Example Of Qualitative Research Paper

Qualitative research methods were used to examine high school students’ experience of an inquiry project. Student inquiry is foundational to the school curriculum in Alberta, Canada. The teacher and teacher-librarian collaboratively planned and implemented an inquiry project to engage students in developing a deeper understanding of a topic that the teachers believed would be of interest and relevance to the students, the need for greater human understanding. The primary study data came from the students who completed three reflections on their experiences, using the SLIM Toolkit forms, developed by researchers at the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries at Rutgers University,USA.

The purpose of the paper is to describe

The inquiry project was collaboratively planned and implemented by the classroom teacher and the teacher-librarian over a six-week period of time. The project was intended to support students in becoming effective researchers—developing new knowledge, understanding the nature of the inquiry process, and developing skills and strategies that enhance inquiry activities. Instructional interventions centred on: developing essential or “big” questions, developing a personal and meaningful approach to a topic, information searching, information analysis and recording of ideas, information structuring and presentation, and integrating technology throughout the inquiry

She worked with them to create essential or “big questions” around any two of a list of “big ideas” related to the theme and to the two pieces that provided the foundation for the project, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Some of the “big ideas” were “Poverty,” “Courage,” and “Segregation,” and “Racism.” The students developed their individual topics, expressed as “big questions,” which were then discussed with and approved by either the teacher or the teacher-librarian. Some sample big questions were “Can racism be stopped?” “Does non-violent protest actually work?” The students also completed an activity linking their big questions to relevant events from the 1930s-1960s and to events from their contemporary experience as well; they also began to note quotations from the novel and scenes from the film that were relevant to their