Not One, but Many: A Critical Race Theory Research Team Approach to Investigate Student Experiences in Racially Diverse Settings 

• In Event: 34.043 - "Powerful, Empirically Driven, and Multimodal Narratives...and Statistics": Expanding the Reach of Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Higher education provides minimal intellectual space to fully examine what it means for education researchers of color to interrogate school policies and practices through the lenses of youth who are experiencing oppressive schooling conditions. Using critical race theory, the authors conceptualize what it means for researchers of color to conduct research focused on school context with students of color with whom they share similar histories, communities, and experiences with racism in education. The authors believe that “Critical race theory offers the researcher an opportunity to stand in a different relationship to the research (and researched)” (Ladson-Billings, 2000, p. 268). The research team consisted of two African American women, one Latina, one Korean man, and one Hmong woman. Four of the five research team members are bilingual: two speak Spanish and English, one speaks Hmong and English, and one member purposefully code-switches between academic English and African American Vernacular English. Additionally, all of the researchers have past lives as teachers in K-12 schools and, at the time of the study, lived in the same neighborhoods as the student participants who participated in the intra-district enrollment programs. Each of the researchers shared similar K-12 education experiences as a student with our participants. The similarity of experiences shows the intransient nature of racism in institutions of higher learning. Through multiple examples the researchers discuss how their ontological and epistemological perspectives shaped their experiences in the field. Additionally, the authors explore the merits of using CRT to conduct race-based research as a multi-racial team of scholars who validate and challenge each other’s assumptions and perceptions of our own and other groups.
Using data from a research project focused on how racially marginalizes students experience predominately White high schools, the authors explore the challenges inherent in studying familiar contexts and youth with whom we share similar schooling experiences. The study took place in five high schools in four suburban districts that share borders with a Midwest metropolitan area. In order to substantiate the findings through the voices of students of color, the data collection consisted of twenty-two focus group interviews of four and five students, with 90 students of color (Delgado, 2000; Delgado Bernal, 2002; Fernandez, 2002). The racial breakdown of the students included sixty-six African American, six Latino, and six Asian American, six White/ Black bi-racial, one bi-racial Asian American/ Black, one Asian American/ White bi-racial, one Indian American, one Black/ Native American bi-racial, and one multi-racial student. In part, the disproportionate number of African American students reflects the racial percentages within the larger metropolitan district and the schools that participate in the open enrollment and inter-district desegregation busing programs. To provide greater avenues for muted voices to be heard and acknowledged, methodological spaces must be expanded so that the power and complexities of race-based research, as instruments to prevent static, deficit representation of cultures, communities, and people, can be more deeply investigated as tools for creating racial justice in education.

Authors

• Thandeka K. Chapman, University of California - San Diego

• Nicholas Daniel Hartlep, Metropolitan State University

• Tatiana Joseph, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

• May Vang, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater

• Talonda Michelle Lipsey, Edgewood College