Cultivating Unexpected Gifts: Storying “Volunteer” Data Within Qualitative Focus Groups

This article explores data from focus groups that, at first glance, yielded nothing fruitful. Drawing inspiration from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writings in which she learns from the wisdom of plants, the author poses the question, what might volunteer plants teach us about unanticipated, even undesired, qualitative data? Conceptualizing volunteer data as data that were not sought, asked for, or even desired, this article reframes these data in a more generative light. Through (re)engaging with focus group transcripts, the author came to shift perspectives from data-as-weeds (what is undesired) to data-as-volunteer plants (what is unexpected, yet holds potential).