Social Movement Activist Research in the Struggle for Education Justice and the Right to the City

• In Event: Challenging Neoliberal Reforms Through Collaborative, Community-Engaged Research

Abstract

1. Objectives
In this paper, we grapple with possibilities and dilemmas of activist scholarship in the struggle for education justice and political power in Chicago. We seek to contribute to a growing body of literature on activist research and a deeper understanding of how activist scholars can do collaborative research with organized groups to serve social liberation. We strive toward certain principles of research practice:
• Engagement in social movement praxis;
• Collaborative knowledge production;
• Organizing as everyday life;
• Desire-based over damaged-centered research (Tuck, 2009);
• Organizing is fundamental to social change
We ask: What is our work and how does it qualify as activist scholarship? Who are we accountable to? Has our activist scholarship made a difference? How do we resolve some of the dilemmas of this work?

2. Theoretical framework
We adopt Hale’s (2008) definition of activist scholarship as research that is collaborative, politically engaged, and aligned with an organized group in struggle. Research and political engagement enrich each other and “knowledge is vital to social action” (Hale, 2008, p. xiii). With Hale (2008), Cammarota and Fine (2008), Gilmore (2008) and others, we reject the binary of rigorous research and political involvement and assert that research with social movements demands rigorous adherence to social science standards because the work has real consequences for social struggles.

3. Methods and Data
We analyze our community-based/community-driven qualitative research with attention to issues of positionality, epistemology, collaborative methodology, humanization, and catalytic social change. Our projects range from analysis of district policies; relationship of school policies and gentrification, race, and poverty; to U.S. government disinvestment in youth. They include substantive reports and policy briefs, and span a gamut of community and teacher collaboration.

4. Results and conclusions
We discuss the following dilemmas of activist research:
• Activism discredits research: We are engaged in activism in solidarity with communities fighting for education justice. However, our public engagement in these struggles sometimes clouds the legitimacy of our work.
• Rejecting positivism while using positivist tools: While we reject the use of standardized test scores, and other positivist measures, to evaluate students, teachers, and schools, under some circumstances we feel compelled to use these measures.
• How to legitimize collective community knowledge: We seek to elevate the expert knowledge of working class communities of color while working within the university, which is seen as sole producer of expert knowledge.
• Research for immediate struggles compromises broad analysis: Our academic writing makes broad analyses, however in our community collaborations we are more typically responding to immediate needs.

5. Significance:
The battle over the right to the city is playing out in Chicago where Chicago Public Schools is rocked by corruption scandals, shakeups at the top, and junk status bond ratings. Faced with an over one billion dollar budget shortfall, CPS has threatened teacher cuts, increases in class size and elimination of vital school programs. This is a moment of ripening crisis and opportunity that calls for researchers to join their expertise with collective social struggle for a more humane, just, and democratic world.

Authors

• Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Rhoda Rae Gutierrez, University of Illinois at Chicago