1. Using Qualitative Interviewing to improve the TLC-II teacher perceptions survey Option 2: methodological design of your proposed study
2.
3.
4.
5.
Editor's Notes
My research proposal is to apply the TLC-II survey to the high school environment, which is essentially a quantitative analysis. However, in order to improve the survey in the ways suggested by its author, qualitative interviewing from a grounded theory paradigm is required.
When first asked to think of a research proposal, I immediately thought about teacher/librarian collaboration because of my current work as a high school librarian. I was already familiar with Loertscher’s taxonomy having taken Designing Lessons for School Libraries, so the idea of correlating his levels of collaboration to frequency of library use was a natural. Upon conducting a literature review, I found that Patricia Montiel-Overall had made this same connection five years ago and had done ground breaking social research along these lines. Far from discouraging my own research, Montiel-Overall suggests directions for further research.
Conducting the TLC-II survey in a series of high schools is my research proposal, but in order to improve the TLC-II survey I would have to use qualitative research techniques. The relationship between quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis is not competitive but complimentary. In this case it is part of the iterative development of the TLC instrument. Montiel-Overall, P. (2009). Teachers’ perceptions of teacher and librarian collaboration: Instrumentation development and validation. Library & Information Science Research , 30, 145 − 155.
The four facets of Montiel-Overall’s Teacher/Librarian Collaboration model are: Coordination, Cooperation, Integrated Instruction, and Integrated Curriculum. Different activities were identified through direct observation and qualitative interview and then coded to one of the four facets to be used in the quantitative analysis done with the TLC-II survey.
Adding items to each facet increases the stability of the findings according to exploratory factor analysis. (Montiel-Overall 2009) Qualitative interviews with at least 10 bay area high school teachers and 10 school librarians. First I would ask teachers to itemize as many activities done in relation to the library and librarian. Answers would be recorded and transcribed
![Research Topic: Teachers’ perceptions of teacher/librarian collaboration ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)