Is Race a Factor? An Analysis of a Frame Clash in Black Studies

• In Event: From Deficit Discourse to Educational Resource: Using Discourse Analysis to Make Visible Difference and Diversity as Valued Resources

Abstract

Over the past decade, higher education populations have become increasingly globalized and diverse, foregrounding the need to review General Education curriculum to see how diverse student literacies can be supported and utilized. Researchers have called for higher education to address critical thinking, problem-solving, and writing and to develop methods for assessing said skills (Aloi, Gardner & Lusher, 2003; Maki, 2001). This study heeds these calls by examining “criticality” in a General Education, Black Studies course entitled History of Jazz, which fulfilled a diversity requirement for undergraduate students.
Grounded in the framework of academic literacies of New Literacy Studies, criticality is theorized in this study as critical literacy practices situated within issues of identity and institutional relationships of power and authority in higher education (Lea & Street, 1998). As a facet of academic literacies, engaging students in developing criticality in which they co-construct arguments and problematize curriculum represents an important critical literate practice.
From the initial class meeting, the instructor emphasized student voice or agency in an effort to develop criticality. Over time, as the instructor, teaching assistant, and students co-constructed shared ways of knowing, being and doing that constitute classroom life (Green & Wallat, 1981), students learned to problematize the course curriculum. An interactional ethnographic approach was used to analyze video, making visible a frame clash that marked criticality (Green, Skukauskaite, Dixon, Córdova, 2007). A frame clash can serve as a rich point, a practice outside the norms and expectations of classroom life (Agar, 1994). In this frame clash, a White student raised questions about how the textbook utilized in the course portrayed race, asking, “Does the author dismiss the White bands since there are only a few paragraphs about them? Were they not important to the development of jazz? Or was it the author’s bias?” These questions sparked a discussion around race as students presented arguments for whether White bands should be included in a Black Studies course. This frame clash led the researcher to inquire about students’ thoughts about race, development of criticality, access to the curriculum, and opportunities for learning.
To answer these questions, it was important to look at how the instructor initially framed the goals of this Black Studies course to understand the students’ take-up of the curriculum. Therefore, the students’ discussion of race can be seen as situated in the larger context of the course and within institutional relationships of power and authority. What analysis made visible was the process by which students developed criticality around how race was presented in the curriculum and what opportunities for learning were afforded when they did so.
This study holds implications for administrators and educators seeking to empower and cultivate students’ multiple literacies around social justice issues in the context of higher education courses. An interactional ethnographic approach makes visible what counts as literacy, curriculum, diversity, and in particular, Black Studies as well as what learning opportunities are afforded when such facets of General Education classroom life are negotiable.

Author

• Jacqueline Marie Reid, University of California - Santa Barbara