Lisa M. Dorner, Ph.D.

teacher, researcher, life-long learner

Copyright © 2020
Lisa M. Dorner, PhD
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Doing Service-Research Projects in STL

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Many St. Louis area residents may not think of their city as multilingual, but it is. We could consider just one group that has changed the face of our metropolitan area over the past 30 years: Bosnians. In 2012 (and probably still today), they were the most populous foreign-born group here, estimated at over 70,000. The majority of Bosnians came to St. Louis as refugees in the 1990s, but secondary migration from Europe and from around the US continued throughout the early 2000s.

As an educator of students studying to become teachers, I always look for ways to help others understand the communities that they serve (or will serve). Toward this end, partnering with local educational organizations, students in one of my teacher-education classes studied qualitative research methods and conducted what we called service-research projects. Similar to but somewhat distinct from service-learning or community-based research (Boyer, 1999, see Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professorate), service-research projects combine these kinds of efforts: they are learning experiences that simultaneously teach research skills and academic content, while students serve an organization and learn about its particular community. In one particular semester, students’ projects explored the linguistic, racial, religious, and migrant experiences of youth in the St. Louis area, including those from Bosnian Muslim families.

In a recent publication in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (2017, click here!), my co-authors and I discussed the results of this work. As defined in our abstract, we argue: Skills developed through qualitative research and community partnerships can be essential for developing education students’ cultural competency and understandings about diverse student populations. This paper provides a snapshot of our work by defining service-research and showcasing one student research team that worked with a local immigrant organization and developed three case studies of young women from Bosnian Muslim families. Through an analysis and discussion of service-research and the students’ results, we argue for the integration of qualitative research skills, service projects, and community partnerships into educator preparation programs.

Please join me in learning more about how working and studying with community members helps us understand and work with our communities better!

How can we get out of our bubbles?

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This morning, I was listening to NPR, and I heard a story about how one young man decided to get out of his same old bubble. He built an app that used publicly-listed Facebook events to randomly choose new places for him to go — to get him out of that bubble. Attending random events, he made new friends and had various opportunities to view the world from new perspectives.

So how might we help develop similar bubble-popping experiences for young people? I believe that schools like the St. Louis Language Immersion School (SLLIS) can and do help children view the world in new ways. SLLIS has integration as one of its core values: integration across race, income level, language background, immigrant status, and more. The school immerses children in new perspectives, quite literally, by teaching students all of the typical subject areas using a language other than English. For most students at the school, English is their first and only language, but the school also attracts many children from multilingual households.

How else might schools pop bubbles? We cannot just put people together in the same room to explore new perspectives; we have to talk, think, and write about such experiences. In the spring of 2017, the Quality Teachers for English Learners project led by Dr. Kim Song supported a series of family literacy events at SLLIS. I participated in these events as both a leader and a participant with my daughter. Our goal was to work with families to support them sharing their stories, as one more way to “pop some bubbles” and learn from others. I’m thrilled to share the pre-press version of my daughter’s book, in which she documents how her school has opened her eyes to an Outside World.

Research Team Studies Policymaking Across Missouri

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Hello from my friends and research team! From 2015-2016, this dedicated group of scholars at the University of Missouri, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis, has worked on a project called: “School Board Members and Policymaking in Changing Communities.” Despite all the talk about federal education programs and state-mandated tests in the news, education in the U.S. is still largely locally determined, with school boards serving as the principal policymaking bodies (Hess, 2002). While recent research suggests that school boards may help to establish policies that attend to diverse communities, we know little about how board members come to understand demographic change and make policies that respond to it (Turner, 2015). What ideas, conversations, and processes lead up to their decision-making? As the U.S. experiences its greatest immigration since the turn of the 20th century (Massey, 2008), we asked: (1) What do board members in rural, suburban, and urban Missouri know about immigration, English Learners (ELs), and EL program options? (2) What are their beliefs about immigrants, ELs, and language learning? (3) How do their contexts shape their knowledge, beliefs, and decision-making? These questions seem ever more important, as schools struggle to address concerns facing immigrant communities in our current, uncertain times. 

To date, we have developed a brief overview of findings that may be helpful for our local organizations that provide training to school boards (School Board Members and Policymaking). In addition, we are preparing multiple papers from this work and will present them at this year’s AERA conference in San Antonio — see you there! 

MODLAN Website is Live

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The Missouri Dual Language Network is proud to announce its new website: www.modlan.org! Check back often to find resources for (and about) the growing number of dual language, bilingual schools, training, and opportunities across our state. We are also proud to be partnering with the Cambio Center at the University of Missouri to write a series of “e-briefs” about dual language education. Here’s to supporting the development of a multilingual, integrated citizenry in 2016!

Research with Children

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“The more one is in a position to make decisions for children, to speak on their behalf, the more one is able to silence their voices.” (Lee, 2001, p. 10)

For 18 months in the early 2000s, I ‘hung out’ with elementary-aged children from six Mexican immigrant families; we did homework together, played with younger siblings, drew pictures, and created imaginary games. (In formal research terms, I designed an ethnography and used participant observation techniques informed by the social science of childhoods and scholars like Allison James, Alan Prout, and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana.) I wanted to explore how young kids understood a new language education program being developed and implemented in their school district. I believed that children served as cultural brokers for their families, possibly shaping how their parents understood and made choices about the new program.

As I published the results of the study, however, I found that I relied heavily upon my conversations with adults, field notes from adult-centric interactions and meetings, and interview transcripts. I generally neglected most of the data that I collected with youth, and thus, inadvertently silenced their voices. I reflect upon the entire process and re-analyze data from youth to explore questions of ethics in doing research with children and young people. The results of my reflections are in this newly published piece, “From Relating to (Re)Presenting: Challenges and Lessons Learned from an Ethnographic Study with Young Children,” qix.sagepub.com/content/21/4/354.abstract. I welcome your ideas and feedback on this!