Students with Disabilities Perspective on Reading Comprehension Instruction: A Qualitative Inquiry

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

Research Approach

There are certain factors such as the selection of participants of the research study, sampling size, data collection and tools used for the analysis of the collected data plays an essential role in the success of a research study. Selection of an appropriate research methodology enables the researcher to determine the strategy of how the research is conducted along the way. Once the researcher has selected the appropriate research methodology then the author can proceed with the further study which includes the identification of the facts essential for the collection of pertinent and significant data for the research study, along with secure handling of that data, and once the data is collected finally analyzing the data by running different tests on it to find the appropriateness of the collected data, in order to get the final results (Merriam, 1988).

This chapter of the research study will provide the readers with the research methodology that is used for the research study. In this research study the author has used qualitative case study methodology for understanding the experiences of the high school seniors with learning disabilities that have received varying reading comprehension instructional strategies. Qualitative case study methodology utilizes “descriptive approaches to data collection to understand the way things are and what it means from the perspectives of the research participants” (Mills, 2003, p. 4). A qualitative research study employs several methods to collect empirical data and relies on the experiences of the participants (Denizen & Lincoln, 2005).

The main focus of the research study will be the high school seniors with learning disabilities from the Dougherty County School District, located in Albany Georgia. Through this research study the researcher aims to understand the issues that are being faced by the high school seniors with learning disabilities at Dougherty County School District during the reading comprehension instruction provided by their teachers. Through this research study the researcher aims to find out methods and strategies that would prove to be useful and beneficial in terms of reading comprehension and academic achievement for the high school seniors with learning disabilities at Dougherty County School District (Merriam, 1998).

Participants and Setting of the Research Study

The total number of participants that would be involved in this research study would be twelve. All of the twelve participants of the research study will be the high school seniors with learning disabilities at Dougherty County School District, located in Albany Georgia. This district is specifically selected by the author because recently an extensive amount of complains have been received by the district school administrators for the senior high school students with disabilities having problems in understanding, figuring out, and remembering what they have read inside their classrooms, and they are not satisfied with the methods and strategies that are being used by their teachers. The reason for this dissatisfaction is that the current methods lack the background experiences that contribute to deciphering the text that are ...