Grounded Theory Coding Research Articles

Making it happen: A grounded theory study of inservice teacher training for parent involvement in schools

Abstract Effective parent involvement programmes depend primarily on the capacities of teachers to work effectively with families in school- based initiatives. However, teachers generally receive little preparation for parent involvement. Responding to this need, an in-service teacher education programme has been introduced at a South African university. Teachers enrolled in the programme are required to complete a field-based assignment entailing the implementation of a parent involvement activity in their schools. A grounded theory inquiry was conducted to explore how teachers made this happen and to develop a substantive theory in this regard. Teachers' written accounts of the activity were selected over a twoyear period by means of theoretical sampling and were then analysed, using grounded theory coding and constant comparative analysis. The emerging substantive theory suggests that the core categories at work in the schools interact and form a pattern that could be repeated over time to improve the ...

Health needs: policy plan and school practice in Greece

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of health‐related needs on a policy design and curriculum enactment basis in terms of the national school health education curriculum in Greek secondary education.Design/methodology/approachA single case study, using an ethnographic approach, was conducted in Greece, seeking to understand the continuum from policy design to curriculum enactment in respect of health‐related needs. Three sources of data were used to meet this goal: policy texts, observation, and interviews. Multilevel sampling was employed to select one secondary school as a site for “good practice”. Grounded theory coding, thematic analysis and critical discourse analysis identified themes associated with the idea of health‐related through the corpus of data.FindingsOn a policy plan level the concept of health‐related needs was coupled with and reduced to a predetermined list of health‐related subjects; and the list of health‐related topics had not been updated for long and was characterised by a rather biomedical orientation. On a school practice level the stage of needs assessment was not applied, the list of health‐related subjects advocated in the policy plan was used on a proactive, normative and top down basis, and the students' felt needs tended to be disregarded.Originality/valueThis study followed up the continuum from policy design to school practice regarding the concept and practice of health needs, highlighting the possibilities and the problems from both perspectives.

What psychological and behaviour changes are initiated by ‘expert patient’ training and what training techniques are most helpful?

The Expert Patient Programme (EPP) is a lay-led, group-based, self-management training course available through the UK National Health Service for persons with long-term health conditions. Thirty-two patients who attended EPP courses in East London were interviewed about their experiences. Grounded theory coding of transcripts was employed to identify recurring accounts. Thematic analysis was used to theorise and organise participants’ accounts, identifying commonly reported changes, helpful techniques and disappointments and frustrations. Results highlighted the role of information provision, especially face-to-face information exchange as well as the impact of in-class instruction and modelling of physical skills. Personal goal setting, using graded tasks, self-monitoring and goal review were regarded as the most useful techniques. Adoption and use of these self-management techniques depended on the establishment of an empathic and self-validating interpersonal context. Findings also imply that EPP may not be ideal for all participants and suggested modifications and improvements are discussed.

Problematics of grounded theory: innovations for developing an increasingly rigorous qualitative method

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data.

Exploring the reality of applied partnerships: The case of the Greek school health education curriculum

Objective To explore the barriers and facilitators of building partnerships in terms of the national school health education (SHE) curriculum in Greek secondary education. Setting One large urban public secondary school, local authorities and external partners. Methods A single case study, adopting an ethnographic approach, sought to record and explore the reality of partnerships at school level. Multilevel sampling was employed to extract one secondary school as a site for `good practice'. Individual interviews, focus groups, observation and document analysis were used to build this case study of applied partnerships. Grounded theory coding and thematic analysis identified themes associated with the idea of partnerships through the corpus of textual data (verbal and written). Results (a) The key professional in the coordinating mechanism (local authorities) lacked sufficient support. (b) Voluntary collaborations alleviate the gaps in human resources. (c) Parents' engagement was marginal. (d) Top-down imposed partnerships did not work effectively. (e) `Social' health promoters were dismissed in favour of `biomedical' partners. Conclusions Overall an explicit trend of failure in the process of building partnerships was shown in terms of this case of SHE curriculum implementation. To explain this trend, it is necessary to engage in attempts to understand the culture and context of the case.