Black Students and Access to Education: Leaning in to Slow Methods for Counterstories

• In Event: Methodological Commitments and Refusals: Engaging Slow Methodology With Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Objectives or purposes

This paper grapples with the use of slow methodologies (Quashie, 2022) in working with co-constructing participants’ stories as a method of producing counterstories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), a tenet of Critical Race Theory (Hill-Collins, 2021). This paper comes out of a qualitative study that used CRT framing to learn from Black students’ experiences when applying to and enrolling in their first year of undergraduate studies at a predominantly white institution (PWI), that has a reputation as a prestigious university in Canada.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

The author uses Critical Race Theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) to highlight the impact of race in students’ experiences accessing post-secondary education. A central tenet of CRT includes counterstories as narratives from voices that are otherwise excluded or oppressed. In the field of education research, this includes Black students’ voices that are used for extractive purposes and (re)produced as data. In engaging with Quashie’s (2022) slow methods, the author reflects on the process of co-constructing counterstories with participants as iterative and cyclical.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

Critical theories attempt to move the needle on effecting social change and center
the voices and experiences of participants (Bhattacharya, 2017). Thus, a critical case study (Bhattacharya, 2017) was used, bound by participants’ self-identification as Black (including African and/or Carribean) and enrollment in their first year of undergraduate studies.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

Eleven Black students in first year undergraduate programs completed a survey, followed by two hour long, one-on-one participant researcher interviews. The semi-structured interviews included discussions on the process of applying to university; teachers and family who impacted decisions; resources they accessed; emotional aspects of persisting in a PWI; and the experiences of being Black on campus at a PWI. These interviews were coded thematically and participants who opted to be a part of the second phase were re-engaged in a process of meaning making, producing counterstories to share as part of the results.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

The results outline the barriers, supports, challenges and successes Black students in Canada face when attempting to access university, and persisting once enrolled. Two major themes highlighted are (1) the importance of family and community in the application, enrollment and persistence of undergraduate studies, and (2) access to information comes from informal sources outside of educational systems are more trusted. The author also points to the process of slow methods as a means for producing counterstories that illuminate students’ voices in a way that students felt best represented them. The counterstories were recorded as presentations.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

Anti-Black racism in Canada has been well documented (Cole, 2020; Dei, 1996). This paper has implications for impacting Black students’ access to post-secondary institutions, and for researchers to engage with slow methods who wish to produce counterstories. Slow methods open the possibilities around counterstories that are not a linear production, but rather a continual and constant engagement that may grow the way we think of counterstories.

Author

• Nadia Qureshi, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author