Advancing Nondominant Methodological Perspectives in Educational Qualitative Research Through Teaching and Learning

• In Event: Living It Out: Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry as Politic and Practice in the Academy

Abstract

Colleges and universities are positioned to play an instrumental role in researching and addressing educational and economic inequities, yet often fail to foster needed change (Pasque, 2010). One way institutions may intentionally work toward social justice is through the education of the researchers, practitioners, and policy makers of tomorrow. Yet, if graduate students are taught only dominant notions of qualitative inquiry, then dominant research paradigms, findings, and recommendations will continue to perpetuate the status quo – with tangible implications for our schools, colleges and universities, policies and programs. This paper explores the ways in which instructors may include non-dominant critical research methodologies in qualitative inquiry courses in order to expand student knowledge production (Cheek, 2008). The author provides specific examples from her teaching of qualitative inquiry courses, including the use of performative autoethnography (Spry, 2011) with a new graduate student researcher to interrogate socioeconomic and rural student inequities during the transition from high school to college.

Author

• Penny A. Pasque, University of Oklahoma