Stacia M. Stribling

Participant selection as a conscious research method: thinking forward and the deliberation of ‘Emergent’ findings

Participant selection is one of the most invisible and least critiqued methods in qualitative circles. Researchers do not just collect and analyze neutral data; they decide who matters as data. Each choice repositions inquiry, closing down some opportunities while creating others. After reviewing the selection literature, we present critical vignettes of our selection choices in three separate studies, examining how those choices directed meaning making within and beyond the studies. Our analysis across these vignettes uncovered a constant interface—and often a struggle—between our personal situations and social agendas as qualitative researchers. Four aspects of this Reporting In/Reporting Out tension are discussed: trusting qualitative research, building the story, dealing with powerful others, and accepting unintended consequences. We encourage qualitative researchers to critically think forward their selection choices before and during the research process, to be mindful that selection is a constitutive method of the data collection and analysis process.

Examining the Immigrant Experience: Helping Teachers Develop as Critical Educators.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine ways that a multicultural perspective using critical literacy practices engaged practicing teachers to rethink and re-vision oppressive hegemonic structures and attitudes regarding immigrant students and their families and helped them to develop as critical educators. In the context of a professional development master’s program, 57 teachers experienced a curriculum strand focused on immigration issues and provided extensive feedback responding to the curriculum. The data were analyzed to assess in what ways using current and controversial issues helped teachers to develop their capacities to understand and critique the world in more complex ways and what impact these experiences had on their teaching practice. Evidence suggests that the majority of teachers were receptive to the curriculum although some teachers exhibited resistance. Resistance appeared to be minimized and teachers’ development supported using curricular experiences that “put a face to the issue,” that put learners “in others’ shoes,” that engaged teachers’ emotions, and that made clear how policies, practices, and attitudes directly and indirectly impact the lives of children and their families.

Reading the World: Supporting Teachers' Professional Development Using Community- Based Critical Literacy Practices

This paper shares the findings from a study that assessed the impact of a graduate level curriculum that engaged fifty-seven k-12 teachers in community-based critical literacy practices. The findings from the participants‘ written critical reflections following two community exploration activities showed that they gained enhanced awareness of social inequalities. In addition, some of the participants made connections between the observed community disparities and their civic responsibilities to work towards social justice. A high school teacher reflects: ―This year, our [community] walk

Experiencing the “Growing Edge” Transformative Teacher Education to Foster Social Justice Perspectives

This article explores how teachers’ perceptions of social justice issues are developed through experiential learning opportunities and maps their transformations in thinking onto the three levels of responsibility identified by Berger’s “growing edge.” The study looked at where teachers were on the growing edge and examples of how they navigated that edge. The findings showed teachers’ navigation as a cyclical process where they would return to the process of discovering and recognizing the edge once they felt they had build a firm ground and were on solid footing at their new edge.

Equity Audit: A Teacher Leadership Tool for Nurturing Teacher Research

Abstract This is a three-part essay featuring six teacher educators and one classroom teacher researcher. Part one describes faculty efforts to build curriculum for teacher research, scaffold the research process, and analyze outcomes. Part two shares one teacher researchers experience using an equity audit tool in several contexts: her teaching practice, in collegial decision making, and as a guide for her teacher research projects. In part three, the authors reflect on the value of the equity audit.

The Transformative Power of Action Research

I am a farmer. Growing up as a suburbanite just a short train ride from New York City, I never had any real aspirations to be a farmer; however, I now find myself planting peach trees, rattling off over 30 varieties of apples, and living my days glued to the weather channel. It is often the unexpected and unconventional paths we take that prove to be the most exciting and that lead to the most learning.