Intergenerational Narrative Inquiry: Cultivating Professional Practices for Resisting Erasure in the Academy

• In Event: Puerto Rican Women Teacher Educators Telling Their Stories, Sharing Their Lives

Abstract

Objectives
In this presentation we describe how we engaged in an intergenerational narrative inquiry process to analyze our experiences as teacher educators and the influence of the colonial status of Puerto Rico on our personal and professional lives. The term intergenerational represents our collaboration as a junior scholar and a mid-career scholar.

Theoretical framework
Our work is framed by critical perspectives, such as critical race theory and Latina critical theory, critical biculturalism, and the work of scholars engaged in postcolonial and decolonizing research (Darder, 2011; Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Spivak, 2004; Swadener & Mutual, 2008). Specifically, we use the concept of erasure in the context of Allahar’s (2005) work and the work of Hall (2008) who locates the origins of erasure in the history of colonization.

Modes of inquiry and data sources
This is a critical qualitative study that uses interpretive, first-person methodologies, such as co-constructed and critical personal narratives and testimonies, methodologies that honor different versions of science and empirical activity (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008).

Over a five-month period, we engaged in a series of what we call digital pláticas. These refer to informal, yet purposeful communication via e-mails, occasionally followed up with online communication via Skype or phone. We conducted a holistic-content analysis (Chase, 2010; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998) that uncovered the role of our experiences with language on our professional careers.

Substantiated Conclusions
Our ambivalence toward English has played a role in our cultural and linguistic identities as scholars and teacher educators in U.S. academic institutions. Such ambivalence exemplifies how the historical context of Puerto Rico, as a colony of the United States, has shaped our professional identities. As teacher educators, we exercise agency and use research and writing to resist erasure and reclaim funds of knowledge (Castillo-Montoya & Torres-Guzmán, 2012; Moll, 2014; Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 2005; Vélez Ibáñez, 1988) that have allowed us to embrace our individual and collective experiences as Puerto Rican teacher educators in the United States.

Scientific or scholarly significance
We extend Moll et al’s (2005) funds of knowledge concept to our work in the academy by focusing on the ways that telling our stories and developing mentoring networks is necessary for our individual and collective functioning and well-being as scholars. Cultivating solidarity is essential for creating a culture of collaboration in the academy.

This process requires flexibility and a deliberate disposition to put ourselves in vulnerable positions by sharing experiences that may be received by others as fossilized, essentialized, rather than meanings on the move—dynamic in nature and ever evolving (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). This practice has allowed us to gain insights into how our experiences may have mediated our professional choices and identities, with the understanding that we still are and will always be in a process of opening our lived experiences to new interpretations. Thus, narratives are tools that help us to “bring the past forward into our consciousness” (Hall, 2008, p. 279), resist erasure, and embrace the transformative potential of our experiences.

Authors

• Sandra Quinones, Duquesne University

• Carmen M. Martinez-Roldan, Teachers College, Columbia University