During the first half of 2024, Pierre- Loup Lenoir worked as a student assistant as part of a research project led by Dr Naomi Truan, Assistant Professor of German Sociolinguistics at the  Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). Under the umbrella of HERLING, the research lab for the study of Heritage Languages of the Netherlands, he writes about his experiences conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork for the very first time.

This is the second post as part of a three-part series. In this post Pierre-Loup focuses on challenges and opportunities of collaborative research processes.

Mismatched theoretical expectations and practical realities

The research project “Je parle aussi français! Ik spreek ook Frans!” is a project initiated by the French Institute in the Netherlands, in which HERLING acts as a scientific partner. Based on weekly after-school workshops taking place in Rotterdam (Crooswijk) and The Hague (Bouwlust en Vrederust), the project seeks to develop the knowledge of French for children aged 6 to 11 through a valorization of their cultural and linguistic heritage. So far, the project has focused on Dutch children with a Moroccan migration background, under the assumption that they may be either French-speaking or connected to a French-speaking family heritage.

A persistent issue during data collection was the clash between our theoretical research goals and the more practical concerns of our collaborators from the French Institute. Looking back, we might have relied too much on what our project partners had promised. Of course, I had expected that some of our research objectives would have to be remodeled, which would become clear during our first visits to the workshops. But I was surprised to learn that we did not even agree on our research objective—heritage language speakers. The idea was to get better insights into the motivations and their views on the use of French as Dutch citizens of Moroccan origins.

Despite initially receiving a green light from our collaborators to interview teachers, children, and parents, I was faced with resistance from the project leaders when scheduling parents’ interviews. As I considered French to be part of the languages spoken at home, I mistakenly assumed that our contact with the parents would be fairly straightforward: I had been assured by the project leaders that they would help in initiating contact with the parents with whom they have a long-standing relationship. Nevertheless, a point of contact was never reached as the parents were generally not personally involved with the project. We were faced with restricted access; asking parents to participate in interviews with researchers they did not know might lead them to shy away from the workshops themselves. The project was still relatively new when we were brought onboard; its innovative nature also meant that both teachers and parents involved in it were not yet ready to be scrutinized through a research lens.

Bringing collaborative research into the classroom

It is important to also look at things from the teachers’ standpoint: The classrooms allow them to form a direct connection with the students. Then, all of a sudden, a student assistant gets involved. One who questions some core assumptions and wants to talk to the parents. In our preparation we underestimated the time it would take to build a trusting relationship with all parties involved in the project. This case really brings out the confusion that can pop up in collaborative research. Our original agreements, made in a friendly collaborative spirit before any field observations, sometimes needed a serious reality check later on. I now recognize the importance of clear communication from the get-go: I personally struggled to address these problems, as I nevertheless had a friendly working relationship with the project staff.

Interestingly, my experience with collaborative research also left me a bit confused about my role in the workshops. In theory I was there as an observer of the teachers and children. I therefore prepared myself to hold a passive role. In practice, I found myself enjoying actively participating in the exchanges and activities. Balancing my primary role of researcher with the relationship I established with the teachers and children became a challenge. I was still quite inexperienced in conducting research; I struggled to find the right balance of involvement. I would attend the workshops twice a week, sometimes three times a week: Some of my visits proved to be not very meaningful for our research as my field notes remained incomplete. The activity-based learning and the small cohorts made it difficult for me to deal with the inclusive nature of ethnographic fieldwork: It took me a couple of weeks to get some perspective on things!

Valuable lessons learned

After a few weeks of collaborative work, I was able to follow the cohort in The Hague from the first lesson onwards: by then both the teachers and I wanted to make the new workshops a success. But somehow, we disagreed on how to achieve that! I believed starting up a dialogue with the parents was important, not only for our research but also for the project itself so as to learn a bit more about the students and their motivations. I was quite surprised to see the teachers seemed to be afraid that my questions might destabilize the parents and lead them to leave the project. For this reason, the teachers asked me to wait a few sessions before reaching out to the parents—which was totally fine! But after several weeks of the workshops being a big success, the teachers still did not want me to talk to the parents. How come? Despite some assumptions, I never truly got to the bottom of this. It was quite frustrating for me, as I held on to the hope of being able to conduct interviews as each week passed. The impossibility of expanding the research to the parents also introduced a sort of glass ceiling to my fieldwork. Despite the valuable field notes I had taken from the workshops, I progressively resigned myself to not being able to bring the research a step further. This gave a rather bitter aftertaste to each of my later visits.

Overall, this first dive into collaborative research was quite an eye-opener on how to actually carry out a research project with multiple parties involved. Even if we did hit some major bumps that made us rethink big parts of our agenda, I nevertheless gained priceless hands-on experience, working independently in the field. The challenges we faced may have proved to be a bit too much to handle at times with my lack of experience. I now know I would be able to do a much better job now in dealing with some of the frustrations I have outlined next time. It's easy to theorize and prepare a plan for how the research will operate before stepping foot in the field; spotting the obstacles in the midst of the research requires much more composure and perspective.

If you would like to learn more about the project, please reach out to Dr Naomi Truan.