Enhancing the Experiences of Black Women in Higher Education via Participatory Action Research Counter-Spaces

• In Event: Leading and Learning About Equity, Diversity, and Social Justice

Abstract

Although Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) has been cited as a means to cultivate more equitable systems in education, its potential has not been fully realized as a mechanism to enhance the experiences of minoritized cultural groups in U.S. higher education. As outsiders within academia who are multiplicatively marginalized, Black women’s engagement in CPAR demonstrates potential to address this gap. In this conceptual paper I introduce an emancipatory social project embedded in a research methodology known as a Participatory Action Research Counterspace (PARC). After situating the proposed methodology in existing literature, I describe a PARC study involving a group of Black women students, faculty, and administrators at the same predominantly White institution (PWI) to define the contours of the methodology.

Authors

• Nicole M. West, Missouri State University

• Michele D. Smith, Missouri State University

• Ashley Payne, Missouri State University