A Research-Practice Partnership to Develop the R-CITY Multi-Component, Equity-Focused Social–Emotional Learning Intervention
School of Education and Human Development, University of Virginia
How they used Delve
A faculty member on a University of Virginia-led research-practice partnership used Delve to code three focus groups with 15 students from racially marginalised groups, coding to saturation to assess whether an equity-focused social-emotional learning curriculum landed with the young people it was built for.
“Student data were compiled and analyzed within Delve qualitative data analysis software by one of the partnering university faculty. She read and reread all the focus group transcripts and created codes, noting emerging themes (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). These codes and categories were compared, contrasted (between and within focus groups), and sorted until no new categories and codes emerged and thematic saturation was reached.”
- Field
- School mental health; a research-practice partnership co-creating the R-CITY equity-focused social-emotional learning intervention for K-12 schools during the 'dual pandemics' of COVID-19 and racial injustice
- Data
- Three age-stratified student focus groups (15 participants, grades 4-9, mean age 12.3, recruited from the district's Student Equity Advisory Team and all identifying as members of racially marginalised groups), each averaging 90 minutes on Zoom - the strand analysed in Delve; the wider paper also drew on 16 teacher exit interviews and a document review of meeting minutes, agendas, correspondence and coach notes
- Approach
- Qualitative content analysis. The student focus group strand was coded in Delve by a single analyst - one of the partnering university faculty - who read and reread the transcripts, created codes and noted emerging themes, then compared and contrasted codes and categories between and within focus groups and sorted them until saturation. Bracketing (reflexive review of her own reactions with the research team) and peer review of interpretations guarded against researcher bias, and study memos documented the step-by-step decisions for a peer to check. The teacher interview strand was coded separately in Dedoose by three trained research assistants with a co-author acting as tie-breaker.
- Data types
- Focus groups, Interviews, Documents
Abstract
There is growing interest in the integration of social-emotional learning (SEL) and equity approaches in schools, yet systematic research on how to blend these two frameworks is limited. In this article, we describe the process by which a research-practice partnership (RPP) collaborated to iteratively co-create a multi-component equity-focused SEL preventive intervention in the context of a politically charged landscape related to the ‘dual pandemics’ of racial injustice and COVID-19 in the early 2020s. We conducted a document review of informal data sources (e.g., meeting minutes, correspondence) and analyses of formal data sources (i.e., teacher interviews, student focus groups) to describe how we overcame challenges to form an RPP, to demonstrate our collaborative intervention development efforts, and to assess feedback on the contextual appropriateness of the intervention. We discuss lessons learned from our partnership efforts and reflect on future directions for RPP-driven work to advance equity-focused SEL in K-12 public schools.
Citation
Jessika H. Bottiani, Maisha Gillins, Charity Brown Griffin, Chelsea A. Kaihoi, Lorenzo Hughes, Sharon Pendergrass, Toshna Pandey, Ryan Voegtlin, Sandy Rouiller, Elise T. Pas, Katrina J. Debnam, Catherine P. Bradshaw (2024). A Research-Practice Partnership to Develop the R-CITY Multi-Component, Equity-Focused Social–Emotional Learning Intervention. School Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-024-09703-4