Implementing Inquiry-Based Science Education to Foster Emotional Engagement of Special-Needs Students - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 115

Rimmele was used to facilitate the analysis technically (cp. Seidel et al., 2006 ).
Transcripts helped to explicate some core categories with standard examples. The
coding was validated argumentatively with the classroom teacher, who knew the
students for more than a year. The classroom teacher and I agreed on the majority of
the codings. Where we did not agree at first, agreement was achieved by discussion
about the video data in relation to our observations.
These aspects (documentation of the research process, using systematic coding
procedures and rules, interpretation in a team) aimed at intersubjective inferability,
seen as the highest quality factor in qualitative research (Steinke, 2012 ).
6.2 The Category System of the Analysis
To recall, the main purpose of the study was to explore and better understand how
the emotional engagement of the emotionally sorely afflicted students of the class
was influenced by the implementation of guided inquiry. As outlined above
(Table 2 ), the accomplishment of the curriculum-based learning targets indicated
the engagement of the students in the inquiry-based task. My interest was to make
statements about the following aspects:
￿ How self-dependent do the students (start to) work? (personal skills, feeling of
autonomy)
￿ Which ideas and methodical ways do the students use to approach the task and to
acquire knowledge? (methodological skills, feeling of competence)
￿ How do they communicate with each other about the subject? (subject-related
social skills, feeling of social embeddedness)
These questions were directly related to the aims of the teaching unit (see
Table 2 ) and led to the following multiply revised category system (Table 3 ,
revision is indicated). Each category refers to one need defined by Deci and Ryan
( 2000 ). The better the indicators of each category can be observed, the higher the
level of engagement of the students.
Finding positive manifestations of these categories would be interpreted as a
clear sign of affective engagement in sustaining the learning activity as well as
active participation.
In the next section, the results of the outlined case study are described and
discussed in relation to the competences the teaching was focused on. The inter-
pretation of the results forms a basis for reflection. Reflection-before-action is
needed to adjust the planning of the next teaching unit according to the knowledge
gained (Postholm, 2008 ).