Critical Inquiry for the Social Good: Methodological Work as a Means for Truth-Telling in Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session considers critical inquiry that directly engages with notions of truth-telling and social justice. Critical work necessarily situates inquiry within an assumed responsibility for the public good: one thus engages in inquiry practices in order to promote a more socially-just society. This alignment of inquiry with social justice productively challenges the use of critical, a term too easily (and simplistically) invoked in contemporary educational discourse. Given these assumptions, this session has two purposes: 1) to provocatively challenge methodological work through papers that address how inquiry might be differently “critical” if we begin from notions of truth/the good and 2) to illustrate diverse responses to truth-telling from specific inquiry traditions and consider how they intersect or depart from one another.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Qualitative Research

Chair

• Austin James Pickup, Aurora University

Papers

• Getting Intimate: The Promise and Problems of Bringing Love Into Qualitative Research - Crystal T. Laura, Chicago State University

• Illuminating Truth-Telling in Education Through Intersectional and Qualitative Research Methods - Jill Robinson

• Dropping My Anchor Here: Working With Truth Claims Within and Beyond Academia - Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University

• "I Do Activist Things Even Though I'm Nothing": Deleuze's Philosophy as Method for Critical Ethnography on Latino Youth Activists - Sophia Rodriguez, College of Charleston

Discussant

• Aaron M. Kuntz, The University of Alabama