Qualitative data collection methods for transformative social research

Qualitative data collection methods for transformative social research

Marjorie Elaine

(UCLA School of Education & Information Studies)

 In this talk I will offer a grand tour of two decades of research on language brokering that I have conducted in the United States. I will focus on methods I used to document how children manage the myriad forms that brokering takes and to elicit youth and families’ perspectives on the practice. Data were gathered through participant observation (documented in field notes), the recording of language brokering events, interviews and focus groups, re-enactments of language brokering situations, and the gathering of artifacts, journals, and images. I will describe the multiple lines of analyses that emerged from this work, using a variety of analytical approaches, and illustrate how we are currently working with this “treasure trove” of data to generate curricular materials for schools.

Bio
Marjorie Elaine (previously known as Marjorie Faulstich Orellana) is Professor of Urban Schooling, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of International Migration, and Co-Director of Faculty for the Teacher Education Program at UCLA.
Her research centers on the experiences of immigrant youth in urban schools and communities, including as language and cultural brokers for their families. She is the author of Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth and Cultures (Rutgers University Press, 2009), Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces: Language, Learning and Love (Routledge, 2016), a 2019 co-edited volume (with Inmaculada
García-Sánchez): Language and Cultural Processes in Communities and Schools: Bridging Learning for Students from Non-Dominant Groups (Routledge, 2019), Mindful Ethnography: Mind, Heart, and Activity for Transformative Social Research (Routledge, 2019), and several chapters and articles, a selection of which can be found at https://seis.ucla.edu/faculty/marjorie-elaine-faulstich-orellana/.
She is a past president of the Council of Anthropology and Education and was a
bilingual classroom teacher in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1993. Her personal website is
https://marjoriefaulstichorellana.com/