Black Girl Choosing: A Methodology of Care, Collaboration, and Refusal

• In Event: Journeying From Home to Everywhere: Centering Black Girls and Women Across Learning Environments

Abstract

Objective:
The fields of Black Girlhood Studies and Education have examined the various ways Black girls navigate compulsory school settings that uphold anti-black policies (Brown, 2013; Kelly, 2021) and perpetuate misogynoir (Bailey, 2018). This paper builds on that research by focusing on the methodological lessons that Black girls and women offer us when sharing their stories and engaging as collaborators and co-researchers. This paper theorizes these methodological lessons as a methodology of Black girl choosing, a methodology which attends to critical ways Black girls and women frame their practices of consent and refusal as students, learners, and research collaborators on studies exploring the learning experiences of Black girls and women.

Theoretical Framework:
Black girl choosing is a methodological approach of inviting Black girls and women into participatory research as collaborators and co-researchers whose unique knowledge and skills generously influence the trajectory and outcomes of research studies. Building from Black and Indigenous theories of consent and refusal (Simpson, 2007; Simpson, 2014; Shange, 2019), a methodology of Black girl choosing encourages research designed with a relational notion of consent in mind, and therefore invites ethnographic, among other, methodological refusals.

Methods and Data:
Working with three groups of Black girls and women (ages 15-32) over the course of one year, I utilized arts-based (Barone & Eisner, 2012), participatory action (Fals-Borda, 1991), and humanizing ethnographic research methods (Paris & Winn, 2014). Data sources include one-on-one interviews with research collaborators, field notes from group sessions, and samples of collaborators’ art work created throughout the study.

Results/Substantiated Conclusions:
Throughout this study, as my research collaborators and I met to check in and discuss our educational experiences, our practice of collective care and ongoing acts of choosing each other in our shared learning helped us to imagine more justice-based learning settings and experiences for Black girls. In turn, through a methodological practice of Black girl choosing, we are able to observe how Black girls’ and women’s learning experiences influence their practices of consent and refusal. I found that by engaging this methodological approach, participants in this study enacted ethnographic refusals as project collaborators/co-researchers and utilized their agency in these roles to influence the design and direction of the study because they understood consent as a practice of relationality and responsibility. Further, I found that this relational form of consent guides the research by centering the needs, hopes, and desires of the study collaborators and necessarily differs from how consent is framed by the Internal Review Board and the limited scope of protections and respect it offers participants.

Scholarly Significance:
A methodology of Black girl choosing reminds us that research with and for Black girls must be a practice of care and a commitment to disrupt, not replicate the harm Black girls often experience in schools. This work is part of the growing body of asset-based research about Black girls and can be used to help bring about more justice-based learning experiences for Black girls.

Author

• Jazmen Moore, Stony Brook University - SUNY