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Data collection

I use students’ writing journals in all of the courses I teach for a variety of reasons including determining their opinions, discovering gaps in understanding, as well as to frame their thinking and inform class discussions. All aspirants are required to journal during the first 15 minutes of each class session. I sought and received approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board to use student writing journal responses in this study; all of the participating students signed informed consent letters with anonymity guaranteed.

The prompt that served as the focus of the current study was Why Me? Why Now? The journal responses to this prompt were analyzed to determine self-reported motivation to prepare to become school leaders. Since traditionally the results from the exit survey of this program have found that over 92% of our students plan to pursue a position within five years of completion, it was determined that initial reports of motivation were a valid indicator of their goals.

Data analysis

The journal entries of 83 aspirants were transcribed and labeled with self-reported demographic data. The contents of each journal entry were distilled through open coding; once initially coded by the researcher, a colleague used the same codes and independently reviewed the entries. While coding was confirmed and yielded consistent results, 15-18 codes were further explored collaboratively to yield three robust themes – leadership, internal motivation, and external motivation. These themes were determined to be the most effective in reporting findings. The data was then pattern coded for more discrete themes and categorized by frequency (Miles&Huberman, 1994).

In order to report on the whole content of each journal entry, pattern coding yielded seven discrete themes (Table 1). The key to the labels of the seven discrete themes of coded responses represented in Table 1 are: (1) Leadership Skills Only means that the entire journal entry discussed only leadership skills; (2) Internal Motivation Only means that the entire journal entry cited internal motivation without mentioning any other motivating force; (3) External Motivation Only was the label given to journal entries where only external motivating factors were expressed; (4) Leadership and Internal Motivation means that both of these themes were evident in these journal entries; (5) Leadership and External Motivation was the label given to entries where both elements were expressed; (6) Internal and External Motivation means that the entire journal entry cited both internal and external motivating forces; and (7) Leadership, Internal, and External Motivation means that all three of these forces were cited in the journal entry. Actual sample statements from the study participants are presented as examples of each of the seven discrete themes.