Feeding the Soul: Employing Kitchen Table Conversations as Methodology

• In Event: Methodologies of Resistance, Research of Care: Research as Healing Practice for/by Women of Color

Abstract

Purpose/Theoretical Framework
The purpose of this presentation is to examine the ways in which kitchen table conversations as a method of data collection (Bell-Scott, 1995) influence not only research findings but also the participants themselves. In this presentation, I will use Black feminist thought (Collins, 2000) to analyze my use of this data collection method as one of many in a study about Black teachers who engage emancipatory pedagogies in their classrooms in an effort to prepare their students for life in a racist society.

Methods/Data Sources
Because Black women are marginalized throughout American society, our homes—and more specifically, our kitchens—are one of few spaces where we can truly speak what is on our minds and hearts without fearing consequences (Bell-Scott, 1995). For the study discussed in this presentation, I could have opted to hold group interviews at any particular location. I knew that my home, however, was the one place where each participant would feel comfortable and willing to speak his or her truth. Additionally, kitchen table conversations fit nicely into studies that involve counterstorytelling or talking back (hooks, 1989) as the space of the kitchen table fosters such conversations.
While the other data collection methods for this study focused on each participant individually, the kitchen table conversations reminded participants that they were not alone on their journey of educating Black children, and it also led them to embody the notion of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is “an African concept of personhood in which the identity of the self is understood to be formed interdependently through community” (Battle, 2009, pp. 1-2). Spiritual in nature, the concept of Ubuntu allows individuals to form their identities through community, leading to the creation of the communal self.

Results
The study results revealed that kitchen table conversations put the participants in a place to physically see and hear that they were participating in something much larger than themselves. These kitchen table conversations in which participants felt unbridled allowed them to express their concerns, fears, and passions free of consequences, while simultaneously helping them to understand that there were other Black teachers with the same aims, no matter how much opposition they faced within their own school buildings.

Significance
The significance of this presentation stems from the notion that as researchers increasingly focus on those who are marginalized in our society, we must understand the ways in which particular environments have the capacity to affect our participants. Some locations can cause participants to shut down, but others can allow our participants to flourish within and beyond our studies. Finally, as I believe that researchers should give back to the participants who have given them so much, kitchen table conversations allow participants to see themselves as part of a community that may not have been completely visible to them before.

Author

• Kristen Duncan, University of Georgia - Athens