Blog post 3

• Discussion: What do these results mean to your specific research question? What are some limitations in your research? 

• In order to strive for a more inclusive future, directors must receive training and education on casting processes in order to consciously consider which stories they will tell and how they will tell them through their casting choices. Especially in educational theatre, directors must consider their students’ culture and how their casting or lack thereof will foster inclusivity and representation onstage.

• Overall, there should be more effective and universal terminology to discuss these casting methods. Many teachers weren’t aware that the way they went about casting actually did align with a method, or described their method but said they were confined to a different category even when their description of their casting process aligned with the opposite method. Additionally, the way casting processes should be handled educationally is in opposition with how it is professionally. Professionally, “Colorblind casting” is generally regarded to be a thing of the past. However, in most educational settings, teachers are choosing materials that don’t specify character race, and thus shouldn’t be casting as such, which would align with the values of Colorblind casting. Entirely Color conscious casting is acceptable only when a school is putting on a show that requires certain races of characters (ie, Hairspray, West Side Story). The most important thing to consider in those cases is whether the school has enough diversity to put on these shows and cast them in a Color conscious manner. In my research, I have found only one school whose director felt they could confidently choose shows that needed Color conscious casting and then implement the proper casting for that show. For Color conscious casting to be used effectively in a classroom, there must be an existing body of actors who could appropriately play race specified parts for the directors to audition. For a director to choose a show with a race specific part and only have one actor who could feasibly play the part introduces typecasting stereotypes and relies on a student prior to an audition process, which can convey the Color conscious casting method into the field of considering ethnicity over talent, which can introduce more problems in an educational theatre setting and leads . Nevertheless, diversity must be considered by the school with each production staged, no matter the minority population or lack thereof the director originally has to pull from. Educators cannot control what their environment’s minority population is, and have little say over their audition pool. This doesn’t mean, however, that inclusivity should be at the back of their minds by any means. In fact, it was schools with the lowest minority populations that returned the least representative casts. Even some schools that would only need two or three minority students to represent their school accurately failed to meet a representational standard. This isn’t the fault of the director– there are a plethora of confounding variables that can influence audition pool and turnout. This being said, it is still their responsibility. Fostering inclusion in the community given, no matter how few cultures are represented, becomes even more pertinent when the surrounding environment is less diverse. Representation matters more when it isn’t surrounding cultural groups, and directors should receive education and training on how to foster it.

• A few limitations I ran into are that since I’m not examining professional shows, I’m trying to find information on minors which is difficult to navigate legally. It involved contacting directors, and I had directors who couldn’t give me ethnicities of students or entire casts. Additionally, I had directors who never responded to my initial email. Because of this, I had a lot of potential for nonresponse bias. I am fairly confident that this was accounted for by the T test because T tests are used for smaller samples, which is what I ended up with. 

• Conclusion: How does your research contribute to the larger academic conversation? What are the implications? Connect back to why people should care. 

Also include a Reflection Throughout the Inquiry Process [how the inquiry process informs growth and self-awareness as a researcher]

• Reflection: Choose at least 2 (or more!) of the following questions

1. Think back to the initial curiosity that sparked your inquiry. What other curiosities do you have and how has this process prepared you to explore them?

2. In the future, I would love to expand this project to focus even more on each individual school’s growth and examine whether they’ve improved their own diversity statistics. Additionally, I would like to gather data from a larger pool of schools and districts, and gather student opinion on whether they feel their directors consider diversity in casting. Student opinion could be very insightful here as to why casting choices turn out the way they do in educational theatre. I would also like to examine gender in casting, and whether schools choose shows that represent their female vs their male populations. Sexuality in casting would also be an interesting thing to examine specifically in terms of representation, and delving into whether students are representing their own or different sexuality as characters onstage would open an interesting ethics in casting discussion. I think that this process has prepared me to explore these inquiries by giving me firsthand experience with navigating the difficulties of gathering any human samples, let alone the difficulties in gathering an unbiased one. Additionally, I’m better now at planning my research timeline.

3. How did you handle the uncertainty of the research process?

• The uncertainty of the research project took me some time to learn to navigate, but I found whats helped me is having concrete outlines for my research and going into everything with a plan. I found that, especially with my interviews, if I had questions written our prior to the interview it was harder to deviate from the topic and I got all the information I needed.

1. If you could revisit your research process, what would you do differently and why?

• If I could revisit my search process, the main thing I’d change is starting my actual research process earlier. I think if I had reached out to teachers sooner, I could have had more time to bug them about interviewing with me and avoided some of the nonresponse bias that I encountered.

1. What was the most important research skill you developed as a result of this process, and how might you apply it to your future endeavors?

The most important research skill I developed was probably learning to avoid bias. I didn’t realize how much bias could creep into my project even unintentionally, but now I am more confident that I could facillitate another entire research project and avoid as much bias as I could.

2. How did your expert adviser facilitate your deeper understanding of the research process?

Having Mrs Dale as my advisor was incredibly helpful. She had a teacher’s understanding of casting processes and helped advise me as how to best contact them, what questions to ask, and how to deal with teachers who couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. She also had a lot of insight on the legality and morality of the project, and helped me figure out how teachers could share information on their casts’ demographic without breaching school policies.