Chapter 4 Methodological Approach to the Study
¶Data sources for this qualitative study included various documents produced during the initial National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that funded early development of the Paradigms in Physics program, publications about the Paradigms in Physics program, handouts from various meetings during the re-envisioning and revising process, responses on an anonymous survey of faculty and students, field notes from observation of some of the paradigms in physics courses, audio-recordings of Paradigms 2.0 committee meetings and Upper Division Curriculum Committee meetings, and audio-recordings of interviews with faculty, the evaluator of the initial grant, graduate teaching assistants (TAs), an undergraduate learning assistant (LA), a faculty visitor, and previous and current chairs of the department.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was requested and obtained for the study, including for the anonymous survey and interviews. Consent forms were signed by participants, including faculty and students in the courses observed.
Qualitative interpretation of these data involved selecting commentary from the interviews and excerpts from the documents in order to illustrate the journey that the participants experienced in initiating, sustaining, re-envisioning, and revising this long-term educational reform. Three dots “...” in quotes indicate that some words have been omitted. Words in parentheses indicate a role descriptor in place of a name such as “(teaching assistant)”, words an interviewee omitted such as “quantum (mechanics)”, or a brief clarification such as “it (the upper level program)”.
In selecting commentary from the interviews, excerpts from the documents, and responses to the survey, the lead author drew upon her previous studies in the areas of organizational decision-making (van Zee, Paluchowski, & Beach [28]), ethnography of communication (van Zee & Minstrell [27]), and physics education research (McDermott, Rosenquist & van Zee [16]; van Zee, Iwasyk, Kurose, Simpson & Wild [25]; van Zee, Hammer, Bell, Roy & Peter [24]; van Zee & Manogue [26]).