Research Question – Lisa's Blog

Developments for DLRCP

This last revision cycle brought several different changes to pieces of my DLRCP Final Proposal document.

Early on, gamification did not feel like the right fit for the theoretical framework, and somewhat complicating. Had the DLRCP and the OER that I’m proposing have some other focus than explicitly teaching games, it might have been clearer to think and write about. As it was previously, I was, in the writing, ongoing trying to clarify whether any/and/or each game reference was about the framework of gamification, or about the OER and games themselves. I persisted with gamification as the framework until the initial round of revision due to inexperience and being unwilling to make what I was perceiving to be a large change. Initial revision with my Advisor (thanks, Jordanne!) gave the permission I needed to change the framework to that of place-based learning.

Place-based learning (Gruenewald, 2014) is a better fit as a framework as all the pieces of this project relate to and can be understood in that context. I would have liked to have included some Indigenous perspective around place-based learning in the proposal itself, but found myself unsure as to what might be inappropriate use of that knowledge and worldview, and did not incorporate it in the end. The beautiful thing is that in trying to understand whether/how it would fit meant that I’ve spent the last two weeks or so reading about Indigenous issues in academia, worldviews, connection to place and research methodologies (particularly Kovach [2009], Meyer [2013], Shawanda [2020], and Simpson [2014]). It’s been a wonderful reason to have some very enlightening conversations with colleagues and friends, and has helped me uncover more understanding of my own colonial ways of thinking, and how endemic colonialization is in this culture (and our schools). I’m getting better at seeing in terms of relationship, but it is taking time. Each thing I read gives a new perspective, a better understanding and peels back another layer to reveal clearer thinking.

The unfortunate side effect is that Indigenous worldviews and sense-making continue to be erased in my own work due to my own discomfort with including it poorly.

Through conversation with Jordanne, and growing understanding of methodology, I made a shift from modified action research to that of exploratory research (Stebbins, 2001). Because of the timelines and goals in my project, I’ll not really get to go through a cycle of action research, and the project I’m building is not one that would be implemented in my own workspace, but in an adjacent one. Exploratory research, particularly innovative exploratory research keeps the focus narrow, with the purpose of creation of a product (in my case, a [hopefully] effective OER).

Finally, the methods by which I hope to do the primary research piece have shifted from survey into semi-structured interview. Survey was, after further consideration, a limiting way of gathering the kind of information that I’m after. Semi-structured interview allows for more generative conversation, hopefully mitigating my own limitations and allowing the participants to expand the data in ways that I could not have foreseen.

I’m excited about this next piece, getting into the gathering and building aspects of the project.

Cheers.

References:

Gruenewald, D. A., & Smith, G. A. (2014). Place-based education in the global age: Local diversity. Routledge.

Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies : Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ubc/detail.action?docID=4672931

Meyer, M. A. (2013). Holographic Epistemology: Native Common Sense. China Media Research, 9(2), 94–101. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=88863314&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Shawanda, A. (2020). Baawaajige: Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health, 1(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.33137/tijih.v1i1.34020

Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3). https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/22170

Stebbins, R. A. (2001). What is exploration. Exploratory research in the social sciences, (pp, 2-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Research Dissemination – initial thoughts

Well I’m a little late to this, but have been giving it quite a bit of thought.

I’ll be doing a Digital Learning Research Consulting Project (DLRCP) exit pathway, building an Open Education Resource (OER) grounded in place-based learning, cultural identity and games as cultural referents. In a nutshell (and as I said on Padlet), my DLRCP will be an OER aimed at teachers K-8 of playground games from different cultures and countries, initially focusing on the cultures represented in the current settling immigrants of the Kootenays. The intention of the project is that the games be taught in typical school settings so that when children come from other places, they find a cultural touchstone already there, a place to start to meet their peers, a place for emergent language and connection.

My plan is to consult with local groups (both an immigrant settlement group, our local school districts, and individuals as the research develops and am hopeful that I can leverage some of this network to share the OER on completion.

I’ve been in conversation with one of our local Superintendent of Schools, and she asked how long before it could be implemented (which is hopeful for getting it promoted as a tool in our local area).

The BC Teacher’s Federation (BCTF) has many different social justice and anti racism action groups and initiatives. There are regular professional development workshops held throughout the year, indexed to the BCTF website. My intent is to contact the BCTF to share my findings and the final project through them by late September 2021.

The idea for this project was originally conceived when I was part of an interdisciplinary, international group of artists and activists exploring how story and culture intersect with identity in youth work, how knowing our backgrounds allows us to know ourselves. I’ll be in touch with that group as my proposal is developed, and know that they will be happy to promote and share the research and the project in their circles, through Erasmus+ and Nomadways project spaces. It is through this group and local contacts that I hope to extend the OER itself into the future as a contributor library.

Really, thinking through this has been helpful. There are several groups that I’ve worked with in my capacity as a graphic recorder and illustrator that I believe will be helpful in getting the word out, and I’ve now started a list of groups and people to contact as I get closer to completion.

Still developing my ideas around the research question part. Some rough ideas:

Research question:

Effectiveness of place-based learning on belonging and integration in child immigrant populations through games as cultural referent (not a question yet, I realize)

Sub questions:

Assessment criteria for effectiveness of project in school setting (thanks Deb, for this suggestion)
Best practices for OER teaching materials/accessibility/clarity

I’m left with a couple of questions around our ethics approval, and people that we might speak to about the project. I’ve previously worked with a group in Chios, Greece, who educate child refugees (primarily from Syria) in and around refugee camps in that area. I’d love to hear their perspective on this as a method of creating community in a foreign place – and am not sure if our ethics approval covers conversations with people from other countries (if the organization will not require its own ethical review) or not.

Right now it’s all rolling around in my head, very fuzzy and ill-defined. I look forward to any feedback folks might have and welcome any recommendations.

Cheers!

Thoughts from a virtual Q&A with George Veletsianos

It had the distinct pleasure of meeting George briefly several years ago at an Open Textbooks conference held at TRU at which he was keynote speaker and I was graphic recorder. I was impressed at the time at his understanding and use of social media as a means to communicate with his students, and at his understanding of how contemporary students communicate, and what it takes to meet people where they are at.

Our group asked him about snowball sampling – something that was completely new to me. My parents are both scientists. Growing up, my family looked at things from a very quantitative angle. My anecdotal understanding of research was that it was always large study groups, wide-ranging, random subjects, and that everything could be boiled down to numbers in tables. My Dad referred to human services as ‘soft sciences’ and pointed to the problems that qualitative data had, in his opinion, inherently, such as difficulty with self-identifying mental or physical states. He would ask, “how do I know that my 3/5 pain is the same as yours, or someone else’s?” His view on this has always stayed with me. I’ve really always thought of quantitative data as ‘hard’ data and qualitative data as ‘soft’ data, and that ‘soft’ was not in a flattering way, not like real science.

This course has challenged a lot of biases that I wasn’t aware that I had when it comes to research and data. It has been useful to move through the course and unpack each of these little internal resistances that I’ve felt as we’ve moved along. While I still have a long way to go, it was helpful to have a mirror held up to my ways of thinking, to allow my horizons to expand around this.

Our group’s question was:

Do you find that using snowball sampling allows for a varied enough sample group for the types of research you are doing? When is it more or less appropriate to implement this as a way of finding participants?

George described snowball sampling as identifying participants who then identify further participants. He shared with us that it is appropriate when looking for groups of subjects who share certain characteristics. This makes sense with the type of research he is doing, where he is looking to speak to a specific demographic of people about their experience.

I had to do some work around his answer – are data valid if they are from a narrow demographic? The answer, of course, is yes! It was my bias that was keeping me from seeing how this way of finding participants has value.

This all connects so beautifully with the way he answered the question asked by Team Four regarding biases – that to work in a team is an important part of the research. He said that other people in the team are there to help challenge each other’s biases. I like the idea of working in a team of people that have strong boundaries set and are comfortable enough that they can challenge each other’s biases without jeopardizing the work relationship. I see, too, how this ties back into the teamwork we are doing in an ongoing way in our cohort, having the opportunity to practice these skills, over and over again.

I’m looking forward to having dinner with my parents later this week, to talk about some of the things that have come up during the course, to learn more about their experience in research, both in their work and when they were in University. I’ll share with them the discovery and exploration of my own biases and hope to explore some of their thoughts and experience around biases, too.

What makes a good research question?

A good research question:

Endeavors to answer something new – not something that has already been investigated (Steely Library NKU, 2018).
Does not contain inherent bias. The example given in a handout from Duke University (Porush, 1995) is “why are social networking sites harmful?” The bias inherent in this question is that social networking sites are, by nature, harmful. A better question would not make unfounded, value-based assumptions.
Is open-ended, needing more than a yes or no answer, or a statistic to satisfy it (Steely Library NKU, 2018).
Is not so broad that it can’t be answered in the scope of the paper to be written (Porush, 1995).
Is important to the larger readership, extending conversation about the topic (Steely Library NKU, 2018).
Is clear, can be read and understood by its intended audience (Steely Library NKU, 2018).

References:

Porush, D. (1995). A Short Guide to Writing About Science. (pp. 92-93). New York: Harper Collins.

Steely Library NKU. (2018). Developing a Research Question. [Video] Australia: Academic Skills, University of Melbourne.