Interview & Analysis

CI 5329

Alicia(Hyunjee) Kim

 

Planning the Interview

• What information do I want to discover through the interview?

I would like to know what kindergarteners think about what is inside the egg. I also want to find out their prior knowledge about the eggs, so that I could write more engaging lesson plans and prepare lessons.

 

• What do I expect the interviewee(s) to say? Why? (Because of reviewing the research literature? Specific previous experience?)

I expect the interviewee to say that many animals lay eggs, since she is into the animal books when she had a field trip to the farm recently. English is her second language, but she is confident using the language. I would provide her color pencils and paper to draw or describe what she wants to say.

 

• How can I avoid steering the interviewee(s) in the direction of my expectations?

I would wait for her answers to be completed, and allow enough time to answer or draw and explain. I will have to maintain eye contact as much as possible and look at her non-verbal movements, too. I would follow up with questions related to her responses, not limiting her creativity.

 

Preparing Interview Questions

• Opening questions:

“How was your field trip to the farm?”

“What did you see?”

“Where did you see the chickens? Where do they live?”

“What else did you see in the cage?

 

• Questions to introduce the main ideas:

 Showing the picture of a giant size and shape of egg and ask,

“what do you imagine is in an egg like this big?”

 

• Probes for specific information:

“What does inside the egg look like?”

“What is inside the egg?”

 

• Possible follow-up questions (depending on interviewee responses):

“What color were the hens?”

“What are the eggs made of?”

“What other animals lay eggs?”

 

Conducting the Interview

Lynn is 6 years old kindergartener who always has interesting questions and likes telling stories and jokes. She recently went to field trip to the farm. Her mom told me that she always talks about what she saw in the farm and enjoys reading books about animals. So, I thought that it was a good timing for me to conduct the interview to find about what kindergartener knows about the eggs. I showed her a man holding this huge egg with his both hands, to check her prior knowledge and not to limit her creative thinking at the same time. I showed her the picture to introduce the main ideas of my questions. “What do you think is in an egg like this big?”

(http://www.greatestplaces.org/activities/egg/eggimagine.html)

When Lynn saw this picture, she started giggling and said, “I know! There is an elephant inside!” Then she rolled the eyes and told me a story. “You know, one time I went to the supermarket and… I see the egg broken. Maybe there is yellow egg inside.”

Then I showed her two different colors of egg and asked who lays those eggs. She told me it was a chicken because she saw it on the farm. I asked her to tell me how the chicken might look like. She drew me a picture of happy brown hen with colorful eggs.

At this point, I could see that she knows where the eggs come from and what might be inside the eggs, but she seems like chicken are the only ones lay eggs. Maybe it is because of her recent experience and observation from the field trip. In the picture that she has drawn, the eggs were colorful in many different colors, yellow, white, brown, pink, green, and etc. When she was drawing a picture of her chicken and eggs, she asked me a question, “what happens to the egg when I shake like this?”