Humanizing Teaching and Research: Co-Creating and Sustaining Dialogic Relationships

• In Event: Knowledge Keepers as Public Intellects: Indigenous Perspectives Toward Nation Building and Democracy

Abstract

Often, researchers and teachers find themselves in dichotomous relations to those with whom they work, which can create power dynamics that situate “us” to “them” or “us” from “them.” If left unexamined, such dichotomizations can lead to research, teaching, and learning contexts and conditions that are dehumanizing for all involved. Thus, there is an ongoing need for more humanizing approaches to conducting educational research and teaching, ones that ask: Who are we in relation to the people with whom we work? What is the importance of being invited into relationships and seeking to sustain them?

If a primary goal of educational research and teaching is to co-create and sustain humanizing relationships with others, then what should research and teaching be and become? This question allows us to move beyond traditional notions of educational projects and toward research as Projects in Humanization (PiH). Such research integrates the multiple identities we encompass—as “researcher-as-participant-as-listener-as-advocate” —with the multiple identities of those with whom we collaborate. Specifically, the movement toward research as PiH is important if we are to engage in transformative work that advocates for agency, sovereignty, and democratic freedoms as defined by individuals and enacted within their communities. By re-framing research and teaching as processes that are co-constructed, we believe we be/become part of the story as opposed to being “experts” of the story that individuals and communities are already creating. As such, PiH is not something we do to others. Rather, it is a way of being present in the work and world that encourages us to learn from, listen to, and collaborate with people. As we engage in PiH, we co-construct relationships by questioning who we are and seek to become in relation to others in ways that impact teaching and research.

The framework privileges the co-construction of knowledge and development of relationships. The theoretical and methodological framework is based on the interdisciplinary intersections of humanizing scholarship (Greene, 2002; Paris & Winn, 2014; Tuck, 2009) and Indigenous research (Brayboy, 2006; Wilson, 2008). It emphasizes that: we are all in process; we are all becoming; and, we are all impacted by the spaces we share with others. These paradigms allow us to focus on the dialogic spiral; on (re)-storying as a process of unsilencing vulnerabilities; and on humanizing practices that critique power relations and leads to PiH. The foundation of PiH is to listen to, tell, and share stories in relation to and with others—.

In this proposed presentation, the presenter will share stories from a three-year longitudinal and ethnographic study. The data focus on how a 12th grade Native American literature teacher in an urban Southwest U.S. school emphasized the creation, development, and sustenance of relationships with students in order to support their co-development of critical consciousness. She encouraged them to co-develop the curriculum, which led to engaged discussions that questioned whose knowledges were included in schools, and whose were storied over, excluded, and silenced. The stories value humanizing approaches to teaching and research that point to dialogism, decolonization, and critical consciousness.

Author

• Timothy Jose San Pedro, The Ohio State University