Vanishing: Storying Educational Research

• In Event: Mobilizing Traditional Methods for Transformational Ends: Subversive Possibilities When Combining Critical Frameworks and Conventional Methodologies

Abstract

The past four decades have been marked by critical turns across the social sciences dedicated to examining power, particularly along raced and gendered lines, in our research contexts and methodologies (Erickson, 2011). Although Black and Indigenous histories reveal the centrality of U.S. schooling as a mechanism for subordination (Adams, 1995; Sojoyner, 2017; Spring, 2001) and fervent resistance (Anderson, 1988; McCarty, 2002; White, 2015), Ladson-Billings and Tate’s (1994) introduction of critical race theory in education marked a turning point from which race was taken up by the field as “an analytic tool for understanding school inequity” (p. 48). Since, derivations and extensions of critical race theory have developed to center various groups including disabled (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013), Native (Brayboy, 2005), Latinx (Haney Lopez, 1998), and Asian communities (Chang, 1999). Shortly after the introduction of critical race theory in education, Smith (1999/2012) published the ground-breaking Decolonizing Methodologies. Looking directly at the harm research inflicted upon Indigenous peoples under European imperialism, Smith developed an alternative research paradigm centered on self-determination. Smith’s call has been taken up fervently in education by scholars working in Indigenous education (McCarty, 2002), school push-out (Tuck, 2012), the school-prison nexus (Vaught, 2011), and land-based education (Marin & Bang, 2016) among others. As this brief recounting demonstrates, rigorous and nuanced scholarship has been written to guide educational researchers dedicated to disrupting inequity through research grounded in anti-colonial praxis. Thanks to diligent work across the field, scholars have a wealth of resources to support these aims in research design, fieldwork, and analysis (Ali & McCarty, 2020; Brayboy et al., 2012; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015; Paris & Winn, 2013). This paper contributes to the conversation by focusing on the final stages of the research process: reporting and teaching.

Responding to this gap, I introduce what I call research stories, which are fictionalized representations that animate our driving research questions and most significant findings. I argue that research stories are an example of equity-centered, anti-colonial research praxis that advances the teaching and learning goals of educational research. To begin, I explore the conceptual terrain (Bell, 1992; DuBois, 1911; Hartman, 2019) in which research stories are situated. There, I define the idea of research stories, recount its intellectual genealogy, examine how stories teach, and close with an argument for the particular utility of story for educational research questions. There, I argue for the particular value of research stories in exploring issues of racial and gendered power in education. Then, I present “Vanishing,” a research story that invites readers into a world like ours where, with the help of the uncanny, we explore questions of race, power, and schooling. “Vanishing” asks how schooling operates as a process of removal for Black youth. In particular, “Vanishing” helps readers explore the way our current understanding of diversity has created elite schools whose prestige depends, in part, on the presence of Black bodies but not Black futures. Following the research story, I conclude with a discussion of how research stories can be used in our work.

Author

• Kyle M. Halle-Erby, University of California - Los Angeles