Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Methodology
An ethnographic case study method was used to explore the four topics. The re-
search project was initiated with the preparation of reviews of the literature on
each topic within each of the three countries. This information provided a basis
for the development of research protocols, to be used to guide the interviews and
observations. The protocols were constructed by a team of multilingual educators,
psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists from the University of Michigan
and reviewed by education researchers in Germany and Japan. Further refinement
occurred in consultations with the field researchers, all specialists in the selected
areas of the study. This approach ensured that the questions studied were applica-
ble in all three countries. The National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) re-
view boards also provided guidance on the topics and questions, in order to con-
firm their relevance for U.S. education policy.
The field researchers participated in a week-long training session at the University
of Michigan, where they received background information on the study, learned
to use qualitative data analysis software, and met in teams organized both by topic
and by country. Within these teams, researchers reviewed guidelines for each set
of interviews and worked toward a common understanding of the research goals.
These steps were essential to provide some consistency of collection of data in
an ethnographic study that involved multiple sites, different languages and cul-
tures, and researchers with varying academic backgrounds.
With assistance from NCES and consultants from Japan and Germany, three urban
communities in different regions of the United States were selected as research
sites that would be as comparable as possible to the sites in the other countries
in terms of size, economic base, and status. Researchers spent up to 3 months
each in the primary site and visited the others for shorter periods of 3 to 4 weeks.

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The purpose of the fieldwork in the secondary sites was to generate diversity in
the sample of cities to test the validity of the findings from the main site.
School achievement data were utilized to select a range of schools within these
communities. A total of 16 schools were chosen for participation, representing
low, middle, and high academic achievement as well as socioeconomic and ethnic
diversity. At each school, teachers, parents, administrators, and students were se-
lected for participation. Because the TIMSS study focuses on achievement data at
4th, 8th, and 12th grade, efforts were made to select corresponding grade levels
for classroom observations and to select students from these grades for interviews.
Six experienced researchers conducted most of the interviews and observations
in the United States schools with additional fieldwork conducted by research staff
from the Case Study Project at the University of Michigan’s Center for Human
Growth and Development. Each week researchers in the field summarized and re-
ported their major findings. Also, members of the research team were in contact
with each other and with the staff at the University of Michigan via e-mail.
In the development of a comparative, ethnographic study of education in three
countries, one must be especially careful in attempting to characterize the edu-
cation system of one’s own country. We were fortunate in writing these chapters
on the United States that many of the researchers were bilingual and were able
to conduct observations and interviews in more than one country. Returning from
fieldwork in Germany or Japan, they were able to see the United States education
system through a new lens with heightened awareness of contrasts and ability to
view from this new perspective what had previously been ordinary. Furthermore,
we had several researchers contribute to the fieldwork for each topic, an unusual
approach for ethnographic work, and conversations among these teams during the
analyses, as well as careful reading of drafts for corroboration of findings, proved
valuable.
Where possible, respondents were matched with interviewers of similar ethnic
backgrounds. An African-American ethnographer interviewed the majority of Afri-
can-American students and parents, and an Hispanic interviewer interviewed His-
panic students and parents; where appropriate, these interviews were conducted
in Spanish. After data collection was completed, these individuals met with the
primary field researchers to provide perspectives on significant issues.
Interview and observational data were entered by the researchers into a qualitative
data analysis program, HyperQual2. This step enabled the researchers to tag pas-
sages that referred to frequently occurring themes or topics of interest, so that
data could be sorted for further analyses. Various members of the United States

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research team met periodically to discuss their findings, and the group commu-
nicated electronically with each other and with the research staff at the University
of Michigan throughout the project. Following the field research, data were elec-
tronically transmitted to the University of Michigan. This allowed the authors of
the chapters to use material collected by other members of the team as well as
by themselves.
In the course of analyzing the data for each of the topics, each researcher re-
viewed many hundreds of pages of data. To present a reliable picture of contem-
porary American responses to the main topics of the study, it was necessary to
try to find common themes but at the same time to adequately represent the wide
variety of opinions, ideas, and practices that exist in the United States. In addition
to the ethnographic data, authors at times refer to related literature and national
statistics. The topical reviews of the literature conducted before our field inves-
tigation provided much of this contextual information.