Chicana/Latina Undergraduate Pensadoras y Plàticantes in Higher Education

• In Event: Co-Constructing Truth(s) With Latinx Research Collaborators Through the Chicana/Latina Feminist Methodology of Pláticas

Abstract

Objectives: This paper draws from individual and group pláticas conducted with 15 Chicana/Latina undergraduate students to consider how collective and collaborative co-construction of knowledge was conducted alongside college students. The intent of this paper is three-fold. First, this paper considers how the researcher engaged Chicana/Latina undergraduates as collaborators through pláticas. Second, this paper highlights how pláticas served as a method that facilitates insight into multiple truths rooted in students’ lived experiences within higher education. Third, this paper explored how the collaboration within pláticas advances a Chicana/Latina Undergraduate as Pensadoras framework within higher education scholarship.

Theoretical Framework: This paper draws from critical race feminist epistemologies and methodologies that braid together critical race theory, Latina/o critical race theory, and Chicana/Latina feminisms. I apply these frameworks to consider how race and racism and intersecting systems of marginality underlie the everyday experiences of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States by reckoning with racial realism and the critiques of colonial and eurocentric knowledge production in educational research (Delgado Bernal et al., 2018). In this analysis, I build on Gonzalez’s (2001), Mexicanas as Pensadoras, an epistemological approach rooted in CRT and LatCrit epistemologies, which centers on young Mexicana women’s ways of knowing. I offer an epistemological approach within higher education that centers Chicana/Latina undergraduate students as pensadoras and necessary collaborators in higher education research.

Methods & Data Sources: As a methodological exploration, this paper centers pláticas as the method and point of inquiry. In particular, I consider how the pláticas method with 15 undergraduate pláticantes engaged in the second principle of pláticas as outlined by Fierros and Delgado Bernal (2016), which calls for pláticas to honor participants as co-constructors of knowledge. This analysis draws from three individual pláticas with each student (45 total) and two group pláticas focused on discussing emergent codes from the individual pláticas.

Findings: I discuss four ways pláticas serve as a tool for centering collaborative thought and knowledge construction with Chicana/Latina undergraduates. First, pláticas require that power, traditionally situated solely within the researcher in eurocentric research paradigms, be shifted and shared among the undergraduate pláticantes. Second, pláticas were applied in this research study by prioritizing and centering the realities and experiences of the undergraduate pláticantes, allowing the undergraduate pláticante to center what is important to them during the pláticas. Third, pláticantes brought their whole selves - racial, cultural, gendered, and linguistic diversity - to the pláticas, which shaped how they engaged, experienced, and contributed to the pláticas. Lastly, the group pláticas served as a space of collective meaning-making where emergent codes from the individual pláticas were further discussed and developed among the pláticantes and educational researchers.

Significance: When educational research inquiry is rooted in critical race feminist epistemologies and liberatory methodologies like pláticas, Chicana/Latina undergraduates are positioned as pensadoras and contributors to our collective liberation within higher education systems.

Author

• Brianna R. Ramirez, University of California - San Diego
  Presenting Author