Author of Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999) Linda T Smith states that ‘methods are not neutral’ (2021). Thus, the research method I chose had to be in spirit of the ‘social / climate / racial justice‘ (ARP Unit Brief) aim of the intervention. I knew I was on the right track with focus groups as my main primary research method once I read ‘Do Focus Groups Facilitate Meaningful Participation in Social Research?’ (2011) by Barbour and Kitzinger. They discuss the concept of ‘participation’ in focus groups and how power dynamics work between the researcher and the participants who often become the ‘researched’. I wanted to steer clear of this tendency and engage my students as active participants not only through the self-assessment programme, ie, the intervention, but also in discussing its efficacy in the focus group. This is in line with the theory underpinning my intervention, i.e., constructivism (Allen 2022; Buffkin & Bryde 1996; Carlson and Blanchard 2024; University of Buffalo nd).
I didn’t use focus groups just as a shortcut to conduct interviews with multiple people. Liamputtong in Focus Group Methodology: Principle and Practice (2011) emphasises that the most significant aspect about focus groups is the group dynamics/interactions (p 50). The 3 participants I had in my group had been classmates for over a year and seemed to gel well together in class. I aimed to create an atmosphere where not only did they all have a chance to respond to my questions/prompts but they could also play off each other’s responses. This latter bit in fact generated the most interesting data, which I delve into in the blog post about findings. I also followed Liamputtong’s advice regarding asking ‘effective questions’ (pp 68-69) – I asked open-ended, neutral/non-leading questions to provide my students space to share their opinions. This was key not only for good, ethical practice in research but also because an aim of my self-assessment programme has been to empower students in their learning journeys and I wanted them to feel empowered to frankly share their experiences here too.
Still, ethical research was a paramount concern for me throughout the process. I ensured to share the participation information sheet well in advance of the focus group. I chatted to them about the project, explained the context, and gave them the chance to ask me any questions they had. They all signed the consent sheet. I emphasised that their responses would remain anonymous and asked them to respect each other’s anonymity too by not sharing the discussions outside of the group. As per BERA’s (2024) advice, I have also been reflexive in my process and considered my students’ and my well-being in the research process and in creating the slides and blog posts for the assessment:
‘This means that ethical decision-making becomes an actively deliberative, ongoing and iterative process of assessing and reassessing the situation and issues as they arise. Good researchers are reflexive and consider both general issues and the specifics of each research situation.’ (BERA 2o24)
A resource I found especially useful is The Handbook of Focus Group Research (2011) by Greenbaum. He succinctly provides the common mistakes made with focus groups. Though a lot of it is addressed to corporations conducting market research, I could adapt the advice for my scholarly research. For instance, I was sure I needed qualitative data for my research and thus focus groups would be useful – as Greenbaum warns that focus groups are not an apt method when huge amounts of quantitative data is needed. The ‘Procedural Mistakes’ that Greenbaum warns against helped me with my research process. I ensured that:
- my research objectives were clearly defined – I was assessing the efficacy of my self-assessment programme
- the participants were suitable – the students had all participated in all the stages of the self-assessment programme and read the reports I had generated
- the moderator was adequate – as the creator of this research, I was in the best position to be the moderator
As a fan of quantitative data analysis, I kept Greenbaum’s advice to not quantify the focus group results in mind in this process. This was all the more significant because I only had 3 participants in the focus group, so each person carried 33.3% weightage in their response. Any deviation from each other would imply a huge shift in numbers, thus a more qualitative representation of their responses would be more suitable. I discuss this further in the blog post about my findings.
References
Allen, A (2022) ‘An Introduction to Constructivism: Its Theoretical Roots and Impact on Contemporary Education’, Journal of Learning Design and Leadership, 1(1). Available at: https://ldljournal.web.illinois.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Andrew-Allen-Constructivism_JLDL_Vol1Issue1September2022.pdf (Accessed 2 January 2026).
Barbour, R and Kitzinger, R (2011) ‘Do Focus Groups Facilitate Meaningful Participation in Social Research?’, Developing Focus Group Research. London: SAGE Publications. Available at: https://methods-sagepub-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/book/edvol/developing-focus-group-research/chpt/do-focus-groups-facilitate-meaningful-participation (Accessed 7 January 2026).
BERA (2024) ‘Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, fifth edition’. Available at: https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-fifth-edition-2024-online (Accessed 7 January 2026).
Bufkin, L J and Bryde, S (1996) ‘Implementing a constructivist approach in higher education with early childhood educators’, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 17(2), pp 58–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1090102960170207 (Accessed 12 January 2026).
Carlson, K and Blanchard, D (2024) ‘Restructuring Power Dynamics within a Classroom: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study’, The Interactive Journal of Global Leadership and Learning, 3(2). Available at: https://red.mnstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=ijgll (Accessed 21 January 2026).
Greenbaum, T L (2011) The Handbook of Focus Group Research. SAGE Publications. Available at: https://methods-sagepub-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/book/mono/the-handbook-for-focus-group-research/toc (Accessed 7 January 2026).
Liamputtong, P (2011) Focus Group Methodology: Principle and Practice. SAGE Publications, ProQuest Ebook Central. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=689539 (Accessed 7 January 2026).
Smith, L T (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.
— (2021) ‘Decolonial Research Methods: Resisting Coloniality in Academic Knowledge Production: Webinar 2’, National Centre for Research Methods. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFQ09rPQFyA (Accessed 7 January 2026).
University of Buffalo (nd) ‘Constructivism: Creating experiences that facilitate the construction of knowledge’. Available at: https://www.buffalo.edu/catt/teach/develop/theory/constructivism.html#:~:text=Constructivist%20Classroom%20Activities-,What%20is%20constructivism%3F,%2Dexisting%20knowledge%20(schemas) (Accessed 2 January 2026).