Critical Podcast Methodologies: Radical Social Studies Pedagogies in Teacher Education

• In Event: Educational Sound Studies and Sonic Pedagogies: Tales From the Field

Abstract

In response to the AERA 2023 “Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth” call (Milner 2022), and drawing on consequential education research in qualitative methods (Denzen & Lincoln, 2018), art-based research (Finley, 2018), and sound studies (Gershon, & Appelbaum, P. M., 2020), this paper shares a literature review influencing how alternate forms of media and sound combine with dialogue to offer both research methods and pedagogical tools for building nuanced analysis of truths and decision-making. It addresses this through one author’s dissertation research in podcast methodologies and pedagogies: a complex interdisciplinary bricolage (Denzen & Lincoln, 2018) methodology of qualitative art-based research: Critical Podcast Methodology (CPM). CPM challenges hierarchies of oppression and traditional research aims by instead emphasizing "research" as cultivating cogenerated knowledges and relationships for transformative justice. CPM, striving towards critically questioning “truth” and power structures, incorporates both Critical Race Theory and Indigenous research methodologies practices, i.e., counter-narratives (Ladson-Billings, 1998) and The Dialogic Spiral (San Pedro & Kinloch, 2017), and this paper explores CPM utilized in the context of teacher education in a social studies methods course rooted in critically interrogating historical truths (Ross, 2014, 2017; Merchant, Shear, and Au, 2022).

While podcasts are present in academia, their use as a research methodology is largely absent. The purpose of this paper is present CPM as a possible methodology and pedagogical tool to fill this absence by developing podcasts as a critical arts-inquiry research methodology, concurrently emphasizing an integral scholarly-activist, transformative justice component. As an emergent research, CPM also has potential in (re)examining research practices and methods through critical arts-inquiry by emphasizing coalition building and mutual aid with diverse communities, thereby explicit as a research method rooted in humanizing, opportunity centered projects of impactful consequence. CPM’s intentional emphasis of voice is a strategy that differentiates it from traditional written texts, instead nurturing the listening of the lived realities and emotions of others as “hearing the emotion and tone in a speaker’s voice may evoke different affective engagements between the audience and the research content” (Kincaid et al., 2020, p.2). Furthermore, the medium of podcasting itself coincides with public pedagogy, and thus contributes to the continually evolving democratic practice of democratization (Amin, 2001; Giroux, 2004), in which more spaces and resources of academia can be leveraged and liberated for communities and social activism.

The paper concludes with a presentation of how CPM manifests as a Critical Social Studies Question Bridge in the teacher research context of a social studies methods course for pre-service elementary school teachers at a land grant university in what is known as the Pacific Northwest. This question bridge has created an ongoing dialogue spanning several semesters of pre-service teachers, and has helped show lines of inquiry, concern, and camaraderie among the new teacher community. This research is timely given the need for better understanding and navigating the hyper-political landscape educators face, especially in the context of social studies, as well as helping to highlight potential ways to further develop teacher education programs through direct and collaborative student-teacher action.

Authors

• Brandon Edwards-Schuth, Washington State University
  Presenting Author

• John J. Lupinacci, Washington State University
  Presenting Author