changing directions?

So I’ve been feeling stuck because for the last week or so, I’ve been feeling that my question is too broad. I’m really trying to tackle improving male literacy from a lot of angles: partner reading, writing parallel stories to the ones being read, and reading more graphic novels. To add on to this, I’ve been collecting data in the classroom, as well as in a special after-school program that began this January.
I remember what Sue said about following the questions that arise in the data we collect, and not being afraid to revise and rethink so that our research flows in several cycles. One student in my study, Donte, an extremely low reader who may have ADHD, stands out for me as I look over my blog. In the December and January postings alone, his name comes up 25 times. Why am I so fascinated with him? Well for one thing, he’s my target audience so to speak- a reader who was so reluctant at the beginning of the year, I literally saw him once pretending to read with the book upside down. He was one of my inspirations for investigating male literacy in the first place.
I think I’m also focusing on him because my intervention strategies are working especially well with him. He really latches on to graphic novels, he is a much more engaged and competent reader when he is partner reading. And he loves to write about his reading, except that his writing doesn’t take the form of a parallel story, it is instead short synopses of what he reads so that he can remember parts of the story better (this was his own, self-created modification, which was so interesting because it’s so appropriate for his needs as a reader).
One of the problems with being so focused on Donte is that I worry about having enough breadth in my study. Also, because how he gets to and from school is variable, he has only been able to come to one comic book club meeting (the after-school club I created). So I may be able to study him only in the classroom context. I think it makes sense to continue collecting data in both the classroom and after school context, and to collect (more general) data from the 15 boys who come to comic book club, and more specific, case study data from Donte and perhaps one other boy who shows up a lot in my journal.
Another thing with Donte is some of the work I’ve collected from him makes me want to start a new cycle of research around a slightly different topic. Ok, so now that Donte is a much more enthusiastic reader, thanks in some at least small part to the interventions I tried, how do I boost the quality of his thoughts as he reads? He and his partner reader had been re-reading guided reading books with the focus of asking questions as they read to further their comprehension. He came up with many questions, as far as I can see they break down into two categories: questions that challenge how realistic the story is and questions about character choices. Sometimes the choices reveal misconceptions about the story or about characters in the story, other times they show Donte trying to contextualize or understand details of the story. Sometimes he speculates answers to his questions, other times not. So far he’s only used this strategy with fantasy fiction books, I wonder how his questions will change when he applies this strategy to graphic novels, historical fiction, informational texts, and other genres? I wonder which types of questions leverage more inquiry on his part, which in turn deepens comprehension?
It feels like I’m switching directions midstream here, but I think I’m following what interests and excites me. The journey that Donte has been on this year is fascinating. He’s already changed so much. He’s so much more curious, he reads for 40 minutes straight and then takes books to the bathroom during our break. At the beginning of the year I couldn’t even get him to read for 5 minutes. I want to see how much further he can go. I want to see besides what excites him, what enriches him as a reader? I have a hunch it’s questions about what he reads. So I think I’m going to go with it. A colleague lent me this book: Make Just One Change: Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions. I think I’m going to use it to investigate how I should teach questioning to Donte. I want to track his progress by collecting all the questions he asks for each progressive book we read. I would like to analyze what types of questions he asks and do they change over time? Do they change according to genre, or some other factor? How do the types of questions he asks correlate with his comprehension of the text?
I think it’s the right thing to investigate this because it excites me, but at the same time, I don’t want to completely give up on my earlier questions about improving male literacy via partner reading, writing parallel stories, and graphic novels. I think this topic is important, it’s just not as exciting to me because I feel like I already know that those strategies are going to improve my boys’ enthusiasm for reading which will in turn improve their competency as readers.
So here’s the million dollar question: Can I keep investigating both questions or should I completely shift my focus onto my question about questions? Or should I start incorporating data collection about questions into my after-school comic book club so that I have a broader base of data?