The Passion to Enact Engaged Policy Work: Perspectives of Latina Faculty Activists

• In Event: Roundtable Session 78
  In Roundtable Session: Photovoice and Going Above and Beyond Being Faculty: Caring, Advocacy, and Passion

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this segment of the gallery presentation is to represent the dialogue between a senior faculty member, the founder and executive director of a university-based policy research center and a national organization of Latina/o university faculty focused on research, advocacy, and community-based collaborations and the doctoral student who works with her. This presentation will share the co-researchers’ experiences in working across multiple contexts, most notably the Texas state legislature, with a goal of disrupting ideological- and interest-laden discourses, and inserting research-based policy solutions into highly political education debates.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework of Engaged Policy informs this presentation and is one that the co-researchers have developed as a way of theorizing the policy work that we both do. This concept grows out of our work at a nonpartisan, university-based policy center. The work of this center fills two kinds of voids that exist in education policy, namely, the structural disconnect between institutions of higher education and policymaking bodies like state legislatures (Shaker & Heilman, 2004; Adams, et al., 2001), as well as the conceptual void (see Dale, 1994) that accords a more central role to issues of power such as the value of otherwise marginalized community voices and knowledge that critical policy scholarship theorizes (Marshall, 1999) but does not always engage in practice. Engaged policy acknowledges that researchers and policy makers are not monolithic groups that hold equal capacity to influence educational outcomes. Often researchers with an expressed commitment to conduct policy-relevant research enter the field with a limited knowledge base on the multiple dimensions of policy.
Modes of Inquiry
This study combines elements of visual ethnography (Pink, 2006) and photovoice (Guillemin & Drew, 2010). We focus on the experiences of a doctoral candidate whose research, in part takes place in the Texas state legislature, and a senior faculty member who is the founder and executive director of a university-based policy research center, and professor at highly ranked institution. We begin with a dialogue centered on the concept of Engaged Policy where we both will provide a narrative of what this notion has meant in practice for each of us, respectively. The dialogue will then be transcribed and content analysis will be used (Gribich, 2007) to pull out themes that describe, from the perspectives of the co-researchers, what “doing education policy” looks like in practice. The doctoral candidate will then be asked to capture in a photo of the different themes that embody what it is like to engage in political debates around education policy issues. Both co-researchers will then choose key photos to display for the AERA gallery presentation.
Results
The dialogue will provide the audience with a tangible sense of Engaged Policy and also illuminate some the tensions that researchers of color experience when they are advocating for social change in highly political contexts.
Significance
This presentation will be distinct from the others in that it provides insight into the experiences of researchers of color who take part in the policy making process.

Authors

• Patricia D. Lopez, The University of Texas - Austin

• Angela Valenzuela, The University of Texas - Austin