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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Community-engaged research is often promoted as an alternative to extractive academic practices, Yet, it frequently reproduces power hierarchies that privilege university researchers over community members. This symposium brings together four papers that challenge these dynamics by centering intergenerational community knowledge as foundational to educational research. Drawing from Afrocentric, Chicanx, and feminist frameworks, the papers offer both conceptual and practical strategies for co-constructing research with communities in ways that resist deficit ideologies and hierarchical power structures. Two papers provide theoretical models that reframe research design through community epistemologies, while the others present tools co-developed with community members to support reciprocal, equity-oriented inquiry. In alignment with the conference theme, these papers reimagine educational research in ways that disrupt dominant relations of powers.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Envisioning an Ámà Approach in Community-engaged Research - Vaughn W.M. Watson, Michigan State University; Sandra Boateng, Michigan State University; Dominic Hateka, Michigan State University; Akinkunmi Ibrahim Oseni, Michigan State University

• A Malverde approach to research: An analysis of the redistribution of labor and resources in a participatory design music study - Yared Portillo, University of California - Berkeley

• Practicing a Moving Literacies Curriculum with Indigenous and Latinx Youth in a Migrant Education Program - Christine Seon "Sol" Rheem, Michigan State University

• Composite Narratives as Method in Intergenerational Community-Based Research - Guadalupe Barrientos, University of Pennsylvania; Jancarlos Montoya Mejia, University of Pennsylvania; Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania

Session Organizer

• Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Limarys Caraballo, Teachers College, Columbia University