The Challenge of Listening: The Effect of Researcher Agenda on Data Collection and Interpretation.

Introduction As researchers and as instructors, we face the daily challenge of diagnosing student ideas by interpreting their written or spoken statements. Individual student interviews are often considered the gold standard for listening accurately to student ideas. However, even in an openended, time-unlimited, one-on-one conversation, accurate listening requires careful effort. We can and do ignore student statements when our own research agenda limits our attention. Explicit consideration of possible research agendas can increase our awareness of the richness of interview data. The authors of this paper have multiple roles in what follows. One author (MCW) conducted the interview cited here as part of a larger investigation and has since, with collaborators, published a paper describing his findings. The primary author (RES) analyzed the interview transcript some time later. In this paper, MCW is sometimes referred to as “the interviewer,” and RES is sometimes referred to as “the observer.”