Thank you for your question. A couple of thoughts come to mind in terms of uniting a community that has been impacted by broader political environments.
- One approach is to hold a listening session to understand what these experiences entail and use these spaces as an opportunity to share issues across groups. You can reference our page on organizing listening sessions here: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/conduct-public-forums/main. It might be the case that books aren't addressing what the issue or concern is. From what you learn through the listening sessions, you can then begin to develop some strategies to help facilitate barriers or blocks that different individuals are experiencing.
- Another approach is to utilize behavior change strategies that focus on promoting motivation, beliefs, and capabilities to ultimately change behaviors and make communities more engaged with political engagement. Here, you might consider designing an initiative that embeds all core components of motivation, beliefs and capabilities. You can review what these involve here: behavior change wheel. The general idea is that the initiative you develop has some element that attempts to reinvigorate motivations to participate. The listening sessions might be a good opportunity to ask people what their dreams are, what success looks like, etc so that they can consider what motivates them. Beliefs are harder to shift, but for this you would try to capture what beliefs people have about parties involved and how it affects their well being. Perhaps, their beliefs only focus on the negative components and this may present an opportunity to offer positive alternatives or outcomes that expand on current beliefs. It might also be the case that people have limited knowledge on how political activities typically function. So, explore these concepts more deeply to understand the state of beliefs among the different groups of people. Capabilities relate to the environment that allows people to participate or utilize skills. Are there opportunities to build their capabilities by training or ensuring they have proper paperwork for engaging in political activities more meaningfully (or certifications), or even the resources to participate in such activities.
Overall, you will need to expand beyond the book club and consider partnering with other community agencies that are involved in this space to see if they would be interested in collaborating to promote capabilities and motivations among the group of folks you're engaging.
1- Student participant selection from ELL population.
2- Letters of Consent/Assent (Parent/Student Participant)
3- How to/which training/s to schedule participation in focus group and photovoice research/feedback for parents/student participants.
4- How to present data/photos of research.
5- Anything else that should be part of research, please.
4- Best equipment for photography? (cell phones, disposable cameras, other?)
Hello, thank you for your questions about using Photovoice research in the classroom.
Generally, be sure to review the Community Tool Box's section on Implementing Photovoice in Your Community for directions and rationale for using Photovoice. Specific answers and implementations will very, depending on your goals for the process. We do not have specific experience using Photovoice in the area of language learning, but it can definitely can be used to help students or teachers understand challenges with the approach.
In addition, you may be able to find online reports, articles, and websites devoted to implementing Photovoice in specific areas. See, for example, Ferdiansyah et. al's 2020 Photovoice in the English as an Additional Language (EAL) Writing Classroom: No Need to Rush to Love Writing Because Love Will Grow with Time
The CTB section on Photovoice has more details on recruiting participants, but I'd encourage you to start by considering the story that you want to document and tell. For example, who do you want represented? You could include all learners in terms, or just a representative sample of those that are the most challenged. Photovoice is not overly prescriptive on participants, and your recruitment and selection will depend on the goal of the project.
If the participants have access to cell phones, they are the easiest and most convenient solution. Smartphone cameras have excellent quality and make it easy to process and share results. Disposable cameras can be another option. In any case, high-end equipment is not necessary.
You may find some examples of sharing photovoice findings and exhibiting your results in the CTB's Photovoice section. You can also create written documents, hold media events, make public presentations, and/or offer a photovoice exhibit. If you are planning to exhibit results, you may want access to a projector, but posters and other methods work well.
You may find other examples and discussion around how to write letters of consent and informational statements on the internet, but a good starting point is the Joint Commission's 2022 primer on Informed Consent (pdf)