Revealing a Hidden World: An Ethnodrama of Student and Principal Experiences In an Alternative School

Background and Purpose: Research on alternative schools has largely focused on the causes and consequences of placement in an alternative setting, often emphasizing academic difficulties and labeling students as “outcasts” and “troubled,” while overlooking students’ assets and broader lived experiences. This deficit-oriented approach limits understanding of how students make meaning of their academic experiences and of the roles of individual and contextual factors in shaping their academic trajectories. The purpose of this study was to investigate how students and staff at one specific alternative school describe and interpret their experiences, with a focus on one student and the principal.

Method: Data were collected from one student (Chloe) and the principal (Mr. Jack) at a second-last-chance alternative school. Both participants completed a semi-structured individual interview. Additional data were gathered through field notes and school site observations. Ethnodrama was an ideal method for analyzing and representing separate interview data from this study’s participants, given that the experiences of students in these schooling settings are often “hidden ” and tend not to be placed in relation to those of administrators.

Ethnodrama is an innovative approach to data representation that transforms meaningful pieces of qualitative data, such as interviews and field notes, into dialogic form, essentially “dramatizing” the data. It is particularly useful for centering the experiences and knowledge of groups who have been structurally marginalized.

The analytic process began with inductive thematic analysis of the interview data. Using the framework of information power, we engaged with the data, noting nuance, complexity, tension, and insight. This process included writing memos, organizing data by topical areas, noting how information was expressed (e.g., emotions), identifying plot points, and extracting relevant interview data that could be transformed into a dialogue between Chloe and Mr. Jack. Field notes and observations were used to develop the setting and emotionality of the ethnodrama.

Findings: Analysis revealed several key topics informing the development of the ethnodrama scenes. Scenes included commentary on participants’ interactions with educators, the resources available at the alternative school, those that were lacking, students’ backgrounds, and the process of transitioning back to students’ “home” schools. Additional scenes included commentaries focused on the benefits and challenges of attending this alternative school, students’ definitions of academic success, the supports and barriers that shape that success, and the role of hope in achieving it. For example, Mr. Jack emphasized the positive impact of the school’s mixed online and in-person learning model, while Chloe discussed the challenges of computer-based instruction and not learning as much as at her home school. These shared and contrasting perspectives shaped the dialogue and scenes, allowing the ethnodrama to authentically represent the complexity of alternative schooling experiences.

Conclusion and Implications: Crafting an ethnodramatic exchange between participants is a complex endeavor. Yet, representing the data through an ethnodramatic dialogue helped highlight participants’ unique perspectives and their recommendations for programming and practices to better support students' academic experiences. Findings emphasize the importance of ethnodramas in translating complex social problems into accessible means of data representation and interpretation.