Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Research With Youth and Communities

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

As a collective of scholars, we view humanizing research as inquiry that involves the building of relationships of care and dignity and dialogic consciousness-raising for researchers and participants. Our session offers interrelated methodological discussions grounded in research with African American, Asian American, Indigenous American, Latina/o, immigrant, and undocumented youth. The papers foreground new concepts that show how research for equity with young people happens in processes of human relationship. We are concerned that longstanding efforts to make the process and product of qualitative inquiry fit into positivist notions of what research is and how it should look often silence and minimize what it is we actually do in coming to know, know about, and make change with youth and communities.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Section 5: Social Context of Research on Schools and Communities

Chair

• Django Paris, Michigan State University

Papers

• The Space Between: Listening and Story-ing as Foundations for Projects in Humanization (PiH) - Valerie F. Kinloch, The Ohio State University; Timothy Jose San Pedro, Arizona State University

• Critical for Whom? Theoretical and Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Approaches to Language Research - Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Too Close to the Work/There is Nothing Right Now - Daysi Diaz-Strong, Elgin Community College; Maria Luna Duarte, Northeastern Illinois University; Christina Gomez, Northeastern Illinois University; Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University

Discussant

• Maisha T. Winn, University of Wisconsin - Madison