Recap

I would like to take a moment to recap this process of the evolution of my research project and the process of data collection through out my research project. I have really learned a lot through this experience. The process of this project began with me wanting to see how ability grouping affects students. I wanted to initially observe three classrooms of students, two classes that were ability grouped (4th and 5th grade) and one class that was not ability grouped (3rd grade). It became quickly evident that my subject sample was way to large and given the circumstances, I would not be able to use this sample size. I then decided to focus on a group of students that I had the previous year. My sample size then became two classes of fifth grade students, one class of struggling readers and one class of advanced readers. These classes were ability grouped. My focus question then shifted when I decided to focus on how student self perception is affected by ability grouping. I administered a student survey to all students in the sample size (both classes). Once the surveys were collected, I began to analyze their findings. Upon analyzing things, I began to feel overwhelmed and realized that, yet again, my sample size was too large. So, from the survey results, I chose five students from each class based on their responses to the survey and my personal experiences with them in the previous year. This became my new focus group and things became much easier to analyze. This whole experience of choosing a sample size was very stressful but helped me realize that you don't have to look a huge sample size to gather the data needed to come to various conclusions.

There are some issues with the sample size and I realize that. These will be discussed in the limitations section of my paper. One thing I think really influenced the results of the surveys and interviews was that I was the teacher administering these surveys. I think if I hadn't conducted the interviews, some of the student responses may have  been different. I feel like some of the students game the "answer that I would want" instead of being honest with me about their true feelings. Its really frustrating knowing this now and how it could have influenced my data. I really think some of my data could have had different results had someone else administered some of the tools used. I guess that's the beauty of research!