‘I’m being heard right now’: amplifying individual voice through scaffolded focus groups

ABSTRACT

Qualitative researchers often turn to focus groups as an efficient and effective way to gather data in a collective context. A common critique is that they play into power dynamics present at the site, privileging dominant, high status, and more vocal participants. Traditional focus group structures also rely on participants to trust the interviewer, without building rapport or clarity about the research process itself. We describe an approach to focus groups that aims to circumvent traditional power dynamics while offering insight and transparency into the research process. Our Scaffolded Focus Group approach has three stages: individual surveys, small group discussions, and a large group discussion. It gives participants time to understand the research process while also building trust between the interviewer and participants, giving students voice, and providing participants greater transparency in the research process. In this way, participants become co-creators in the research endeavor.

KEYWORDS:

• Focus groups
• research design
• student voice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stacey A. Rutledge

Stacey A. Rutledge is an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department at Florida State University. Her research focuses broadly on understanding how the work of educators and students is nested within institutional and policy environments. She also studies how different approaches to school reform shape school practices and student outcomes. She is currently serving as a Project Investigator for the National Center for Scaling Up Effective High Schools, a center that has as its purpose identifying the programs, policies and practices that make some urban high schools particularly effective and working with these districts to scale these practices. She has been an author and editor on numerous publications, most recently Steps to Schoolwide Success: Systemic Practices for Connecting Social-Emotional and Academic Learning published by Harvard Education Press.

Elizabeth Gilliam

Elizabeth Gilliam is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department at Florida State University. Her research focuses on examining the experiences of Black students in elementary and secondary education settings through Critical Race Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis. She also investigates the impacts of popular culture on the learning environment, policy decisions, and on student engagement. She has published several works exploring policy decisions that impact Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Black women in higher education, and social emotional learning practices in high schools.

Brittany Closson-Pitts

Brittany Closson-Pitts is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department at Florida State University. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender and sexuality across local and international contexts, specially focusing on the school-based experiences of queer women/students. Brittany is currently working as a research assistant with the National Center for Scaling Up Effective High Schools. She has co-authored several publications related to this project and has also collaborated on a number of works exploring the representation of Muslim womanhood in media