Interview Questions

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As I wrote in my last blog post, I intend to conduct a broad student survey with my class which will be shared across the school to look for overall trends. However, Driscoll (2011) asserts that interviews are useful when gathering in depth data from a small sample. In order to effectively address the needs of my target learners, it makes sense to interview them to gain more insight into their experiences and attitudes towards mathematics.

Here are the questions I have formulated so far. The interview will be informal to support the ease of my students and I will ask follow up questions to gain further insights and to clarify my understanding.

1. What is your favourite thing about maths?  Potential follow up - Do you enjoy it?

2. What is your least favourite thing about maths?

3. Can you think of a maths lesson you have enjoyed in the past? What happened?

4. How would you rate your ability out of 5 in maths? Why do you think that?

5. Can you think of an area of maths that you would like to work on (link to what they said in the survey if they could identify an area)?

6. What is an area of maths that you enjoy or feel good at?

7. What does a good maths teacher do?

I am hoping that these questions allow me to determine: 1. What is the students self-efficacy in maths, 2. what are teachers already doing that they feel supported by and 3. Can they identify their strengths/ weaknesses in maths.

I will begin conducting the interviews in week 2 of term 2. I plan to do the survey prior to conducting the interviews so that I can use the survey data to inform my questions and to further tailor my questions to suit each individual. 

References

Driscoll, D, L. (2011). Introduction to primary research: Observations, surveys, and interviews.  Writing spaces: Readings on writing 2, 153-174, 2011

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