Page 108 - Gateways for Early Educators

Gateways for Early Educators
FOCUS GROUP PROTOCOL: ENGLISH
GATEWAYS FOR EARLY EDUCATORS
Focus Group Protocol: English
Informal Set Up (10-20 min): participants sign-in, get refreshments, get consent form and survey if they did not bring their copy
Introduction (5-10 min):
“Welcome everyone and thank you for coming. My name is Laura Valles, and I’ll be facilitating today’s discussion group. I am an independent, third-party consultant brought on by the Child Care Resource Center to assist them with hosting these conversations. The purpose of today’s meeting is for us to hear your thoughts and opinions regarding your experience in the Gateways Coaching Program. What we hear today will be used to improve and refine coaching programs, as well as to capture success stories that can be shared with potential future funders.
My role here is to ask questions and listen. I’ll be moving the discussion from one topic to the next. Since we have a limited amount of time, my job is to guide the group through a series of questions, making sure we hear from each of you and making sure to manage our time. You were chosen to participate in this discussion because you are currently receiving coaching through the Gateways program and/or were recently in the program. Your input is valuable and it is very important for us to hear from each of you because you have different experiences. Before I move into the group agreements and other housekeeping, let me take a minute to introduce the rest of the team. This is Tara Henriquez. She will be taking notes and watching the time. In the back, we have X with CCRC who is here as a resource for all of us in case we need any additional background information. Today’s conversation will take about an hour and half to complete.”
Group norms/rules, consent form, and survey (10 min):
As a participant in this conversation, you should know the following information and that you have protections:
Voluntary Participation – Participation is completely voluntary. You have the right to refuse to answer any question(s) for any reason or to withdraw from this discussion group without penalty.
Confidentiality – Although all project staff are required to hold your information confidential, we cannot guarantee that others in the room today will do so. We ask that you respect each other’s privacy and keep information shared in this meeting confidential. The results of our conversation will be transcribed into notes and used for research. Names will be removed from the transcripts. Information from this meeting will be presented in summary form with some quotes. Names will not be used if you indicated on your consent form that was your preference.
Benefit – The benefit of participation is that each of you has the opportunity to provide information that can help the Gateways program develop future coaching programming.
Recording the Focus Group – We will be recording today’s conversation in two ways. Tara will be capturing your responses on her laptop and will audio record the session as well. The purpose of the recording is so that if we miss something important as we take notes, we can go back to hear exactly what was said. Only the program evaluators, Tara and I will have access to the recording, and it will be destroyed upon completion of this project.
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