“Our Streets (Too)”: The Role of Organizing Scholarship in Community-Based Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining Community-Based Educational Research

Abstract

We posit our critical reflections on our community-based research to situate the praxis of “organizer scholars” with youth and communities. As Black organizer scholars, we are a part of our research spaces as community members, fem/mentors, organizers, and researchers. Yet, we understand that we are in the university and structures that further perpetuate colonial relationships with communities (Patel, 2014; Villenas, 1996). We argue one way to transform these relationships is through “organizer scholarship”. We utilize the tenets of activist scholarship (Davis et al., 2019) to frame our discussion and critical reflections about our own organizer scholar praxis, and how this centers justice, is accountable, and wrestles with the tensions that arise when committed to the work of social transformation.

Authors

• Naomi Mae W., University of Wisconsin - Madison

• David C. Turner III, University of California, Los Angeles