The six parent-child school sessions took place after-school hours over a two-week period at times convenient to parents and their children. The school made appropriate space available for the parent-child interviews and the engagement of the parent with their child in implementing a BAIP parent activity. All parent-child school sessions were held in the same room, a resource room located in a quiet and private section of the school. A timeframe was set to schedule interviews before and after the observation session with parents and students. This helped parents plan their schedules. Before beginning each parent-child school session, I
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informed participants about audio and video recording of the session for transcribing purposes, to aid my memory, and to corroborate notes taken during the session; the recording process would be as unobtrusive. Break times were allowed, as deemed appropriate by the parent and/or student.
A semi-structured interview protocol with basic questions guided each interview (see Appendices IX and X). Supplemental questions with additional emerging prompts and/or questions were included as the interviews progressed. Emergent questions depended on what participants shared during the interview. The intent of these questions was to either build rapport or to enhance engagement in the interview.
Parent Pre-Observation Interview.
I conducted a pre-interview with parents in the school at a scheduled time to collect information on their self-perceived competence as home instructors. The intent of the pre- observation interview with parents was to document how comfortable the parents were with providing instructional assistance for their student at home, their perceived roles, the parents’ comfort level in providing home instruction, and to gain an understanding of the dynamics surrounding the students’ prior educational experience in mathematics.
I asked participants to read and sign the informed consent statement prior to starting the session. Interviewees signed and dated my copy prior to beginning the interview. The signed statements were retained for the study files, and copies were provided to the participants for their records.
I relied on a prepared script for introductory comments to put the parent at ease. The script was not used as obvious notes, but integrated as dialog with the parents who were well informed on the study. I previously had met with the parents and they each knew the teacher and
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Executive Director as well as the school contact person. These prior contacts enhanced the responsiveness of the parents to the pre-observation interview. The pre-observation interviews were scheduled in the late afternoons and were designed to transition into the student joining their parent and myself for implementation of the BAIP parent resources.
Parent-Child Observation of Structured Activities.
Once the student joined us in the study room, I asked the parents to read and sign an assent statement for their children. I also sought verbal consent from students prior to starting the session. The observation session began with casual dialog among the parent, student, and me. I provided a fun activity in which the parent and student engaged to practice thinking aloud and familiarizing themselves to that setting. The fun activities were related to student interests, which were identified by the school contact person at a previous meeting. Upon completion of the fun activity, participants were asked to engage in the BAIP parent structured activity. They could work off a print out of the parent activity or make use of a laptop computer that I provided.
The parent-child observation occurred at the end of the school day immediately following the pre-observation interview with the parent. Students knew in advance that they would be participating in an activity with their parents and that I would be present to audio and video record the sessions. Maxwell (2005, p. 108) reported that the presence of a researcher during an observation may influence participant behavior. However, he also noted that when in their natural setting, participants are less influenced by the presence of the researcher. I made a special effort to minimize the impact of my presence on the responsiveness of the student. I gained participants’ confidence through the support of the school, the fact that I had met the
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parents, and that I interacted briefly with some of the students at least once prior to the observation. Students in this school were generally familiar with audio and video recordings being made, so they were not all uncomfortable with the research set-up. I also conducted the observations and interviews in a setting familiar to the students, which aided their comfort levels. The setting was not as natural for parents as they have not taught their children math in school prior to this study. However, they visit the school often to pick up their children, volunteer, participate in school-related events, or to attend workshops, and were thus familiar with the school. I was careful to also casually build rapport with the parties before the observation and interviews began. I asked for verbal permission to begin the video recording at the start, and once recording began the parent had full freedom to determine how the activity would be approached.
As the activity progressed, I used a checklist to note particular events and to facilitate recall when transcribing interview notes (see Appendix XI). This checklist was comprised of itemized actions based on expected behavior that parents and/or students may exhibit. Examples are, “Parent read through the activity with student.” Or “Student helped parent in navigating through the BAIP site.” Items on the checklist were not exhaustive and assumed that research would likely produce emergent behavior that were not initially anticipated but also meriting careful exploration. I noted these emergent behaviors in a written comments section of the checklist. I used verbal prompts during the observation when participants appeared to need a probe to remind them to think aloud. Each observation differed slightly depending on how participants interacted with me. I was sensitive to parents’ and students’ comfort levels in being observed and recorded, and addressed them as appropriate at the beginning of each session.
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Student Post-Observation Interview.
The student interview occurred immediately following the parent instructional activity. Interviewing the student right after the observation aided student recall of the experience. According to the forgetting curve, a “nonlinear function relating the observed probability of memory retention and the delay or lag between study and test” (Averell & Heathcote, 2011, p. 25), the “rate of memory loss for an event is greatest right after the event and then levels off over time” (Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja, 2009, p. 124).
I asked students to describe their experience of learning at home, and describe their emotions and thought processes when engaged in the activities recommended by the parent activity. Parents could remain in or leave the room during the student interview, at the discretion of the student.
Parent Post-Observation.
I interviewed parents again after the observation and student interview. The focus of this post-observation interview was to document how comfortable parents were with providing instructional assistance for their student at home, their perceived roles, and the parents’ comfort level in providing home instruction after having experienced using the BAIP parent resource. I asked parents for their thoughts on the parent resource, the BAIP process, value of having alignment with standards and classroom instruction, how the parent-child school session worked out, whether it met their expectations and how, what they would do differently, what they did not find in the parent resource but would like to have seen in the resource, and how they thought they fared as home instructors. I invited them to discuss their children’s reaction to the home instruction, and whether it differed from their prior experiences helping with academic issues (e.g., homework). I also asked them to comment on how the experience affected their role
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construction and perceived self-competency levels. Students could remain in or leave the room during the parent interview, at the discretion of the student.
Cross-Check Parent-Child School Session Data.
To cross-check these data and my interpretations, I compared observation and interview records against one another. I also explored triangulation of opinions, perceptions, and
experiences about similar issues using data from different members of the triad. Triangulation of observations, nonverbal cues, and researcher memos were used to infer findings. I identified non-verbal cues through an analysis of the video recordings of the interviews. This identification process involved reviewing each of the six observation videos and adding to the transcripts descriptions of behaviors (e.g., facial expressions, body movement, eye contact or lack of, and tone of voice). By doing so, I reduced the risk that conclusions “reflect[ed] systematic biases of a specific source or method” (Maxwell, 2005, p. 93)