Disrupting and Subverting Researcher Knowledge Through Storytelling in a Community-Based Partnership

• In Event: Processes of Partnering: Local Development of Methods to Democratize Knowledge Production in Research on Learning

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper we report on the arrangement of our community research partnership and the routines we developed to reorganize the process of producing knowledge in research on learning. Specifically our partnership designed a series of seven workshops to support two objectives: 1) defining the role of community educators; and 2) analyzing data to produce findings for the partnership.

Theoretical Perspective
Goals of research community partnerships vary, but characterizing the relationship as a partnership should “extend the notion of the so-called ‘expert’ to encompass a wider range of stakeholders” (Dimitriadis, 2008). Core to producing knowledge in partnership involves jointly developing research questions and designing interventions. However the process of developing codes and analyzing data, a fundamental function of authoring new knowledge, often remains an exclusive activity of researchers. We employed storytelling as a central aspect of developing codes to introduce “the possibility for undoing…[or] subversion” within the process of constructing research findings (Clandinin, 2010).

Methods and Data
Our partnership included nine Latina/o community educators and a White researcher. We studied learning in an afterschool science program organized to transform learning experiences of young people historically underrepresented within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic (STEM) disciplines. The partnership focused on developing a deeper understanding of the pedagogical expertise in a material-rich science workshop in a predominantly Latina/o farming community. Embedded within an ethnographic project, our data sources include observations, documents, and audio recordings of interaction from a 3-month workshop series.

Results
Community educators re-directed research and categories of understanding through this process. From the outset, educators expressed a mistrust of researchers based on a history of researchers spending “a few hours” at their program and then authoring papers about their space. This concern guided several decisions throughout the 3-year partnership. First, the partnership shifted focus from splitting time equally between two research sites to spending more time in one site. Second, the lead researcher and the lead educator designed a process for demystifying coding and data analysis through jointly organized professional development workshops. Third, within these workshops, we used storytelling to privilege community expertise in the development of research codes and demystify the research process for educators not trained in research methodologies. Hearing stories of risk, urgency and purpose served to disrupt the researcher’s outsider and White gaze in the analysis of the data. Specifically educator stories created an unofficial space that deepened the emphasis placed on histories of marginalization as central to the educator-led design of the program.

The partnership designed joint activity to meet community and research needs. The workshops had three main objectives: to demystify research analysis, create new routines to co-construct findings, and defining the role of the educators within community. To reach this final goal we produced a pamphlet using themes from our research analysis to communicate with parents, schools, and the city about the value of their program.

Significance
This case highlights the need to interrogate and reorganize the normative power relations that often dictate authoring research findings.

Authors

• Molly Victoria Shea, San Francisco State University

• José Sandoval, Environmental Science Workshop