Table 2: Preparation, organizing and resulting phases of the content analysis in this study.
1. Preparation phase
  1. Careful reading each response
  2. Copying each response verbatim into a word-processing program
  3. Creating analytical data
    1. Selecting the unit expressing students’ learning from the data that was inputted by separating each sentence and then editing by integrating terms spelled using different characters (kana and kanji in Japanese) but which had the same meaning.
    2. Sharing the above units selection by two researchers (CK & MS).
  4. Making sense of the data and whole
    1. Discussing meaning of the data and whole by two researchers (CK & MS)
    2. Sharing meaning of the data and whole by the research team
2. Organizing phase
  1. Open coding for the unit expressing students’ learning
    1. Identifying and encoding sentences and key words that indicated meaningful student’s learning
    2. Sharing codes by two researchers (CK & MS)
    3. Developing coding sheets
    4. Sharing the coding sheets by two researchers (CK & MS)
  2. Grouping codes with similar meanings by two researchers separately
  3. Discussing the coded groups by two researchers (CK & MS)
  4. Developing sub- categories
    Comparing and sharing sub- categories by two researchers (CK & MS): Re-reading all codes, comparing and organizing similar codes, and developing sub-categories
  5. Throughout the above process, developing categories through condensing the statements
3. Abstracting