Curriculum's Fund of Doubt: Doubled Readings of Climate Data as Messy Recursion

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Four
  In Roundtable Session: Campus Climate Research Into Curriculum Studies: Curricular Examinations of a Decade of Qualitative and Quantitative Research (Table 4)

Abstract

This paper examines qualitative data gathered through focus group interviews about institutional climate. The focus group interviews focused on experiences and perceptions of living, working, and learning environments for faculty of color at ten different colleges and universities. As Ross & Edwards (2016) and DeCuir-Gunby & Gunby (2016) note in their research, microagressions and subtle and overt discrimination still mark the experiences and perceptions of faculty of color in various educational settings. This paper investigates the concerns and issues expressed by faculty of color and their ideas for programs, services, and initiatives that might address discrimination and help improve college and university environments. Particular attention is given to themes from these interviews and examines commonalities and differences regarding the types of concerns expressed and types of recommendations offered. Following the curricular approach of doubled readings (Lather, 2012), I then read these findings against my own interpretive lenses with a particular focus on Nancy Fraser’s (1997) core state and end transformations in efforts to better understand how we might use curricular concepts to further institutionalize equitable teaching and learning theorizing and practices.

More specific, in the first move, I examine qualitative data on what faculty of color experience and perceive on college and university campuses and their sort of wish list on what they would like to know in survey research and what they would like to change to improve campus climates. In my second move, I examine my own experiences as a curriculum scholar and chief diversity officer for nearly ten years and what it means to administrate equity work in higher education. As a final move, I read these two different readings, that of the data and my own reflections, against Fraser’s invaluable justice framework that posits end state remedies produce the vary backlash and perpetuation of inequities they attempt to solve. I end with a focus on core state transformations that might put these findings to work in ways that make for more sustainable, socially just colleges and universities. I note that curriculum theorizing has much to offer climate research in terms of ways to understand data and develop action plans that reconceptualize what gets thought of when we think teaching, learning, and academic study. I note that the sort of work that’s promoted here is a challenge to repositivism and focuses on the value in messy, troubling work that reads lean quantitative research alongside thick qualitative work as part of a bigger curriculum project of self-study and reflection.


References

DeCuir-Gunby, J. T. & Gunby,N. W. (2016). Racial microagressions in the workplace: A critical analysis of the experiences of African American Educators. Urban Education, 51(4), 390-414. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916628610

Lather, P. (2012). Getting lost: Feminist efforts toward a double(d) science. State University of New York Press.

Ross, H. H. & Edwards, W. J. (2016) African American faculty expressing concerns: Breaking the silence at predominantly white research oriented universities. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(3), 461-479. DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2014.969227

Author

• Erik L. Malewski, Kennesaw State University
  Presenting Author