Creating and Considering: Exploring Youth Coresearchers’ Development of Culturally Relevant Qualitative Research Questions

• In Event: Continuing the Conversation: Enacting Participatory and Social Justice-Oriented Methodologies in Working With Youth and Teachers

Abstract

Objectives/Theoretical Framework
This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research study that engages social participatory youth co-researcher methodologies (Marciano & Watson, 2011; Watson, 2012) to examine how and why 10 Black and Latina/o youth who experience limited access to information about preparing for and applying to college seek out from and/or share such information with their peers. This study reconsiders culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994) as an analytic tool for exploring youth’s culturally relevant peer interactions (Knight & Marciano, 2013; Marciano, 2011), college-going processes (Tierney & Colyar, 2005), and new media literacy practices (Ito et al., 2008).
Modes of inquiry/Data Sources
This study’s overarching research question was: How and why are Black and/or Latina/o youth attending an under-resourced urban public high school interacting with their peers as they prepare for, apply to, and/or enroll in college? Participants included three “focal participants” and seven “peer participants.” Focal participants were selected using personal contacts and a community nomination process (Ladson-Billings, 1994). Peer participants were chosen through a snowball sampling technique (Bogden & Biklen, 2007) in which focal participants recommended two or three of their peers to participate in the study. Data included: 13 open-ended, in-depth, semi-structured, one-on-one interviews; audio recordings of seven youth co-researcher interviews of peer participants; two focus group interviews; and three youth co-researcher written reflections.
Preliminary Findings
Youth co-researchers forefronted their experiences as high school students and college applicants as they posed and grappled with culturally relevant interview questions they developed during the study. For example, Ashley stated: “I would ask them even though their friends give them advice, how do they know it’s the right advice to accept?” When asked by the researcher how she would respond to her own question, Ashley replied,
Which one will lead, will like brighten your future? That’s how I usually differ the advice from my friends. Like which one will help pave the way to college and pave the way to my career and which one will only hold me back and slow down the process?
Ashley’s consideration of when and why she might follow a particular friend’s advice highlights her decision to perform academically in high school and attend college as reason for following (or not) the advice of her friends. Further, in answering the question she posed, Ashley demonstrates a cultural competence (Ladson-Billings, 2002) that draws attention to an issue important to youth considering advice offered up by friends, and one previously not considered by the researcher.
Significance
In the example highlighted above, implications emerge for curriculum and teaching, such as possibilities for incorporating social participatory youth co-researcher methodologies within official school curricular practices as a way of further developing youth’s literacy skills while developing insight into issues that influence youth’s enactment (or not) of college-going processes, particularly those not actively being taken up in educational research.

Author

• Joanne E. Marciano, Teachers College, Columbia University