Using the themes

Each practitioner researcher combed through the transcripts of the interviews she had conducted and coded them for these themes, and then sent that coded information off to one member of the group who wrote a mini-essay on that theme. The essays were shared at the April 2003 meeting, but not edited, challenged, or processed any further. We wrote them so we could further explore the theme and see what sub-categories came from the theme.

After we coded our journals and "conversations with intent," we refined some themes and added other categories. As we moved from the autobiographical pieces to the journals, our codes and categories changed slightly. We found that the original codes, which came from our autobiographical pieces, didn't quite work with our new data, and we needed to decide which data form truly reflected who we are and what we do.

We do need a better way to describe what is happening in the moment... . Because we are using data that is largely "from the moment" we need to make sense of the moment, and I like Judy's suggestion to code from our philosophies. We have an intention (philosophy) and then we behave (action) in certain ways. How do we make sense of those two things? I want to share power, but I often don't. Now why is that? I think that choice when and where to share power says a lot about my understanding of a "teaching moment" and that there is a time and place to do some things. This comes from my teaching philosophy (Diana, Hub message, May 6, 2003).

However, we struggled with changing the original codes from fear that we would lose something in the process.

You are trying to figure out if and how your previous codes work and what you gain and what you lose by keeping them the same. It seems to me that they are not working as well as they did for autobiographies, but they came from the autobiographical material, so this is not completely unexpected. If you use them as they are, you gain time and *maybe* consistency. If you engage in a discussion like the one we had to get the codes we now have, the process will take more time but the codes may be more useful for this data. (Marina, Hub message, May 8, 2003).