Narrowing the Distance: Toward a Framework for Community-Responsive Inquiry and Theorizing

• In Event: "Never-Finished Justice Situations": New Directions for Critical Race Praxis in Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives and Research Questions
In Pedagogy of Indignation (2004) Paulo Freire writes how educators, “must make an effort, humbly so, to narrow the distance between what we say and what we do as much as possible” (p. 21). As educators working across various spaces spanning four decades, a noticeable tension involves how and what the work looks like on the ground. In other words, the distance between what some education scholars say and do is concerningly expansive. Using grounded theory, this paper takes up Freire’s assertion to examine the role of action for educators committed to justice alongside communities they serve. Research questions included:

In what ways do educators enact action in their teaching and practice?
How does a critical action framework better inform how educators serve the communities they are accountable to?
How might a critical action framework support the necessary reflexive task of educators themselves?

Theory
Theories guiding this paper included critical race studies (Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995; Solórzano, 1998), Ethnic Studies pedagogies (Author; Sleeter, 2001), critical pedagogy (Freire, 2001) and community responsive literacies (Author). Together, these frameworks provide a point of departure to consider “action” as both an analytic and lens applicable to critical education research and critical race praxis.

Methods/Data Sources
Data consisted of semi-structured interviews, analytic memos, and analyses of artifacts of members of two educator activist spaces: Pin@y Educational Partnerships (PEP) and the People’s Education Movement (People’s) in San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively.
PEP is an Ethnic Studies service learning program connecting universities, public schools, and the community providing ways for students and teachers to respond to community issues and systemic problems. People’s is a decolonial and multi-racial educator space that centers wellness to create liberatory spaces in and beyond classrooms. To strengthen the validity of our research, we engaged in a cross-case collaborative analysis (Khan & VanWynsberghe, 2008) and explored the diverse ways teachers and students engaged in action. Supplementary data including teachers’ curriculum and students’ journals supported the main findings and subsequent research framework that emerged.


Findings and Significance
This study works to advance the possibilities and potential of centering action in scholar activism. Building on this applied work that centers transformational resistance and action, we name the following framework of Community Responsive Inquiry and Theorizing or CritAction (Community Responsive Inquiry and Theorizing): 1) Community - Centering the context, places, and space of the people and communities you serve, especially those historically marginalized; 2) Responsive - Engaging in responsive and humanizing education through a problem-posing praxis; 3) Inquiry - Drawing from principles of participatory action research to guide all inquiries of and for marginalized communities; and 4) Theorizing - Honoring the knowledges and theorizing of marginalized communities, their ancestors, and understanding the complex relationality of the work; 5) Action - Putting CRIT into action, specifically projects, practices, and pedagogy that aim to serve the needs of marginalized communities. Through the engaged scholarship of PEP and People’s, we found that a CritAction framework can be applied to multiple education contexts and spaces.

Authors

• Edward R. Curammeng, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University

• Daniel Gilbert Solorzano, University of California - Los Angeles