Week 5 Readings

The following are the summaries for Week 5 reading selections:

Not a CookBook: Guidelines for Conducting an Interview by


This reading gives a very precise, conscious, and helpful way to conduct clinical interviews.

The paper gives explicit details into five different categories that are necessary to consider for clinical interviews. These include preparing for the interview, recording the interview, establishing and monitoring motivation, assessing what the child is thinking, establishing competence, and determining learning potential.

I personally felt that this paper was the most instrumental in preparing me for any clinical interview because it gave me steps to follow and different questions to consider in terms of the student. It is important to understand that the overall concept of clinical interviews is to ensure that the student feels safe, comfortable, and involved in the process to ensure that the necessary information is obtained.


Practicing Representation: Learning with and about Representational Forms by James Greeno & Rogers Hall

This reading speaks about the entire concept of students using representations to visually communicate the knowledge they know. This reading was short and sweet, but it was very informative in terms of understanding how and why students use representations. Also, it spoke of how teachers should teach students that do not use different forms of representations, especially in project based activities. This allows students, in my opinion, to think conceptually and abstractly about the information.

Using Interviews To Explore Student Ideas in Science by Rosemary Russ and Miriam Gamoran Sherin

This reading was a very direct way to give strategies for conducting interviews with students. By using the following steps: contextualizing the concept, probing the student's responses, and seeding new ways of thinking, it can be more effective and efficient. It was very informative in terms of showing the interviewer that it is important to approach the interview in a very causal and conceptual way instead of a firm academic way. I found it the most useful of three articles in terms of preparing clinical interviews.

Questions that arose for me were:
Is it logical to conduct clinical interviews with mutiple children and one interviewer?
What is the ultimate most efficient form of clinical interviewing, or is it subjective to the student and interviewer?