Decolonizing the "Critical": Working With Stakeholders to Dismantle Whiteness in Qualitative Education Research

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Researchers problematize the “critical” in critical qualitative research in education, examining how even well-intentioned studies may be complicit in preserving and reproducing White supremacy. Framed by Critical Race and emancipatory perspectives, four qualitative studies on anti-racist education challenge “colonial genealogies” embedded in commonly used methods and methodologies. Researchers discuss the “White Gaze” in community-engaged teacher inquiry, Sister Circles as methodology, anti-colonial analytical methods when assessing essays by AAL-speaking students, and positionality of non-Black researchers in critical qualitative inquiry. Studies underscore the disparity of “intersectional multiple perspectives” and approaches in current scholarship, and call for more explicit researchers’ reflexivity and future designs that collaborate with stakeholders in critical qualitative methodologies in education research.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Educators for Social Justice

Chair

• Rossina Zamora Liu, University of Maryland

Papers

• Unveiling the "White Gaze" in Community-Engaged Inquiry: Preservice Teachers and Communities of Color as Stakeholders - Rossina Zamora Liu, University of Maryland; Ebony Terrell Shockley, University of Maryland - College Park; Genevieve D'Cruz, University of Maryland - College Park

• The Double-Consciousness of Stakeholders: Black Women Using Sister Circle Conversations to Decolonize Qualitative Educational Research - Stephanie P. Jones, Grinnell College

• On the Case: Preparing Critical Antiracist First-Year Writing Instructors and Combating Linguicism in Predominately African American Language–Speaking Classrooms - Shenika Hankerson, University of Maryland - College Park

• Utilizing Critical Autoethnography to Interrogate the Role of Positionality in Critical Qualitative Inquiry - Alice Y Lee, University of California - Riverside

Discussant

• Marcus Croom, Indiana University - Bloomington