METHODOLOGY

This pilot study tested methods and procedures for exploring teacher-initiated integration efforts, employing qualitative interview and observation methodologies designed to provide detailed descriptions of how integration is accomplished in classrooms. Patton (1990) identifies "clarifying a model or treatment" (p. 107) as an appropriate application of qualitative methodologies. This study examined the so-called infusion model of vocational and academic integration in detail.

Sample Identification

Finding the right people to interview is critical to a descriptive, qualitative study of this nature and was therefore a major focus of the pilot study. The following multiple-stage process for identifying the sample was developed:

• Staff from the Secondary Programs and Services Section, Illinois State Board of Education/Department of Adult, Vocational and Technical Education were asked to identify what they considered to be the top ten secondary programs in the state in agriculture, business education, health occupations, home economics, and industrial education. A total of 49 teacher/program nominations were secured through consensus among the ISBE consultants in each of the occupational areas (a copy of the initial contact letter is in Appendix A). Though the study's purpose was mentioned in the letter, state staff were not asked to select teachers based on integration but, rather, on a perception of overall program quality.
• The teachers who were nominated via this process were then interviewed by telephone to determine the extent and type of vocational and academic integration they practice in their programs. The structured interviews were conducted using procedures and instruments similar to those used by Roegge et al. (1991). The process was as follows: (1) teachers were contacted by letter to inform them of their nomination and alert them to forthcoming telephone contact; (2) teachers were contacted by telephone to set up times for interviews (this sometimes took several calls); and (3) the telephone interviews were conducted, each lasting 10-15 minutes. These initial telephone interviews served two purposes: (1) to select the most appropriate teachers to participate in the in-depth interviews, and (2) to provide focus to the in-depth interviews (see Appendix B for the "Site Selection Guide"). Follow-up calls were made as necessary to clarify information gathered in the interviews.
• Results of the telephone interviews were examined by project staff and faculty from the Department of Vocational and Technical Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Based on this examination, two primary criteria were used to select sites for further examination. These were (1) the degree to which integration was instruction-based (as opposed to curriculum-based) and (2) the length of the time the teachers had been using integration in their teaching.

Three sites were selected for the pilot study based on the data obtained on the telephone interviews. The programs selected for examination in the pilot study were in the areas of technology education, home economics, and vocational agriculture.

Instrument Development

The focus of qualitative research is detailed or "thick" description. In this case, the aim is to describe what individual teachers do and how they do it in terms of integrating vocational and academic content via instructional techniques. For the pilot study, an instrument was developed which was semistructured, focusing on major anticipated themes while allowing for these (or alternative themes) to emerge during the course of the interview. The on-site teacher interview instrument, therefore, was developed and structured very broadly around the following organizers: (1) nature (general description) of the integration activities; (2) focus (e.g., was integration being accomplished primarily through the teaching method, instructional materials, applications such as lab activities, work-based learning experiences, special projects, or a combination of the above); (3) the implementation of the integration strategy and its acceptance into the school culture; and
(4) the evaluation of integrated learning. These guides were adapted from protocols used in previous studies (e.g., Grubb et al., 1991; Roegge et al., 1991).

The instrument was researcher designed and borrowed in style from an instrument developed by Schmidt et al. (1992). The draft was examined by faculty and graduate students in the Department of Vocational and Technical Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for relevance, consistency, and clarity of questions. The instrument contained open-ended questions that were expected to help in leading the discussions with teachers during the interview process (see Appendix C).

On-Site Interviews

The pilot study interviews were conducted during November of 1993. Though the intent was to follow the interview guides rather closely, it was discovered that a more unstructured approach succeeded in allowing the subjects to tell their stories from their own perspective. Though the aforementioned interview guides were used, the format remained largely unstructured, and the interviewers only referred to the guides if the interviewees failed to address specific points. The interviews were recorded on audiotape, averaging approximately three hours in length. Interviewer notes supplemented the tapes, and program documentation was also collected at the time of the site visits.

Content Analysis and Reporting

The audiocassettes from the site interviews were transcribed and typed out for content analysis. Narrative reports were written from the data collected in the interviews and through observations. When all narratives were completed, they were content-analyzed to identify any existing commonalties in nature, focus, implementation, acceptance, and evaluation methods.