Envisioning an Ámà Approach in Community-engaged Research

• In Event: Disrupting Deficit Logics: Centering Community Knowledge in the Design of Educational Research

Abstract

Authors have examined the urgency in community-engaged research of partners leading the learning (Farrell et al., 2023); of sustaining relational partnerships with multiethnic and multilingual youth across contemporary times of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial violence (Staufert-Reyes et al., 2022); and of envisaging community-engaged research that affirms the “schooling desires” of multiethnic youth (Marciano et al., 2024, p. 425). In this conceptual essay, we extend research that increasingly centers relationality, care, and collaboration in community-engaged research with immigrant communities (e.g., Ghiso & Campano, 2024; Ghiso et al., 2024; Kwon et al., 2025). We develop an innovative approach to community-engaged research with immigrant children and youth in multilingual contexts, necessary in these times of anti-Black, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy: an Ámà approach.

To conceptualize an Ámà approach approach, we identify insights drawn from an ongoing analysis of our dataset of research and teaching with youth in Lit Diaspora / Youth Design, a multi-year participatory initiative, where we meet weekly with multilingual African immigrant children and youth, teaching and learning with youth’s community-situated data practices. Specifically, we examine (ongoing) more than 60 hours of weekly teaching and learning with youth and community educators, more than 100 artifacts of youth’s participatory research practices, and more than 50 reflection memos authored by adult members of the university-based research team. We undertook this examining as an “interepistemic synergy,” described by Wandera (2020) as engaging “tools for analyzing data on language and literacy … sourced from both Western(ized) epistemic conceptualizations and non-Western or indigenous epistemic conceptualizations” (p. 645). Moreover, with intentionality in developing the Ámà approach, we assert the interplay of African and Chicana feminist ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies (Adu-Poku, 2001; Chilisa & Ntseane).

We thus recall the immersive cultural-art installation of artist Emeka Ogboh – “Ámà: The Gathering Place,” a re-envisioning of the atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art. In composing the installation, Ogboh crafted and interlaid sculpture shaped to resemble iroko trees in village squares in Igbo communities in southeast Nigeria; handwoven akwétè cloth colored terracotta red, warm brown, and golden yellow; and rhythmic sounds of Igbo folk singers evoking choral call and response. In the Igbo language spoken in Nigeria, where Ogboh was born and continues to work, “Ámà” embodies meanings including “village square[...] a mutable space, often centred around a large tree, that is used for local government, markets, rituals and all manner of social activities. In a region with a strong oral tradition, it is also a place for listening: a site where young people are instructed, where values are instilled and where history and culture is transmitted. (Trigg, 2021, para. 12)

Informed by our dataset, the Ámà as a cultural artifact, and relevant research literature, we discuss two complementary stances of an Ámà approach in community-engaged research: prioritizing intergenerational, communal mentoring; and affirming and extending cultural and linguistic identities. We conclude with implications for research communities, teacher educators, and educators.

Authors

• Vaughn W.M. Watson, Michigan State University

• Sandra Boateng, Michigan State University

• Dominic Hateka, Michigan State University

• Akinkunmi Ibrahim Oseni, Michigan State University