Sample selection

This research concentrates on young French readers (French as their mother tongue) in GS¹⁴⁵ in kindergarten, CP and CE1 of primary school between 5 to 8 years old. As Mer-rium referred, « sample selection in qualitative research is usually nonrandom, purposeful, and small, as opposed to larger, more random sampling in quantitative research » (Miles &

Huberman, 1994, p. 29). Non-like in quantitative research, our aim of sample selection is to

145 GS: Grande Section, the last year of kindergarten. Children in GS are around 5 to 6 years old.

obtain the whole understanding of the situation; therefore, we have well selected night (N=9) pupils in our research, and these cases are considered representative to describe and to comprehend the whole learning process.

L’objectif est de comprendre les situations, non pas d’estimer des valeurs dans une population d’enquête. Le nombre de sujets pourra être plus ré-duit, mais bien choisi (de façon raisonnée). On peut chercher à obtenir un échantillon expérimental en croisant les facteurs importants (dits stra-tégiques) pour s’assurer que tous les cas seront présents. Pour des entre-tiens biographiques ou dans une étude exploratoire, quelques « cas » par-ticulièrement illustratifs suffiront¹⁴⁶ (Merriam, 2009, p. 16).

In order to make the appropriate choice of the subjects, we decide to divide this selec-tion into three sequential steps: the first step concerns the selecselec-tion of six teachers from GS of kindergarten, CP, and CE1 of primary schools for face-to-face interviews; secondly, we will further select three teachers among the six according to their experiences in poetry teaching and understanding via their performance in interview; thirdly, they will be asked to choose three pupils in each of their classes to participate in our case studies according to their reading competences. The three steps will be detailed as follows:

Step 1 Preliminary selection of six teachers

The selection of teachers in this research commences by diffusing questionnaire (see link in Annex 2) to teachers in kindergarten and primary schools, mostly from GS of kin-dergarten, CP and CE1 of primary schools. The reason why we adopt questionnaire lies in that we need to clearly demonstrate our standard to reduce the possibilities of subjective interpretations. Since our questionnaire could serve to select candidates with predeter-mined questions, the « standardization » of questionnaire would excel any other personal judgments, therefore considered as the best choice.

146 The objective is to understand situations, not to estimate values in a survey population. The number of subjects may be smaller but well chosen (reasonably). An experimental sample can be sought by crossing important (so-called strategic) factors to ensure that all cases are present. For biographical interviews or in an exploratory study, a few particularly illustrative "cases" would be enough (Translated by DL).

La standardization des questionnaires, ainsi que l’analyse statistique des données, réduit la part d’interprétation subjective des résultats ce qui ac-croit le caractère scientifique de cette méthode¹⁴⁷ (Berthier, 2010, p. 176).

The purpose of diffusing the questionnaire is to 1) delimit the number of participants, i.e., selecting two teachers on each grade 2) find out the ones who are more proper to par-ticipate, as Berthier puts it, « la population est définie par les caractéristiques des individus qui les rendent aptes à participer à l’enquête »¹⁴⁸ (Le Roy & Pierrette, 2012, p. 71) and we depend on our questionnaire to identify these characteristics which will conform to our research.

We therefore have created this online questionnaire (via SurveyMonkey). From Janu-ary 2016 to June 2016, we have received 42 questionnaires from our target population.

Then we initiated our selection of 6 teachers from 42 questionnaires as the criterions of selection (see instructions in Annex 2). According to the criterion, we have finally acquired six teachers who correspond to our research.

Step 2 Further selections of three teachers

We decided to reduce the number of teachers from six to three, therefore only one teacher for each level, i.e. one from GS of kindergarten, one from CP and another one from CE1 of primary school. The reason for the further selection mainly lies in three as-pects: 1) to obtain as richly as possible the context of poetry learning for children between 5 to 8 years old (only those who had experiences of poetry teaching in their classes could probably bring us pupilis who possess their knowledge of poetry to finally facilitate our research); 2) to prepare for an appropriate pupil selection in the next step; 3) to limit the number of selected teachers in order to put more weight on the interviews with pupils as our research concentrates on the effects of poetry on pupil reading.

The six teachers selected from step 1 are comprised of two teachers from GS of kin-dergarten, two teachers from CP of primary school and another two from CE1 of primary

147 The standardization of the questionnaires, as well as the statistical analysis of the data, reduces the subjective interpretation of the results, which increases the scientific character of this method(Translated by DL).

148 The population is defined by the characteristics of the individuals who make them able to participate in the survey(Translated by DL).

school. Followed by the previous step, we are supposed to further select three teachers by their different teaching levels and distinguished working sites. The multi-level corresponds to the chronological characteristics of our subjects; the multi-site helps to enlarge our sam-ples geographically, which contributes equally to reveal the multi-facets of the same re-search question.

L’échantionnage multi-sites renforce la validité des résultats. L’examen d’une série de cas similaire et de contraste, nous permet de comprendre les résultats obtenus au sein d’un premier cas, en le caractérisant à travers le « comment » et le « où » et, si possible, le « pourquoi » de son fonc-tionnement¹⁴⁹ (Berthier, 2010, p. 161)

A further selection of teachers concerns the face-to-face interviews (see question guide for teachers in Annex 3) with them. Conducting interviews is « a process in which a researcher and participants engage in a conversation focused on questions related to a re-search study » (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 62). Their performances in the interview, i.e.

their personal experiences¹⁵⁰ concerning poetry teaching are essential. Teachers who have never or scarcely practiced poetry teaching in class are thus removed from our samples since it doesn’t correspond to our purpose of research. We believe this further selection could not only present us appropriate teachers and their pupils but also get them familiar-ized with our problematic of research.

Step 3 Selection of nine pupils

According to our problematic and theoretical framework, the population of our re-search focuses on pupils from 5 to 8 years old. « Le choix de la population d’enquête s’impose souvent de lui-même en fonction du problème à étudier »¹⁵¹ (DeMarrais 2004, p.

55). Here comes the core of our sequential experimental steps – the case study of pupils.

149 Multi-site sampling reinforces the validity of the results. The examination of a series of similar and contrasted cases allows us to understand the results obtained in a first case, characterizing it through the "how" and the "where"

and, if possible, the "why "of its functioning(Translated by DL).

150 This experience towards poetry and diction-reading not necessarily equals the duration of teaching, which however is highly relevant.

151 The choice of the survey population is often decided depending on the problem to be studied (Translated by DL).

Followed by the previous two steps, the three chosen teachers will subsequently be re-quested to select three pupils from their own classes respectively in the light of pupil’s reading levels. Different reading levels are favored when selecting pupils as it could outline a comprehensive range of their reading stages. According to Johnson (1990), this is consid-ered as a dimensional sample: « le chercheur établit des dimensions à la recherche de varia-bilité, puis sélectionne des répondants « bien informés », représentatives de chacune des dimensions divergentes »¹⁵². Therefore, in order to get a whole picture in preparation for data analysis, nine pupils of rather distinctive reading levels (three from GS of kindergarten, three from CP and three from CE1 of primary school) are picked up and assigned to our second round of face-to-face interviews.

3.3.2. Instrumentation : selective questionnaire,