Through Counterspaces and Contact Zones: Students of Color Navigating Pedagogical Partnerships With College Faculty

• In Event: Sticky Situations and Critical Spaces: ‬ ‪Complicating Research, Policy, and Praxis‬

Abstract

Purpose: While there is growing evidence that partnering undergraduate students with college faculty in pedagogical explorations enhances student motivation, confidence, and sense of intellectual agency, both within the immediate partnership and in wider academic settings (Cook-Sather, Bovill, & Felten, forthcoming), there is little information on how students from under-represented backgrounds navigate and experience such partnerships (Cook-Sather & Agu, 2013; Felten et al, 2013). The purpose of this case study is to provide an in-depth analysis of the experiences of students of color in a pedagogical partnership program at a college in the northeastern United States.

Framework: This paper draws on two conceptual frameworks that describe spaces within which cultural differences are named and taken up. The first is “counter-spaces” — academic and social spaces on and off campuses “where deficit notions of people of color can be challenged and where a positive collegiate racial climate can be established and maintained” (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000, p. 70). The second is “contact zones”: “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical power” (Pratt, 1991, p. 575).

Method and data sources: Within an IRB-approved action research project, constant comparison/grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to analyze written mid- and end-of-semester feedback, surveys, and focus group transcripts of 16 student consultants who self-identify as people of color.

Results: Through the critical dialogue in which they engage across their differences, students of color and faculty members affirm the presence, insights, and participation of students of color in the professional development of faculty. At the same time, the student’s experiences raise larger questions about the structures, roles, and relationships operating between and within the categories of student, educator, and institution in higher education.

Significance: This work supports what must be ongoing processes of negotiation across differences toward greater equity. Its significance lies in the insights it offers into the process of such negotiation and in the opportunity it provides to amplify the voices of those often silenced or excluded from conversations about higher education as a social context: students in general and students of color in particular.

Authors

• Alison Cook-Sather, Bryn Mawr College

• Tiffany Shumate