As a literacy co-coordinator, I felt the need to find out why people were not using the literacy service available to them.... I wondered if a different type of needs assessment would provide more useful information. Perhaps I could find out what kind of service was needed by contacting potential students and asking first, where in their lives a lack of literacy skills stopped them from doing what they wanted to do independently. Having identified a need, I would ask them what would be the best way to address it.
I decided to invite a number of Literacy and ABE students in programs at the time to form a group to design and carry out a community needs assessment.... I hoped that the group's ideas would help me to provide a more useful literacy service in the community. The question that guided my research was, "What ideas would a group of students come up with in relation to conducting a needs assessment?" (pp. 195-196)
I am one of those who never know the direction of my journey until I have almost arrived.
- Anna Louisa Strong
If you're not sure about the question(s), you're not alone. In my research about sharing power (Norton, 2000a), I was not ready to pose a specific question at the start of the project:
As I started the research, I knew I wanted to learn about sharing power. Rather than pose a specific question, I collected information with this general focus in mind. (p. 165)
As I worked with the participants, many questions came up. Towards the end of the project, Holly, one of the participants, said: "We finally got to do something for ourselves, without the staff doing it.... It feels really good that we can actually do something" (p. 164). This prompted me to note some questions in my report:
Why do people feel that they can't do things for themselves? If we consider that "power" comes from the root "to be able" (Starhawk, 1987), we can see how feeling able and feeling powerful are linked. As an educator, I want to help students believe they "can", and I try to help them develop skills so they in fact can. But to what extent do I really help, and how? When do my actions echo other experiences that contributed to students' feelings that they can't? How do I use and misuse my power, as a teacher and as a person? These and related questions took form as I undertook my research about sharing power. (p. 164)