Research

Summary:

Evaluation of philanthropic best practices and considerations to incorporate community-driven evaluative practices centered on equity.

 

Challenge:

In response to current social and cultural changes calling for more democratic and transparent practices across institutions and organizations, grantmakers seek community-driven approaches to their evaluative practices. In partnership with the client, I translated their multiple concerns, queries, and expectations into the following guiding research question: how can foundations support, elevate, and incorporate community engagement in assessing their goals, strategy, and impact? The project offers a compilation of concepts, principles, and considerations of the nuanced practice of community engagement, evaluation as an ongoing learning practice, and the discussion of Trust-based Philanthropy to cultivate mutual trust relationships and develop reciprocal, power-sharing evaluative practices. The overall recommendation of the project is to adopt a community-driven trust-based evaluative approach informed by literature on community engagement, Trust-based Philanthropy, and foundation-wide evaluation.

 

Process:

• Synthesized and analyzed 20+ articles, reports, and books on foundation evaluation, community-engaged methods, and similar relevant literature.

 

Outcomes:

• A report outlining my findings and recommendations for a philanthropic audience

• Practitioner’s brief summarizing main points and suggestions to carry out recommendations

• PowerPoint presentation on the main components of the project and recommendations to the client; increased knowledge about community engagement and equity-centered evaluative practices

Summary:

A 12-month ethnographic research project examining the entanglements between the promise of a good American life, the liberal mission of education, and benevolent forms of empire as experienced by unaccompanied migrant and refugee youth in a California public high school and its newcomer program.

 

Challenge:

I approached the project from the premise that America professes itself to be—domestically and abroad—a beacon of freedom and democracy where anyone can achieve the American dream. Furthermore, as a self-proclaimed benevolent nation, the United States has militarily intervened in other nations’ domestic affairs under the guise of imparting freedom and democracy, positioning itself as an empire of freedom (Espiritu, 2006; Nguyen, 2012). These interventions create a paradox of beneficence and defense that, for many, create the conditions of possibility for their migration (forced or volitional). Consequently, the promise of a good American life is delivered to the dislocated others as a benevolent gift of freedom. This gift promises a better life for war-saved refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, and all those who seek the U.S. as the land of refuge and opportunity. The gift of freedom for (im)migrant and refugee youth is the opportunity for a better life, and it begins with public education, which promises opportunities and possibilities.

 

The project investigates what ensues after bestowing this gift unto (im)migrant and refugee youth by examining how the institution of U.S. schooling—through its newcomer programs—becomes tethered to unrecognized assumptions, implications, and consequences of the empire of freedom. The project’s main concerns are the entanglements with benevolent imperialism perpetrated under the guise of benign educational practices of separation, care, and sanctuary. Thus, reckoning with the continuity of the U.S. empire and its enduring gift of freedom, I asked: what are the sources of sustenance within the specific high school and its newcomer program for the empire of freedom? And how do these sources influence the pedagogical actions of educators working with newcomer youth?

 

Process:

• Educational ethnography: extensive school-site fieldwork and participant observation in 3 focal newcomer classrooms. Wrote field notes and memos from field observations and interactions.

• Audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with teachers and staff (6 total)

• Thematic coding of transcripts, fieldnotes, and primary and secondary documents and triangulation of sources

 

Outcomes:

• Original book-length manuscript

• A peer-reviewed publication offering a more humanizing methodology for conducting research with migrant and refugee youth.

• (one in publication)

Summary:

Arts-based research (ABR) project to encourage students to imagine ways to productively work towards supporting and advancing the educational experiences of Latinx folk in and beyond schools.

 

Challenge:

Expose students to a different research paradigm that critiques empiricism while allowing them to put theory into action creatively. Part of embracing this new paradigm includes recognizing the arts as critical in achieving knowledge by honoring the embodied and powerful ways we connect with others via art (Leavy, 2015).

 

Process:

• Students clearly articulated their chosen theme/issue in their projects

• Projects made visible the links to relevant sources and other fields of study

• Social significance and goal/purpose of the project are clearly articulated

• Appropriate and well-executed art medium with a clear rationale for using such medium

• Clearly states the targeted audience and why this audience was chosen

 

Outcomes:

• Individual and small-group multimedia projects exhibited through an online portal

Summary:

A qualitative research project centered on students’ immigration experience informed the artists’ creation of a musical piece (oratorio) performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, London.

 

Challenge:

Attentive to the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants and, in particular undocumented students, the goal of the musical project was to address the tension between concepts such as the American Dream, DREAM Act, dreams, stories, journeys, borders, etc. To refrain from telling students’ stories for them, the focus became the students as narrators of their own stories.

 

Process:

• Led the recruitment and selection of 20 research participants for five focus groups and ten individual interviews regarding their immigration experience

• Designed, conducted, and coordinated focus groups and interviews and developed the project’s interim milestones to efficiently manage time, resources, and participants

 

Outcomes:

• Composer Jimmy López and playwright Nilo Cruz collaborated to create the oratorio inspired by the student participants’ stories. Grammy Award-winning soprano Ana Maria Martinez performed the solo part.

Summary:

A two-part international qualitative study designed to identify and examine a group of Mexican migrants’ perceptions of words associated with immigration discourse focusing on meaning-making practices between generations in one household.

 

Challenge:

Premising the role language plays in the production, maintenance, and change of social relations of power is inextricably intertwined with (im)migration. This study focuses on the power of language and specifically on how terminology influences migrants’ view of self. The focus words: illegal, undocumented, displaced, uprooted, belonging, immigrant, and migrant were selected due to their ubiquity in immigration discourse. The ideological struggle in language and over language is evidenced by who has the power to determine which word meanings are legitimate or appropriate and which discourses become dominant or official, as in the case of immigration.

 

Process:

• Used a phenomenology of language approach to analyze the role words associated with the discourse on immigration play in the meaning-making process of individuals touched by immigration

• Five parent-child duos audio-recorded semi-structured interviews in two phases (10 interviewees); the first was in the U.S., and the second was in Guadalajara, Mexico.

• Analysis of data guided by a Grounded Theory approach in which theory will be derived from and grounded in the data

 

Outcomes:

• The study makes empirical and theoretical space to explore the impact immigration discourse has on migrants’ meaning-making practices. In particular, how many taken-for-granted words undergird regulatory functions through the classifications and hierarchies of people they help define.