
































Microsoft Word - 72546-Article Text-221760-1-11-20210928.docx


Emerging	Perspectives	
ep.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca	

 
 

Pan(dem)ic at the (Middle School) Disco: 
Navigating Data Collection During Quarantine 

 
Rae Ann Van Beers1 

 
University of Calgary 

 
Nearly everyone’s lives in this province were disrupted in March 2020 when the 
Alberta government decided to shut down schools in an attempt to curb the spread 
of the COVID-19 virus. For me, the quarantine thwarted my original doctoral 
research plan to work with my middle school participants to develop our peer-to-
peer duoethnographic conversations. The immediate suspension of in-person 
schooling and the frenzied move to online learning for all Alberta schools required 
adjusting my well-crafted research plan in order to move those conversations to an 
online platform. It also forced me to rely on the help of the allies I had found within 
the school, both the staff and the youth themselves, to obtain the data I had 
determined was essential to my study.  
 
Keywords: Covid-19, graduate student, research plan, data collection, online 
platforms, middle school, fair trade, social justice education, duoethnography, 
qualitative research. 
 
Van Beers, R. A. (2021). Pan(dem)ic at the (middle school) disco: Navigating data 
collection during quarantine. Emerging Perspectives, 5(2), 13-16. 

 
 

Intending to put a twist on duoethnography, my research participants from a social 
justice-minded school group were ready to start their peer-to-peer conversations (following 
Norris et al., 2012) in mid-March. Alberta schools were officially shut down on March 15, 
2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate suspension of in-person schooling 
and the frenzied move to online learning for all Alberta schools required adjusting my well-
crafted research plan, modifying my ethics application to move the conversations to the 
school’s online learning platform, and then working to reconnect virtually with my research 
participants two months later. In spite of these unusual stressors, we adapted and eventually 
conducted the duoethnographic conversations online. Navigating disruptions in data 
collection is a stressful venture, however embracing the chaos when one’s “fieldwork falls 
apart” (Chambers, 2019, p. 437) can prove to be a profound learning opportunity. I had 
never been in doubt of the importance of building positive, collegial relationships when 
doing qualitative research, but the lesson of just letting go of my research plan was more 
difficult to accept. Being adaptable and asking for support from various individuals at my 
research site allowed me to finally obtain data for my doctoral dissertation. Although the 

 
1 raeann.vanbeers@ucalgary.ca 
 



Van Beers – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 14 

outcome was not what I had originally envisioned, there will be an outcome and I will have 
learned more from it than if my plan had actually gone according to plan. 

The Best Laid Plans 

A publicly funded middle school in an urban center was the focus of my study, with data 
being collected over the course of the 2019-2020 school year. Comprised of grade six and seven 
girls, the principal activity for the social justice-oriented group that I shadowed during this time 
was to plan the youth component of a national conference about fair trade, while continuing to 
raise awareness about the importance of fair trade within their school. My choice to have research 
participants engage in duoethnography with a peer stemmed from the methodology’s emphasis on 
participation, equitable relationships, and transformation. Duoethnography places two researchers, 
who are also the study participants, into a relationship with one another to create a dialogue with 
the intention of better understanding a phenomenon under investigation (Norris & Sawyer, 2012; 
Sawyer & Norris, 2013).  

In my research plan, mentorship was a significant part of the study so that I could better 
explain these ideas to the group, along with the expectations of potential participants. We had 
planned to begin that mentorship process the week following the conference when I was going to 
remind the students of my research and describe duoethnography more fully. Tackling the research 
in this way would have required a great deal of trial and error, as there was no map to follow for 
such a plan. My hope, in turning over responsibility to the participants for the creation of their 
duoethnographic conversations, was borne out of respect for both their rights to participate as fully 
as possible in the research and their abilities to engage in it in meaningful ways (Ceglowski & 
Makovsky, 2012; Mann et al., 2014). I had decided that I would try to avoid providing interview 
or conversation scripts for them to work from as I hoped they would discuss the overarching 
question of ‘what is social justice?’ and simply let things flow. I believed that this format would 
more readily adhere to notions of youth voice and perspective that were vital to my study (Herriot, 
2014; Smith, 2010). This data ownership by the research teams was intended to bleed into the 
initial analysis stage as well, where participants were to be presented with transcripts of their 
conversations for review, to discuss any changes they deemed necessary, and share insights about 
what they were learning through the process. I also wanted to get their feedback about my initial 
categorization of themes during data analysis to enhance member-checking of the data (Lincoln & 
Guba, 1985) and provide as much opportunity as possible for their participation throughout the 
research process (Ceglowski & Makovsky, 2012; Ergler, 2017). 

Navigating the Chaos 

The teacher in me was deeply disappointed that I had lost out on the opportunity to teach 
students the art of duoethnography. With schools physically shutting down, I was unable to provide 
students with (what I deemed to be) a meaningful education about this methodology in the way 
that I had envisioned. Instead, we settled for a club meeting over Zoom during which I reminded 
students of my research and asked them to consider participating. A full two months after our last 
in-person contact at the youth component of the conference, I described the modified process for 
participation that I had arranged with the principal and sponsor teacher, and which had been 
approved by the ethics board: research partners would have a conversation through Zoom that I 
would set up and record and then transcribe for their review. Moving the interviews to this online 
format was not particularly onerous, especially since the participants had grown used to engaging 
in school virtually. It is difficult to say how this alteration impacted the data they generated, as I 



Van Beers – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 15 

was ironically more “present” in the conversations than planned. Hovering looks different when 
done virtually versus in-person as I was not able to give them the same distance as I might have if 
the conversations had happened in school. Another disruption to my plan involved the participants 
sticking mainly to the guiding questions that I had created for them in a bid to ease their concerns 
about what to talk about. Although somewhat frustrating to deal with, these disruptions 
(Rodriguez, 2020) did not seem to affect the methodological character of my research plan as 
duoethnography is known to be a fluid methodology (Sawyer & Norris, 2016). 
 Initially losing contact with the group was a significant and stressful problem. At the 
beginning of the pandemic, schools were scrambling to move to learning online and a Ph.D. student 
trying to collect data was low on their list of priorities. Reconnecting with the group took time and 
some coaxing on my part. In the midst of all this, the sponsor teacher of the group had a family 
emergency and his attention was understandably elsewhere. Fortunately for me, my friendship 
with another gracious grade six/seven teacher from the school served as an access point as he 
helped to reunite our group online. He amplified my plea for research participants by stating in the 
group chat he set up for us: “This is a great opportunity to help Rae Ann out with her research and 
share your thoughts.” I’m confident that without his help I would have ended up with no 
participants at all, highlighting the importance of forming collegial relationships with those at the 
research site. 
 It felt strange to be reunited with the students after two months with no contact, especially 
as I had been seeing them at club meetings twice a week since the beginning of that school year. 
Having put in that much time in the months prior to the school shutdown turned out to be incredibly 
important, as I believe it was this “deep hanging out” that motivated my six participants to share 
their stories with each other and with me (Montgomery, 2014, p. 124). Those months of building 
rapport with the club members ultimately resulted in their willingness to help me with my research. 
As an educational researcher, I typically viewed myself in the role of helper because by gathering 
information I could potentially improve the way we engage in teaching and learning. Even in my 
role of researcher and pseudo-club member during my study I took on the position of helper, 
allowing the students to tell me what to do. For instance, they directed me through their monthly 
fair trade bake sales by sending me for forgotten items in other parts of the school and asking for 
help with preparing the float and figuring out their profits. In the end though, our roles were 
reversed as they helped me to create the data that was vital to the completion of my study. I am 
afraid to think about what my dissertation would have become without their generosity of spirit, 
as well as that of the principal, teachers, and other staff who supported me during the chaos of data 
collection.   

In choosing to “dwell in the cracks” (Spencer, 2014, p. 139) of my research process I was 
better able to accept it for what it was, rather than what I had planned for it to be. That being said, 
there was still a grieving process for me as I had to let go of the plan I had grown so attached to. 
That was perhaps the most difficult part of the entire experience. Recognizing that my plan would 
not work in the way I envisioned it forced me to be adaptable and figure out what changes could 
be made in order to make the research feasible and still maintain methodological integrity. Such 
flexibility required the help of others, both adults and youth in this case, in order to meet my data 
collection goals. From this experience I now have a better understanding of the messiness of 
qualitative research and, perhaps more significantly, what it means to be an educational researcher 
when one’s world is turned upside down.  
  



Van Beers – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 16 

References 

Ceglowski, D., & Makovsky, T. (2012). Duoethnography with children. Ethnography and 
Education, 7(3), 283–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2012.717197 

Chambers, J. (2019). When fieldwork falls apart: Navigating disruption from political turmoil in 
research. Area (London 1969), 59, (2), 437–444. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12587 

Ergler, C. R. (2017). Advocating for a relational and dynamic model of participation for child 
researchers. Social Inclusion, 5(3), 240–250. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v5i3.966 

Herriot, L. (2014). The presence of an absence: Youth participation in macro-level educational 
reform. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 9(1), 35–52. https://doi.org/10.1386/ctl.9.1.35-
1 

Lincoln, Y. S. & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. SAGE.  
Mann, A., Liley, J., & Kellett, M. (2014). Engaging children and young people in research. In A. 

Clark, R. Flewitt, M. Hammersley & M. Robb (Eds.), Understanding research with 
children and young people (pp. 285-304). SAGE. 

Montgomery, H. (2014). Participant observation. In A. Clark, R. Flewitt, M. Hammersley & M. 
Robb (Eds.), Understanding research with children and young people (pp. 122-135). 
SAGE. 

Norris, J., & Sawyer, R. D. (2012). Toward a dialogic methodology. In J. Norris, R. D. Sawyer, 
& D. Lund (Eds.), Duoethnography: Dialogic methods for social, health, and educational 
research (pp. 9-39). Left Coast Press Inc. 

Norris, J., Sawyer, R. D., & Lund., D. E. (2012). Duoethnography: Dialogic methods for social 
health, and educational research. Left Coast Press. 

Rodriguez, S. (2020). “You’re a sociologist? I am too…” Seducing the ethnographers, 
disruption, and ambiguity in fieldwork with (mostly) undocumented youth. Journal of 
Contemporary Ethnography, 49(2), 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241619882075 

Sawyer, R. D., & Norris, J. (2013). Duoethnography. Oxford University Press. 
Sawyer, R. D., & Norris, J. (2016). Dialogic interdisciplinary self-study through the practice of 

duoethnography. In R. D. Sawyer & J. Norris (Eds.), Interdisciplinary reflective practice 
through duoethnography: Examples for educators (pp. 1-13). Palgrave MacMillan.   

Smith, A. B. (2010). Children as citizens and partners in strengthening communities. American 
Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(1), 103–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-
0025.2010.01012.x 

Spencer, C. C. (2014). “Wow, that bitch is crazy!” Exploring gendered performances in leisure 
spaces surrounding reality television. [Doctoral dissertation]. The University of Utah. 
ProQuest LLC. 

 


