new FOCUS

Now that the action plans are crafted, I can begin revising them and my dissertation focus to make changes that reflect an objective research positionality. 

When viewing my first draft of my dissertation, I found many deficit-based phrases. This shows, my biases as a middle school teacher followed me into my work as an intervention designer for my college learners. 

I consider myself an indigenous-insider (Banks, 2015; Srivastava, 2006) in the field of focus, yet, there are times when I may be perceived by individuals within the community as an outsider, depending on the location of service delivery and cultural background (Banks, 2015; Bray et al., 2014) of the participants. This is something I never considered before but I was already planning on using qualitative strategies such as focus-group transcript coding and ongoing member-checking (Cho & Trent, 2006; Creswell & Miller, 2000). Now, my goal is to learn how to incorporate the voice of the participants in planning (Creswell & Miller, 2000) for what we provide them. 

This can be through pre-session surveys to obtain quantitative data that drives qualitative methods. These constructivist paradigm-inspired mixed-methods would also enhance the validity and reliability of the study (Fairbrother, 2014; Golafshani, 2003). 

It will be important for me to monitior any assumptions or biased perspectives I may carry as an insider. As a service provider as well as researcher, I will avoid being prescriptive (Bray et al., 2014) after data collection and during analysis (Srivastava, 2006).