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Data Focus: Students as Researchers in School Improvement
The Race, Ethnicity, Class and Opportunity Gap Project
Michelle Fine has said that youth-involved research "challenges the traditional assumptions about who the experts are, who gets to frame the questions and generate the interpretations." A recent project on the "opportunity gap" in K–12 education reveals exactly what these trained experts can do.
When we do participatory research, it's often directed towards policy-makers (or in the case of students, administrators) for whom surveys carry a cachet of scientific capital that qualitative data does not.1
Participatory Student Action Research
Over 18 months, more than 100 students from very diverse backgrounds participated in a series of research camps in which they were immersed in methods training, interview protocols, focus groups, survey design, and participant observation. Over half of the students received course credit from a local college for taking part in the program.
The student perspective influenced the research in many notable ways.
Language Matters
After conducting preliminary research and discussing issues surrounding the achievement gaps in American education, the student-researchers insisted that the project be renamed as a study of the "Opportunity Gap." The students felt that this more clearly reflected their own experiences.
Other successful projects involving students have identified the importance of language in many respects. For example, the student participants should be referred to by their adult counterparts and fellow student-researchers as "researchers" or "colleagues."
Research Design
The students felt very strongly that the survey should not appear to be a test. The student-researchers included photographs, cartoons, and open-ended questions, such as "What is the most powerful thing a teacher has ever said to you?"
Critical Thinking
In addition to the qualitative and quantitative methods courses, students also engaged in educational theories, critical race theory, and American history.
More Than Surveying Peers
Surveying and interviewing their peers is a valuable tool with many advantages. Great care should be taken to ensure that all students have access; the Opportunity Gap project, for instance, made its surveys available in English, French-Creole, Spanish, Braille, and on audiotape.
Through interviewing and observing student-members of Chicago's Local School Council system, Mariame Kaba concludes not only that these young people have a "right" to participate in district decision making that affect their learning, but also that they are "uniquely qualified" to do so. The Chicago students define equality on the Council as a feeling that they are being listened to.
Kaba's conclusion is that while students "felt" valued and equal, as decision-makers they clearly existed in a subordinate role. That the "scope of their influence" centered on "student needs" reinforces the notion that to achieve student engagement and empowerment, student research must include much more than surveying and interviewing their peers.
The Opportunity Gap project recognized the importance of students learning from and interacting with other students of the same age, from very different backgrounds. Students who attended urban schools visited their research partners' schools in affluent, suburban areas and vice versa. Processes were designed for the student-researchers to reflect on these experiences.
The scope of the project also extended far beyond student-to-student interactions. The researchers, for example, interviewed a dozen elders involved in civil rights and the Brown v. Board case.
> Tip #10: Promote public visibility.
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FOOTNOTES
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1 Michele Fine, interviewed by Barbara Cervone, President,
What Kids Can Do
Full interview PDF [7 pp., 131 KB]
"Betrayal: Accountability from the Bottom" by Michelle Fine, Janice Bloom, and Lori Chajet, Voices in Urban Education 1, Spring 2003.
Article online
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