Toward Culturally Responsive Research Practice: Studying the Indigenous Cultures Institute Arts Program

• In Event: 16.022 - Critically Dramatic Conversations: Complications in Drama/Theater Research for Social Justice and Equity

Abstract

Scholars Michael Anderson and Kate Donelan (2009) articulate a need for more scholarship around the efficacy of arts education. They offer, “…there have been calls on researchers in arts education for at least the last two decades to generate research evidence to support some of the advocacy claims that have surrounded arts education” (166). Many arts education researchers have responded, but there is still a great need for more research in our field worldwide to provide evidence for the need for arts education. As this scholarship and different research methodologies in arts education are developed, I question how to best capture such data while honoring the subjects and the diversity of individuals and communities in which the work of arts practitioners is being done. Clearly, in applied arts, especially, the educational goals have little to do with the arts, but more about social issues, identity, and shifts in understanding leading to action. These changes are much more challenging to measure and require specific research methodologies that are mindful of and sensitive to the individuals and communities they seek to study.
The Indigenous Cultures Institute (ICI) of San Marcos, Texas, recently completed its fifth annual summer arts camp. The ICI’s summer camp is one of its many programs that seek to educate about indigenous cultures. Ultimately, through immersing youth in indigenous arts each summer, the ICI aims to inform indigenous youth of San Marcos about their heritage and ultimately disrupt the hegemonic narrative so often forwarded in public education. Each year, through and IRB-approved study, I continue to investigate the efficacy of the program to instill a sense of cultural consciousness and pride among the youth. This paper interrogates the study itself, the tools I have developed and employed, and looks at how the research methodologies, situated within a western sensibility, may reinforce rather than disrupt hegemonic practice. While the study looks at the efficacy of the program, I have not yet interrogated how the indigenous arts employed in the program specifically offer a counter narrative about their ancestry and identities to that which the youth typically encounter.

Author

• Roxanne L. Schroeder-Arce, The University of Texas - Austin