Toward Humanizing Research in the Context of a Dehumanizing Policy: Culture Circle-Informed Focus Groups

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 10:50 am
  In Roundtable Session: Elevating Critical Methodologies in Educational Research, Theory, and Praxis (Table 7)

Abstract

This paper is a methodological piece for researchers who seek to conduct research in more humanizing ways. In it, I share aspects of humanizing research that I incorporated into my research on high-stakes teacher evaluations. In particular, I explore the implementation of focus groups in which I drew upon the praxis of culture circles. Through vignettes from and teachers’ reflections on these focus groups, as well as my own reflections, I attempt to respond to Paris and Winn’s call to “provide a roadmap to foreground the worth of such processes of humanization for inquiry and society” (2014, p. xiv). I offer suggestions for enacting this methodology with teachers amidst neoliberalism and evidence of what this methodology can afford teachers.

Author

• Amy R. Guenther, Saginaw Valley State University