Hello everyone! Can you believe that we have been working on our project for over two months now? We can’t believe how far we have come, and we have a lot to share with you. As much as we would like to say that our project has gone perfectly over these past two months, we will be the first to admit that it hasn’t been a perfect experience. We have struggled and we are currently struggling with our project. Keep reading to learn about our challenges.
WEEKLY OBJECTIVES
With less than a month left to complete our project, there are a number of objectives we hope to meet over the next week in order for our project to be successfully completed:
- Project progress meeting with our TA to discuss the next steps of our project
- Update our community partners at PCRS on our project progress
- Interpret the results of our data from the interviews at the youth centres using qualitative analysis
- Identify gaps and inefficiencies at the PCRS youth centres
- Determine best approach to address food purchasing issues at PCRS
ACHIEVEMENTS
We have been able to stay on track with our project timeline thus far, and we are proud of our newest achievements:
- Conducted interviews at the Newton, Guildford, and Broadway youth centres with staff involved in food purchasing
- Organized and completed the interview transcripts from the three PCRS youth centres
MOMENTS OF SIGNIFICANT CHANGE
Our Moments of Significant Change workshop helped us realize some of the problems we are currently facing, and reflect upon significant obstacles we have had to overcome. We plotted events up until Week 9 that were critical to our project, and individually assessed our responses. The reflection process helped us gain insight on the dynamics of teamwork, and how team members may react differently to the same event. It also generated a visual representation on the complexities of group work, and allowed for us to openly communicate our anxieties about the project.
Our emotional-trend lines were mostly varied, with the exception of our downhill slope towards Week 9. Like many other groups, we were hopeful at the start, but were met with many challenges along the way. We realized that a lot of our anxiety stemmed from uncertainty in the outcome of our project. Our collection of qualitative data from interviews left us with more questions regarding the final direction of our project. This resulted in our overall low emotional state for Week 9. We realize that this is a common experience for many groups, as community based projects are often characterized by uncertainty. Moreover, our reading this week demonstrated that facing uncertainties exercises judgement, a skill that is vital for both professional and educational careers (Shulman, 2005). We realize that this experience compels us to become visible and accountable for our actions through active learning, distinctive features of signature pedagogies which are essential for education (Shulman, 2005). Our feelings of anxiety over uncertainty are characteristic to this change in pedagogy. Like Schulman (2005) indicated, this approach elicits more involvement, and holds us accountable to not only our professors, but also fellow group members and community partners. We understand that trying to achieve results which satisfy these expectations will inherently induce apprehension. This is further compounded by risk of putting forward ideas and defending them (Shulman, 2005). The reading helped us understand that these feelings were typical for students, and that it is our responsibility to manage this anxiety in order to both challenge and support each other as a group (Shulman, 2005). This, along with support from our TA, motivated us to organize the steps necessary for finishing with a strong project. In order to finish at a higher emotional state, we have decided that synthesis of the data collected as a group is the most crucial first step.
In hindsight, the workshop allowed us to re-evaluate our project scope, which became much clearer after collecting the data we required. We realized that our initial goal of compiling data on PCRS consumption habits, and synthesizing suggestions for methods of consumption would be unattainable in the allotted time. By reassessing our scope, we realized that the more viable option would be to interpret, from the data we collected, which aspects of PCRS food purchasing could be improved.
STRATEGIES FOR A GRACEFUL DISMOUNT
As our project nears completion, our team has discussed ways in which we can complete our project in a way that will make both our group and our community partner feel successful and satisfied with the work that we have accomplished this term.
Until now, our group’s priority has been collecting data through interviews. Thus, we are now at a point where we are unsure of the next steps we should take to make our project useful to PCRS. Individually, we have all had a chance to take a look at the data and think about recommendations to propose to PCRS. Because we are finished with the interviews, we have the time to work as a group to interpret the data. Our professor, Will, often emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary action in resolving problems. Fortunately, our team is made up of individuals that belong to different programs within LFS, and, thus, have learned different approaches to overcoming food insecurity. We think that by incorporating every member’s ideas into our recommendations based on our findings from our interviews at PCRS’ youth centres, we will be able to build a list of recommendations that will be useful for PCRS.
In addition to working as a team, we also require the help from our partners at PCRS and from the LFS teaching team. Because we are at a moment of confusion in our project, we will meet with our TA, Carrie, to build a plan for these last few weeks that is feasible and converts our raw data into information that can work towards improving food security. We will also talk to our community partners at PCRS to update them on our project progress and to find out what they would like us to do with the data we have collected. This direct communication between our group and PCRS will increase our chances of our project being successful and useful to PCRS.
Before we begin making recommendations to PCRS, we need to understand our data. We will need to take a qualitative analysis approach to interpret the data. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to learn how to present qualitative data in lecture this week using the article “A Warm Meal and a Bed: Intersections of Housing and Food Security in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside” by Christiana Miewald and Aleck Ostry. For example, we saw how the authors of this article used tables to present demographic characteristics of residents and to clearly present the results of their interview questions to identify themes. We can use the example to guide us in presenting our qualitative data in our final report. Because we are all new to analyzing qualitative data, we will be looking at a resource our TA provided for us; the journal article “Techniques to Identifying Themes” by Gery Ryan and Russell Bernard will help our group effectively analyze our data. Using this article, we can take a similar approach to our lesson of qualitative analysis in lecture by organizing our data into tables to identify common themes in the interview results. Through this method, we hope to find the roots of food inaccessibility at PCRS.
By using these strategies, we hope that by the end of this term, we will have completed a project that is satisfying to both our group, and to PCRS.
Although this has not been a perfect experience, we have learned a lot and have appropriate strategies to complete our project successfully. We hope you come back to visit our blog to read our final post about how we improved food security at PCRS.
Works Cited:
Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf
