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| Students Speak Toolkit > I. Getting Ready > B. Introduction to Focus Groups |
"When I die, I want to come back with real power. I want to come back as a member of a focus group."
– Media guru Roger Ailes
Imagine someone offered your school community a new tool that would allow you see how students experience school. Almost as if you could x-ray their thoughts, you would be able to see how students feel and think about every aspect of their lives at school. This powerful tool would tell you how to make changes in your school climate and curriculum to improve student success and empower learners.
Would you want such a fantastic tool? Most of us would. Even though the tool we offer in this Toolkit – focus group research – does not make all the needed strategic changes for us, it provides invaluable information and makes decision making easier and more reliable.
Focus groups are a form of inquiry or research. They produce information that school boards, administrators, educators, parents, students, and businesspeople can use to improve student achievement. Although not a mechanical or physical tool, focus groups, when carefully planned and carried out, offer a powerful means of finding out how all types of stakeholders think and feel about questions that may now seem unanswerable. Even better, every school community in Kentucky and in the United States has the natural talent, skill, and equipment necessary to carry out successful, reliable focus group research.
You can gain a wealth of information using natural curiosity, a willingness to listen, and basic organizing skills. The trick is to understand what focus groups can do and then carry out each step in the process with care. Strong and steady support from your district's leaders, plenty of time, good timing, and ample resources will also help lead you on the path to success.
"I can see us using focus groups to learn more from students about how to improve our curriculum and how to improve CATS (Commonwealth Accountability Testing System) performance."
– Tom Welch, Principal
East Jessamine High School
The learning opportunities for understanding students' experiences are significant:
Discover why new curriculum approaches included in your Consolidated Plan are working or failing to work with particular groups of students.
Learn what holds students back from full commitment to academic excellence in a particular school, and what changes would make a difference.
Listen to students as they discuss the reasons behind lagging school spirit and offer ways to remedy the problem.
Hear what students consider good teaching and bad teaching, and how both types of teaching affect their performance in school.
Learn about students' responses to certain changes in school rules or disciplinary procedures and the impact these changes have on school climate.
Discover how students feel about school safety and what measures would make them feel safer.
Explore options for students to become more involved in school activities or functions.
Learn how to improve relationships between teachers and students or administrators and students.
Focus groups originated among people who viewed gathering authentic information as a means of learning how to help a political candidate or a commercial product thrive. Most political campaigns and many manufacturers and service companies today depend on the practical, accurate insights of focus groups for survival. From these businesslike beginnings, focus group use has spread throughout the world of human services and education.
"We need to understand the connection between school climate and school safety. We KNOW there is a connection, but we need to hear students talk about it. We need evidence, and we need ideas.
– Superintendent Linda France
Jessamine County Schools
During a focus group scientifically selected participants discuss carefully crafted questions about topics that matter to them. Researchers ask the same set of questions to several different small groups and make tape recordings of the conversations. Researchers then analyze each group's answers to each question, looking for similarities, differences, and themes in the responses. Often the research team produces written transcripts of each focus group session to make the analysis easier. After researchers have developed an understanding of the patterns and themes related to each question and to the overall topic of the research, they produce a concise written report. Typically that report will include anonymous quotes from participants that help make the main points in the research clearer and more meaningful.
Focus groups provide you with information you can't get in any other way. As stated earlier, the focus group process is not mysterious and requires no specialized expertise. Successfully conducting focus groups and getting the most from your participants does require considerable time and effort, however. It also requires faithfully carrying out a somewhat lengthy set of steps.
The remainder of this Toolkit will make it possible for you to understand and carry out these steps. The more you do focus groups, the better you will become at managing the "design/act/analyze and report" sequence of activities we present. In addition, the more you use focus groups, the more you will become convinced of the power this inquiry tool wields. We hope you find this first section of the Toolkit insightful – as well as exciting – as you begin your learning.
Next: Background: Behind the Toolkit
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