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How to develop a coding system for observational research

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I did a classroom observation on two high school classrooms. They were as different as night and day. My instructor has asked me to review the field notes I collected for the "Classroom Observations". I need to develop a coding system for my observation notes. He instructed us that as I work on my codes, be sure to consider the broad research question stated in the Classroom Footage Observation Field Note Guide:This is the question "What is the nature of the interactions in these settings"?
My initial posting should consist of a list of the codes I should develop for my observation notes.
The class room that I observed were high school classrooms and one teacher was very verbal and the other was rather quiet. She basically walked around and looked over the students shoulder as they di their assignments from the black board. She would stop now and then and talk to some students.

I don't have any idea where to start and how to develop a code for a observation. Please help.

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Solution Summary

Discussion of observations, and how to quantify observed behavior using a coding system, with Internet-based references.

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Observations of behavior really do need quantifying in order to rate, or to quantify, what you have seen. For example, if you were studying little kids playing, and your research was violence, you would need to define what constitutes violence. Pushing is not the same as hitting, and verbal slurs or challenges are different from fighting. To accurately record what you see/saw, you need to define what you were seeing, so you can quantify it.

In your setting, you might want to quantify teacher interactions with students. What sorts of interactions did you observe between teacher and student? Verbal, hand signal, eye contact, and the like, all count as interaction. Individual student contact is different from group contact, and that is different from whole group, or class contact. How many comments were directed at each? You might even want to code the difference between when a student initiated the contact, and when the teacher did. Perhaps you want to identify when the teacher contact was positive, or encouraging, and when it was negative, or corrective.

You might want to define student-student ...

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