Unified Studies program this year. We are
going to begin with introductions. The 70 or so students are coming into the double
classroom with the accordion divider latched open. The co-teachers, Sid and Cheryl,
are in their adjoining office making last minute preparations. This is the 16th year
of this program. It combines several different disciplines into a holistic experience
that lasts all day every other day for juniors and seniors who must apply for admission. They spend at least one day per week on outings into the surrounding mountains,
museums, places of business, the state legislature, and other learning settings.
DO
I sat down about 7:55 and four of the student teaching interns sat with or around
me. Teresa is sitting with students at a table nearby. Tim at another on far side
of the room. They are the other two interns.
RF
I wish I had done that. I feel weird all gathered together in this corner of the
room with the people I already know while all the students are over there waiting
to be known.
RA
I wonder if the students are feeling the same sort of thing that I am feeling just
now? Do they feel nervous and so they are gathered in groups with the people they
already know or are they wishing they knew someone so they could do that?
DO
I probably won't take notes most of the time today, just so I can really get into
participating with everyone.
DE
8:03 We're starting!
DV
Cheryl: It already feels like we're into the year with our planning. There is nothing
I would rather be doing than this, the short Summer not withstanding. I like working
with Sid. Let me know if you want to be called something else. . . .
DE
Cheryl began to call roll by calling out the students' names while they stood briefly
so everyone could see them.
RA RF
Knowing these people will be together all
day makes it feel like we can really take our time getting to know each other.
DP
Dahrl (an intern) is sitting by me. She is my younger sister by nearly 13 years.
She is going to spend this year learning to teach in this setting and also in an
AP history class setting. She has told me how nervous she is and how excited too.
She can't decide whether to quit her night job so she can dedicate all her time to this experience
or not. Her hair is curly and dark brunette. She looks older than the students
for sure (her judgment as stated to me several times) but attractive (judging from
the comments from some of the students who have talked to me-- I added this entry September
15). She is dressed semi-casually in denim jeans and a dark forest green cotton
blouse. Her white Rebocks look brand new.
DN
The students are all very quiet. There is a little nervous laughter now and then
when someone stands up to be introduced but almost no one is really talking, except
Cheryl. I see a lot more long hair on the guys than I am used to seeing. At least
half of the guys have hair to their shoulders or longer. Nearly all the guys have high
top boots or shoes.
RA
I thought long hair had been out for awhile.
RA
Wonder how they decided where to sit?
DE
8:12 Cheryl is still reading roll.
DV
She just asked: Hey guys... shhh please.
RA
This is the first time she has said anything about noise-- 9 minutes into the class.
DE
She finished reading the roll and now Sid is starting to talk.
DV
Sid: There is no text for this class and if you miss a day, you can't read up and
make it up. Missing a day will kill your opportunities, you're out the experience.
It is a whole day's worth of time. I would make a commitment now to participate;
if you don't, you will be in a bad situation.
DV
8:18 Cheryl: We're starting a new program this year and you dang well better make
it work. This program has been going for 16 years. At the beginning we were going
to include social studies, but we didn't find anyone who really wafted to do the
work without a text. This year we are going to include social studies because some of our
student teachers are specialized in that area. Sid and I hate failure, so we will
do whatever we have to make it work. Another teacher here at the school is going
to help.
DV
She talked briefly about Ted Sizer's ideas and the district's interest in this program.
RA
I remember that the principal said Cheryl is involved with the committee on Shift
in focus.
DO
I need to follow up and find out what that entails and if it has anything to do with
what is going on here.
DV
Cheryl: Let's talk about the calendar.
DE
Sid looked and discovered there is something wrong with the calendar. He sent Tim
to fix it.
Cheryl launched into a talk.
DV
Cheryl: You have to be doing. Can't wait for Cheryl and Sid to entertain you.
We are facilitators, providers. Aides will be involved in this too and you should
let them and appreciate it. They are being asked to help us; so don't even think
of asking them not to mark you late or whatever-- don't compromise them. They are your same
age, but they have different responsibilities. We try to operate on a person to person
basis in here, not on position to position. We treat people really well in here.
So you do the same with the aides. I don't mean to be negative, but if any of you
are doing very negative things, we will ask you to go somewhere else. Not because
I don't like you but because we don't want to sacrifice 75 other people because
of a negative draw. Rub silver and gold together and they get embedded with each other.
Same with people. So I do all I can to be around positive people. Hope you felt
this room was different than most when you walked in here. I like being in such
environments. Same with being outside-- that perspective puts things into a better way
of seeing things. I hope you will do the same. Think about your friends. Are
they taking you up or down. What are you doing for them.
RA
This sounds like a statement of her philosophy. Sounds very much like what I have
read in the disclosure document she and Sid give out and also like the presentations
I have heard them make to students at BYU who were thinking about doing their student
teaching in this program. Some of the themes I see being mentioned here that I want
to follow-up on and document are: teachers as facilitators, students responsible
for their own learning, respecting one another and each other's responsibilities,
developing person-to-person relationships rather than a position-to-position orientation, the
importance of a positive environment for learning, using settings other than the
classroom to expand learning perspectives, and the use of mini-lectures or pep talks
to communicate the teachers' values and expectations.
DS
The students are sitting around 12 groups of tables (3-4 tables have been pushed
together to form these groups) in plastic chairs. The carpet in the room is a dirty
green, torn in several spots but freshly vacuumed. All along the North upper wall
of the room are several mounts of animal busts-- mule deer, antelope, mountain goat, etc.
There are three dividers (abgut 7 feet tall and 10 feet long) on rollers along the
West end of the room that are covered with colorful posters showing people skydiving,
sail boarding, skiing. Some show scenes from nature with no people in them. The dividers
seem to be blocking the view in from the double doors that are built into the West
wall. The South wall of the room is a really a movable wall that could be opened
to include a neighboring room. There are several blackboards on all the other walls.
There are no desks. There is a door in the East wall that is opened now to let
in the cooler air from outside.
Mechanics of Fieldnotes
The form your fieldnotes take will vary as you choose. Each person should organize
their own inquiry journal in a format that suits his or her personality, interests,
resources, and needs. For example, I write most of my fieldnotes on a laptop computer
which allows me to insert later reflections directly into files that contain the original
descriptions and reflections I took while participating in particular events. However,
I have also used note cards, small notebooks, video and audio tape, paper napkins, and even the back of my hand. Marné keeps her journal with her at all times
and writes in it during class breaks, while students are writing or reading, right
after school, at home in the evenings, etc. She occasionally expands her notes onto
computer files but usually sticks with paper and pen. Sid and Cheryl are beginning to use
a laptop computer and have also used a written journal but the majority of their
record is kept in their heads! Whatever the means of recording you choose, a few
suggestions on mechanics should help you keep track of and improve the quality of your notes:
* While you are actually observing, interviewing, participating, etc. take brief notes
that may consist of a few hastily jotted key words and longer notes if the situation
is such that you can take them during collection without disturbing the people you
are with. Video or audio taping is also a way to hold information for later analysis. It may be that you are unable to take any
notes during a given session, but make sure your descriptions and reflections on
the experience are recorded in your brain so you can recall them onto paper as soon
as possible.
* No matter how the fieldnotes may have been initially recorded during data collection
times, they need to be formally expanded and recorded
in your fieldnotes. This is where the key words jotted down during the earlier experiences
may be expanded into full sentences, reflective notes may be added, electronic recordings
may be partially (usually recommended unless you have access to a secretary) or fully transcribed, etc. New insights may emerge during this expansion phase
and these should be recorded along with the information which stimulated the new
insights. Some ideas about how to organize these notes are adapted from Bogdan and
Biklen (1982):
-- Begin each day's notes with a header stating where and when these notes were originally
taken and the date they were expanded into the fieldnotes (hopefully on the same
day they were taken).
-- Write a series of paragraphs containing all the different types of fieldnotes (descriptive
and reflective) described earlier. Whenever a c`ange occurs during a session (due
to changes in the event being observed, in the topic being discussed, in the person talking, in the reflections of the inquirer, etc.), a new paragraph should be
begun. Occasionally writing the time at the beginning of a paragraph will help you
fit the entire experience into a time context.
-- Margins and spaces could be left in the fieldnotes pages to allow later addition
of detail as you review your notes many times throughout the study. This step may
not be necessary if using a word processor to record the fieldnotes3 but it is probably
a good idea anyway because eventually the notes will be printed out, and even then
additions may be needed.
-- Do not procrastinate between having an experience during which you initially record
fieldnotes and the formal expansion of those notes. The sooner you expand, the better.
If you do not take the time for full expansion of your initial recordings, give precedence to descriptive notes. If you have those observations written down, the
reflections will come when you read those notes later; but the reverse is not always
true. Nevertheless, don't worry about recording everything during any one session;
you can always add things when you remember them later.
-- It is often better not to talk about your collection session before you record
it because most people tend to think that if they have told someone about what they
saw or heard or experienced, it isn't so important to write it down. Thus, though
they get it off their chests, it never gets repeated into their notes. On the other hand,
sometimes talking your experience out can be a great way to initially make a record,
especially if you were unable to take written notes during the experience. If you
do this, be sure to make a tape recording of your conversation so you can either transcribe
it or take fieldnotes on the recording. Also, this is often a good practice after
you have recorded your fieldnotes-- to talk about the experience with someone else
and record the new insights you obtain through that discussion on tape or in new
fieldnotes entries.
-- Once initial recordings are expanded into a formal data record, they constitute
a working field record of your experiences. However, as the research proceeds, new
experiences will shed new light on these earlier experiences. Therefore, you should
regularly review your inquiry journal already created and as you do, new insights will
come, details may be recalled, analytical categories may come to mind. These should
all be added to your fieldnotes too. Rather than create new fieldnotes that are
physically separated from the original expanded notes which inspired the new insights, most
inquirers write their new insights into the margins of the field record, with dates
to show when they had the new ideas. This process could be modified if the expanded
record were made using a word processor; however, the association of new ideas with
original records should be maintained.
-- You should plan to take at least three times as long to expand your fieldnotes
as you took to initially record them during a data collection activity. Included
in this expansion time is the addition of analytic hunches and insights you will
have as you are writing up a session. This is the time you are interpreting the experience and
even sharing it through writing or talking to someone about it.
Taking all these notes probably sounds impossible or at least like very hard work
for people who are already busy teaching or administering a school. In fact, it
is hard work; but so is thinking. And taking fieldnotes is really just a way to
help educator-inquirers be more thoughtful about what they are doing and learning. Take heart
in knowing that the more you work at keeping a good record of your inquiry experiences,
the better you will get at doing so and the more rewarding it will be so you will
eventually get hooked, like Marné did, and not want to stop.
Additional Readings
Bogdan, Robert C. and Biklen, Sari Knopp (1982). Qualitative Research for Education
, Allyn and Bacon
Spradley, James P., (1980). Participant Observation
, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Questions for Consideration
1. What are the purposes of fieldnotes?
2. What should be included in fieldnotes?
3. How can you learn to take detailed fieldnotes, especially while continuing your
practices as an educator?
4. Why is it so important to use detailed and specific language rather than summaries
in your own words of what you see and hear?
5. What are the differences between descriptive and reflective fieldnotes? Why are
both types of fieldnotes needed?
6. What are the different types of descriptive fieldnotes? What do you think about
using them?
7. What are the different types of reflective fieldnotes? What do you think about
using them?
8. What types of fieldnotes have you already begun taking?
9. Now that you have explored the notion of recording more specifically, how do fieldnotes
complement the other activities in the holomovement view of the naturalistic process
outlined in Chapter One?
Suggested Activities
1. If you haven't already, set up a fieddnotes book (on paper or in a computer file)
in which to keep descriptive
and reflective
fieldnotes.
2. After your first day of writing fieldnotes, expand them. Read through them. Find
an example of vivid description in which you used specific, concrete language. Can
you also find an example of a vague, general description? What can you do next time
to avoid the latter?
3. Find a condensed account of a conversation you heard during your study. Write
an expanded version, trying to recreate that conversation in full. Compare the two
versions. Do you have any reflective notes to add to the descriptive account (personal
reactions, biases, analysis ideas, methodological ideas for following up on the conversation
to get more information) ?
4. Try to label the types of notes you made. What coding system is evolving for
you? Does it include all the kinds of notes described in this chapter? If it is
different, why are you using your system? Justify it.
5. What questions did this chapter raise for you? List these in your fieldnotes (the
audit trail section if you have one designated would be ideal).