At each of the sites, face-to-face interviews were conducted with teachers; administrators and counselors; and business, industry, and community representatives. These individuals were involved in school-based learning, work-based learning, and activities linking school- and work-based learning at the sites. The primary information collection approach was the long interview, with a total of 199 interviews conducted at the sites. Included in the interview protocol were questions and probes designed to identify professional development activities having the greatest positive impact on teachers. The critical-incident technique was used to stimulate interviewees' descriptions of professional development activities that helped teachers to meet students' school-to-work needs. Interviewees were also asked to describe the best school-to-work practices teachers had used, including those where they interfaced effectively with employers. The critical-incident technique was again used to help interviewees focus on describing examples of teachers' best practices.
Interviews and analysis were conducted concurrently to ensure that we were gathering information that would contribute to the study objectives. The analysis centered on identifying meaningful themes and subthemes associated with teachers' professional development activities that were imbedded in the interview text and on determining to what extent common elements existed across sites. To handle the extensive text transcribed from the interviews, The Ethnograph software was used. This software allows for coding, grouping, coding again, and regrouping information according to established and emerging categories, themes, and contexts. A more detailed description of the study procedures may be found in a report prepared by Schmidt, Finch, and Moore (forthcoming).