Big Questions: Using Participatory Action in Research to Explore Language, Power and Discourse
Kayla Benoit is a student in the Master of Science in Management (Marketing) program at the Edwards School of Business whose research focuses on debiasing job descriptions.
Kayla Benoit is an auntie, a cousin, a partner, a daughter, an artist, a singer. She’s a knowledge seeker and a student as well. She’s in her final year of the Master of Science in Marketing at the Edward School of Business. She’s from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg, which is her reserve in Ontario. However, she was born and raised here right on the border of Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 in a small town called Guernsey. She commutes every day for her classes here on campus in Saskatoon.
What type of research are you doing?
Kayla uses participatory action as her research methodology: "getting the experience in participatory action research has been phenomenal for me. I think I've really found my place and it sort of allows for this interdisciplinary look at your studies. That's been something huge for me.”
She says that participatory action research "was completely new to me. And that's not a well utilized style of research, but it's very useful. And I think it aligns well with the Indigenous ways of knowing and being in that it's a large focus on the participants in the research.”
"So not only me, the researcher, I'm gaining something, but you being part of my research group, you're going to be forming the reason we're here, the research questions, the findings, and then communicating those findings to the people that it is valued to.”
What kind of questions are you exploring?
Kayla’s research has been around two main topics: allyship and language, power and discourse. The allyship research project is where it all started for her. From there, it’s merged into a marketing and human resource focus. She calls it, “language, power and discourse.”
"What I'm focusing on is debiasing job descriptions. And I'm working with the City of Saskatoon. And I'm debiasing their over 1,500 job descriptions and hopefully creating a framework that we can implement in other areas, like the university and things like that.”
Her research looks at job titles, such as is tradesperson, tradeswoman and tradesman. But she’s also looking at the entire job description and the language they use.
"A lot of what we know about debiasing is that there's biased language in a gendered way. So yes, it could be like referring to spouses as a wife instead of a partner or spouse, things like that. But I'm also looking at other things like using maybe potentially colonized language or any sort of language that would potentially stop an applicant from wanting to apply because they feel maybe the use of the terms in the job description are so focused on education and this. And they don't account for lived experience.”
Why does this research matter to you, the community and society?
This research matters to Kayla because it’s helping her “to believe in myself and believe in my voice and being the person that can speak up for those potentially may be underprivileged or just in a situation where they feel like they're not adequate to be walking the halls of this Western institution and to just lean in to that influential or that leadership capacity that comes innate to me as a person.”
She says, “I want to be the person that's saying something that's memorable and makes change, and makes positive change for Indigenous students like myself or my relatives that come six, seven generations down the line."
Research matters because “you have your opportunity to voice your opinion and be heard by people in leadership positions that can actually influence change... It's the social, it's the support, it's the community that you build that makes it matter.”
More than that, this research matters to the community and society because she’s “looking at is just breaking down those barriers and reaching more of an audience so that we have a really diverse applicant pool and just bettering the aunties and uncles like me out there in the future.”
One of Canada’s oldest business schools, the Edwards School of Business offers graduate programs to advance or change your careers, including the Master of Science in Management with specializations in Finance, Marketing, and Management (including Human Resources/Organizational Behaviour, Supply Chain/Information Systems, Operations Management, and Accounting & Taxation). Visit the Master of Science in Management program page to learn more or chat with a program advisor.