ahead, I made sure at each step that what I was doing made sense to me and fairly represented
the data. In addition, I had to convince Dr. Heller that what I was doing made sense. An
analogy to this process might be the pilot testing of curriculum materials. After testing, revisions
are made prior to releasing the materials to the larger audience. I believe this is a constructivist
way of doing research: The process is a part of the product, and meaning is constructed out of
what is evident, reasonable, and logical. Even subjective evaluations were are part of this
process. We were able to assign highly subjective monikers to groups (“bad”, “good”,
“confused”, “dysfunctional”) and know which group we were discussing by its pejorative name.
Finally, the independent evaluation of the written solutions supplied another interpretive reality
check.
One major interpretive concern was that somehow my coding of the statements or
drawings of the flowcharts changed between the beginning and the end of the study. First of all,
it is important to note the order in which the sessions were coded: 4, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. I saw no
“chronological” pattern to such measures as lines per episode. I have already addressed the issue
of whether or not the students who appear in more than one group were consistent in their claim
making (Table 3-24, page 126). They are relatively consistent.
As a final example of interpretive validity, consider the very use of the Toulmin
categories and the additional defined categories. Alternate Claims and Modified Claims are
interpretive but also related to the Toulmin category of the Claim. Likewise categories like
Consensus Checking grew out of the cooperative groups and the problem-solving strategy. That
is, these additional statement types are not atheoretical, to use Maxwell’s term.
Theoretical Validity