Poetry Inside Out: An Ethnographic Context for Collaborative Research and Practice

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-6 - Multiliteracies in Action: An Intergenerational Inquiry Into Literacies and Multilingualism Through a Poetry Translation Program

Abstract

In this paper, two university-based researchers and two teacher researchers will present not only the ethnographic context for various PIO-focused research and practice, but also the epistemological and methodological principles that are shared across different sites (e.g., mixed-grade high school ESL classroom, senior English language arts classroom, and an afterschool program for seventh and eighth graders, facilitated by college undergraduates). In all sites, differently-positioned practitioners (college undergraduates, high school students, high school teachers, and university-based researchers) collaborate in enacting PIO and documenting its impact on the development of multiliteracies.

In terms of methodological principles, the research collective shares a commitment to documenting language-in-context. Hence, all members combine ethnographic and discourse analytic approaches. We engage in participant observation as teachers, students, and researchers. We also audio tape extensively during each PIO session (with multiple digital audio recorders placed around the classroom or setting of the afterschool program) and occasionally video tape sessions, focusing on whole group discussion as the poem page is introduced; pair and small group interaction while the poem is translated; and again on guided whole group discussion as translations are read publicly and discussed. All members of the research collective keep field notes or teaching journals, and we collect all PIO-related student work so as to support our analyses of audio- or video-taped discourse data. We meet weekly in a variety of configurations (youth-research group, undergraduate group, teacher-research group) – with several members participating in more than one. All research group meetings are audio-recorded and transcribed by the university-based researchers.

Based on discourse data from research group meetings, this proposed paper highlights the possibilities of collaborative engagement – collaborative engagement between teacher researchers and their students; between teacher researchers and university-based researchers; between university-based researchers and college undergraduates; and between university-based researchers and high-school aged, youth researchers – in the service of democratized knowledge generation. The paper will also highlight, from the perspectives of classroom teachers whose youth are conducting research in the classroom, and university-based researchers who are supporting young people in their research, the complexities associated with collaborative inquiry. The paper will include several telling cases when adults found themselves in contact zones with youth (Pratt, 1991). We present an analysis of how our discourses came in contact, and sometimes conflicted with the youth’s discourses and worldviews. Our analysis also focuses on how teacher-researchers and university-based researchers navigated the contact zones, and what can be learned from the productive tensions about doing research with youth.

Authors

• Jie Park, Clark University

• Sarah Michaels, Clark University

• Lori Simpson, Claremont Academy

• Jesse Bicknell, Claremont Academy