Lone star literacy: phenomenological insights into elementary writing instruction under new Texas literacy initiatives

How they used Delve

A doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at Kansas State University used Delve to code an online focus group and follow-up individual interviews with three Texas third-grade teachers, combining a priori and open/descriptive codes in a phenomenological study of writing instruction under new state literacy initiatives.

“Once the transcriptions were complete, I imported the data into Delve, a qualitative data analysis software tool. Delve was used to organize and manage the data to thoroughly examine the teachers' responses and experiences to code themes and identify patterns and key insights. [...] I used the Delve software tool in an iterative process combining Apriori and open/descriptive coding to establish themes and subthemes and track the frequency of topics in the data.”

Field

elementary literacy and writing instruction; Texas education policy

Data

One online focus group and three individual follow-up interviews with 3 third-grade ELAR teachers in Texas public schools (Oct-Dec 2024), plus a pre-focus-group profile questionnaire and a focus group note-taking sheet

Approach

Qualitative phenomenological study framed by sensemaking theory; hybrid inductive/deductive coding (a priori codes plus open/descriptive coding, after Saldana) with themes and subthemes and topic-frequency tracking in Delve; transcripts by Rev

Data types

Focus groups, Interviews, Open-ended survey responses