This document summarizes the findings of focus groups conducted with graduate students from various countries about their experiences with academic research. The focus groups explored the research strategies students use, particularly when working in a second or third language. Key findings included students initially floundering in their research but then focusing their topics, mastering important authors and texts in their fields, finding ways to make their own marks with new perspectives, and navigating the differences between research expectations in their home countries and at their U.S. universities. Presenters planned future workshops and tutorials to help support the needs of international and heritage language students in their research.
Graduate students tell all: Notes from their experiences with research
1. Graduate students tell all:
notes from their experiences with research
Betsaida M. Reyes, Alison Hicks,
& Bronwen K. Maxson
LXII SALALM Annual
Conference
Ann Arbor, MI
Panel 1, May 22, 2017
3. What does the Literature Say?
• US welcomed nearly 100,000 Spanish speaking students from Latin
America and Spain (IIE, 2015)
• Most information literacy studies to date have tended to focus on
measuring student proficiency against a series of standard
competencies rather than on recognizing and exploring the
knowledge that multilingual learners bring with them (Hicks & Lloyd,
2016)
• Information literacy is a situated practice that emerges
from and is shaped by the activities of a specific group
of people (Talja & Lloyd, 2010, p. xii)
• Students [are] experts about their own experiences
(Saleebey, 2009)
4. Research Questions
What innovative
strategies do
students use to
make sense of
academic research,
particularly when
working in a second
or third language?
What tactics do
these students
employ to deal with
questions of
cultural and
linguistic
disjuncture?
What
understandings
about information
literacy do
international
students bring to
their studies in the
U.S.?
5. Research Methods – Focus Groups
Three (3) one-hour
long meetings
Demographic
questionnaire
Audio recorded
Consent form
8. Focus Group Questions
1. Tell me about your experiences of research
2. What have been the most successful
research strategies for you to date?
3. What does a good researcher look like in
your opinion and in your country? What
advice would you give to anyone who
was studying abroad and had to do research in your country?
4. How do you feel at the prospect of doing research in graduate school?
What are you most/least looking forward to about researching?
10. Floundering / Focusing
“Cuando busco en Google Scholar no sé por dónde empezar.
No sé si me fio de los autores.”
“When I search Google Scholar, I do not know where to
begin. I do not know if I trust the authors.”
11. Floundering / Focusing
“Depende si conozco el tema o no lo conozco. A veces si
no conozco nada yo empiezo por una búsqueda general.
Con enciclopedias…Luego…si es un periodo histórico que
no conozco…ya que lo histórico influye mucho en la
producción literaria de un periodo histórico pues ir a lo
histórico y darse una empapada general de que sucede
ahí.”
“It depends if I know the topic or not. Sometimes if I do
not know anything, I start with a general search. With
encyclopedias…then…if it is an historical period I’m not
familiar with…given how much history influences the
literary production of a particular historical period, you
have to go to the history and get a general idea of what
is going on there.”
12. Mastering the Canon
“Si ves el nombre muchas veces, si ves Mignolo,
Mignolo, Mignolo, más o menos confías que
Mignolo tiene que ser uno de los principales, hay
que leer y ver qué nombres aparecen bastante.”
“If you see a name multiple times, if you see
Mignolo, Mignolo, Mignolo, you more or less trust
that Mignolo has to be one of the major [scholars],
you have to read and see which names appear quite
frequently.”
13. Mastering the Canon
“Las bibliografías anotadas me han servido... me
ayudan a no quedarme navegando en un mar de
fuentes sino en concreto, que voy a utilizar, porque
lo voy a utilizar.”
”Annotated bibliographies have helped me… they
help me to avoid navigating in a sea of sources and
concretely, what am I going to use, why I am going to
use it.”
14. Making their Mark
“Para mi, algo que me… ayuda mucho a simplificar el tema
es también ver qué se ha publicado sobre ese autor
relacionado con un tema que me interesa desarrollar,
entonces, si hay mucho ya escrito sobre ese tema busco otra
cosa,y si no, busco otro enfoque teórico…”
“For me, what helps me a lot to simplify the topic is also to
look for what has been published about this author related
to the topic that I am interested in developing, and then if a
lot has been written about this topic, I look for something
else, if not, I look for a different theoretical focus…”
15. Making their Mark
“Yo creo que a veces también la idea surge en el proceso
mismo de la investigación. …y de pronto en un contraste [de]
las fuentes se da uno cuenta que tiene todavía un ángulo de
ataque y eso surge eso en el proceso…, o sea uno se da cuenta
de que los otros autores han dejado un hueco para uno decir
algo que puede decir, y cuando uno encuentra eso es un suerte
y ya. Ya tiene trabajo”
“I think that sometimes an idea can come from the process
itself. …suddenly there’s a conflict between sources and one
realizes that there is still an attack angle and this emerges in
the process, or rather one realizes that the other authors have
left a hole[/place] for one to say something that can be said,
and when one finds this it’s lucky, and that’s it. That’s when the
work begins.”
16. Navigating a new Reality
“…Por lo menos en España y en lo que es las filologías e
idiomas no hacemos mucha investigación. Ya nos dan los
artículos que consideran los profesores o si no nos
recomiendan un autor directamente sin dejarnos…para no
hacernos ‘perder el tiempo’ entre comillas. Aunque
realmente es una práctica que tenemos que aprender.”
“…At least in Spain, in literature and languages we do not
do much research. The professors gives us the articles
[that we need] or recommend an author without letting
us…so we do not ‘waste time.’ Even though it is a practice
that we have to learn.”
17. Navigating a new Reality
“Cuando hacíamos trabajos era todo básicamente en
internet. O por pereza o porque la universidad no tenía
acceso como tiene KU.”
“When we worked on Research projects everything was
basically [done] on the internet. Either because of
laziness or because the university lacked the resources
like KU has.”
18. Additional Findings
Desire to effect
social change
back home after
completing their
studies
Feel pressure
to know things
they have not
yet learned
Aware of the
need to
market their
research
interests
“Focus group sessions were
cathartic”
Experiences fall in the
emotional, or affective
domain in relation to their
experience with research.
Feeling of
jumping on a
moving train
19. Future Plans
University of Kansas
Develop workshops to
support the research
needs of Graduate
Students.
IUPUI
Study Heritage Spanish
Speaking and Int’l
Undergraduate Students.
Develop asynchronous
resources/tutorials to
support these groups.
20. Betsaida M. Reyes Alison Hicks Bronwen K. Maxson
breyes@ku.edu maxsonb@iupui.edu
Thank you! ¡Gracias! Obrigada!
LXII SALALM Annual
Conference
Ann Arbor, MI
Panel 1, May 22, 2017
Hinweis der Redaktion
Betsaida
The success of those approaches are varied and widely covered in the literature, particularly when it comes to information literacy in undergraduate students. It is also worth mentioning that a large number of US undergraduate students have received some form of information literacy education at some point in their education with some receiving training in research skills while attending high schools. The abilities of undergraduate students as effective researchers is also well documented in the literature. We propose to explore the issue of research skills in international Spanish-speaking graduate students, an understudied group. We seek to focus particularly on graduate students that are born outside of the US and who may be attending a US institution for the first time. We want to describe their research practices in contrast to their US-educated classmates. This information we hope will inform those who work with similar groups about varied ideas and approaches to information literacy, as wellas strategies that can help them address these differences.
Bronwen
I noticed a [Heritage Spanish speaking] student selecting a resource for his research project by browsing the book covers that he had found in a Google Image search. Aware that the student’s choice of material would probably not be accepted as a suitable source by the professor, the librarian approached the student and demonstrated how to use Boolean operators and quotation marks to carry out a search in both the library catalog and in WorldCat. Yet, despite the librarian’s best efforts, the student remained resistant to her attempt to help, preferring to stick to his visually creative way of finding information in a multilingual world.
BKM: I did show him how to find a title in the local public library catalog, and we had a conversation about what audience the books are written for (popular vs. scholarly)
Betsaida
IIE-Institute of International Education.
We’re going to focus on the results of our presentation on the results of our study rather than the lit, but we’re glad to share that if you want it after the fact.
Betsaida
What innovative strategies students were using to make sense of academic research, particularly when working in a second or third language?
What understandings about information literacy do international students bring to their studies in the U.S.?
3. What tactics do these students employ to deal with questions of cultural and linguistic disjuncture?
Betsaida
The researchers objective was to learn from students about their research skills and experiences. Naturally, focus groups provided the "dialogue-based approach" (Fleming-May & Yuro, 2009, p.201.) needed in this case. The focus group settings allowed for follow up questions between the researcher and the students. It also generated a sense of community and of shared experiences among participants.
As per IRB instructions, students had to sign a consent form that indicated, among many things that the session would be audio recorded.
The groups consisted of six to nine students for a total sample of 22 students representing 11 countries. We had a mixture of masters and PhD students. The majority of students were from the Spanish and Portuguese Department, all of them were in Social Sciences or Humanities disciplines.
Betsaida
This chart indicates the country of birth for our participants. Even though they are all Spanish speakers, they are truly global.
Betsaida
We asked students to list other languages spoken after their primary language. The primary language was 86% Spanish, 9% English and 5% Korean.
Betsaida
These were the questions used to drive the conversation in the focus groups. They were meant to guide the conversation and to provide consistency. Students drove the majority of the conversation. They were given the opportunity to speak in whatever language they felt most comfortable. Spanish was used most of the time with some English sprinkled through out.
Bronwen – describe the methodology
These are the emerging concepts/themes
All three of us participated in the data coding process. Working from the high-quality audio recordings, as well as from notes, each listened to the three interviews several times. As we moved through the recordings we began compiling a list of codes. These codes were then refined over several meetings to form a single list of codes, while ensuring that our emerging themes represented the entire group rather than solely the opinions of a few members.
Bronwen
Floundering is marked by: students not knowing where to begin their research, struggling to narrow down, and feeling frustrated or overwhelmed.
Bronwen
When students face a research question their first instinct is to search for everything available under the sun. In this phase, students often flounder around, as they do not recognize where to start their search. They often also struggle to narrow down their queries and are afraid of missing something important.
Some start to turn to traditional tools like general histories and encyclopedias.
Bronwen
Characterized by canonical work, or the core scholarly works and frames of reference that constitute an area of study, it is a knowledge of this body of literature that represents competence in the field as students start to develop as scholars. In this sense, mastering the canon forms an important if deceptively complex academic goal as students attempt to adopt a disciplinary lens even while trying to elucidate what this might look like.
Bronwen
Unsure about both the shape of their new field of study as well as the nature of North American research traditions, students often turn to familiar and trusted sources as a way of mediating this uncertainty. Bibliographies, for example, form one of the first ways that students attempt to construct their knowledge of a field.
Beyond relying on specific genres of materials, a second major challenge that students face centers upon establishing what research is valued and trusted in the field.
In the same vein, students ask trusted contacts for advice about what is valued in their area of study.
Bronwen
Students make their mark when they find their agency in their studies, when they enter the scholarly conversation in a meaningful way, and when their voice reflects their unique perspective.
Students feel a tension between guarding their own ideas and networking with other scholars.
Bronwen
Students want to know they bring something of value to the conversation so the time they spend working and writing has a purpose, is useful, and matters.
They must be mindful of what content they produce will be of value to future employers.
Eager to make an impact, but struggling with their identity, graduate students find a lot of confusion related to carrying out research, which is compounded by pressures of time and the market. Although they may feel like they are jumping on a moving train and cannot stop, it is the work they put into research and the development of their ideas over time that will show them how to make their mark. These findings suggest that confidence and emotional support through the process play important roles in their success.
Bronwen
Students adjust from language, cultural, and academic contexts into a new reality. They may experience disjuncture between what they know about how things work, and how things work in this new place. Everything is in a language they may not yet be comfortable with, people who have different expectations and reactions to them, and an academic context that is intimidating, to say the least.
Bronwen
Technology in this new place can cause disorientation as well. Students may not be aware of the wealth of databases available to them, and they may have honed internet search skills but databases require a different set of skills. They also may not know about all of the technology available on campus, both in the library and beyond it.
Bronwen
How can we, as librarians, support students including in an emotional and affective capacity? Are we even thinking about that?
Both
KU - Many students voiced their need for more access to specific research skills type of workshops tailored to them.
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis
Study Heritage Spanish Speaking and International Undergraduate Students
Develop asynchronous resources/tutorials to support these groups
