Throughout our time together as a team, we have faced many challenges when trying to conduct and gather research from our partnering schools. These challenges ranged from large-scale community changes, such as the Chicago Teachers’ Strike and the COVID-19 pandemic, to smaller disruptions such as miscommunications, timing problems, or a lack of participants. Through all of this, I have learned that, especially when working in schools, researchers have to maintain an attitude of patience, flexibility, and understanding to work through these challenges. Being an outsider at these after school programs means that my work is not a priority for the schools we are in (as it should be). This often means then that I might have to wait longer to hear back from the staff we are working with or go to a school that ends up not having anyone available to be interviewed.
While the team was not able to collect as much data as we would have liked this past year, we have learned how better to communicate with our school partners and to approach some our data collections with an understanding that we may not be able to gather as much as we would have liked to. Research like this takes a great deal of time to be able to gain a full understanding of the after school programs and the people involved. When working with people in this sort of context researchers must approach it with an acceptance of at least some unpredictableness.
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Many of the challenges in my research data collection were factors that was beyond my control, including student attendance in after school programs and the suspension of the data collection process due to the teacher strikes and COVID-19 pandemic. Under these circumstances, I found that these inconveniences, while undesired, were very helpful in showing the potential conflicts that could arise through the research conducted within public schools. My initial expectations of the process of field research within schools would not have foreseen these untimely occurrences especially when some of the challenges we were faced with were unprecedented by the extent of its impact on the academic year. With the COVID-19 pandemic, sudden and unanticipated changes to our way of life immediately presented us with new challenges that have so far been disruptive to research data collection. While these events are rare and happen infrequently, I have actively witnessed the need to be prepared for the need to take detours in the research process while accepting that even a flawless research plan may inevitably succumb to the externalities of the real world. I cannot expect for there to be a paved road for me to travel on without there having to be some cracks and the occasional pothole that I have to slowly drive over. I must continue to deal with these challenges under the expectation that the process will need adjustments.
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AuthorSUCCEED team Archives
March 2020
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