A Curriculum Experiment: Cultivating Research Practices That Advance the Social Justice Aims of Educational Research

• In Event: Tales of Two Institutions: Social Justice Teaching Confronts Contradictions of “Student Success” in Higher Education

Abstract

I am in total agreement with the view that, “Instructors of qualitative inquiry play an important role in framing methodological dialogues and cultivating research practices that advance the social justice aims of educational research” (Carducci, Pasque, Kuntz, & Contreras-McGavin, (2013, p.3). The principles of: Connected Learning Theory (Ito, Gutierrez et al., 2013), conceptual decolonization (Wiredu, 1995), Ubuntu (Murove, 2014), the developmental university (Fredua-Kwarteng, 2017), and Participatory Action Research (PAR)—as both a methodology and an attitude—frame me as I frame the paper.

I participated as a researcher/evaluator/instructor in an experimental summer interdisciplinary course designed to train undergraduate and graduate students to design research that uses PAR as the modus operandi. Adams (2010) reminded me that: Because action research can embrace natural and social science methods of scholarship, its use is not limited to either positivist or heuristic approaches. It is, as John Dewey pointed out, an attitude of inquiry rather than a single research methodology (p. 5).

In addition, the course coming out of a grant, focused on issues related to social justice and student success in a higher education institution that was being modeled as a national success. Carducci, Pasque, Kuntz and Contreras-McGavin (2013) motivated me to “demystify the process of research training” (p. 21). And so, given the focus of the course on social justice and the use of a critical research methodology, there are possible major implications for and value to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) that the tends to be overlooked and devalued in the academic community (Leibowitz & Bozalek, 2015) but can make significant contributions to the understanding of social justice issues. Quality teaching and learning of qualitative research methodologies in higher education is important because it allows the recipients to do scholarly work that is ethical, rigorous, authentic and of significance to their disciplines and the communities. However, more importantly, given the current and ongoing “politics of inquiry” (Baez & Boyles, 2009) there is need for greater attention to be paid to a diversity of social and educational issues and the challenges faced in doing research that has as its focus the issue of social justice and student success. Students need to be cognizant of the attitudes to inquiry that govern the choices they make about designing, implementing and representing their research work and scholarship. What therefore are the imagined possibilities (Author, 2009) of a social justice approach to PAR and the possible contributions to a more developmental university community? “The concept of the developmental university can be described as an academic establishment dedicated to making a direct and indirect contribution to all aspects of a society's development” (Fredua-Kwarteng, 2017). The outcome of the content and document analysis of the historical documents, students’ responses to the course and the various aspects of the curriculum, will enable us to ascertain and describe fully the extent to which the course process facilitated student growth and understanding of what it means to be and become a critical research methodologist within this context.

Author

• Janice B. Fournillier, Georgia State University