Steering the Ship

Researchers often use focus groups to collect data for qualitative research, but focus groups can also be used by organizational leaders to articulate participants’ values or principles - principles that can be used to guide organizational change. This paper examines one staff’s mobilization of a focus group to collect data for a research study they were conducting together to articulate programmatic principles. The collaborative nature of the group-work engaged and guided the participants in the generation of principles that were then used to guide program-wide development. Furthermore, the collaborative nature of the group encouraged engagement in the research from a partial participant and generated data that was used for triangulation in the grounded theory research be- ing conducted. The principles indeed guided the educators in their research and in changing their school and impacted both their self and collective efficacy.