Critical Race Praxis for Educational Research in Constricting Institutional Contexts

• In Event: Critical Race Praxis Across Multiple Educational Contexts: Expanding the Possibilities for Racial Justice Work

Abstract

Critical Race Praxis for Educational Research (CRP-Ed) is rooted in CRT and is based on the foundational theorizing of Critical Race Praxis (CRP) by legal scholar Yamamoto (1997). In the last decade, critical race scholars/practitioners (Croom & Marsh, 2006; Zamani-Gallaher, O’Neil Green, Brown, & Author of Paper 1, 2009; Author of Paper 1, 2006) have incorporated CRP in the field of education. To further support the application of CRP, Author and Author (2015) put forth the CRP-Ed lens to expand the possibilities in educational research and practice. By foundationally drawing from Yamamoto (1997), the tenets of CRP-Ed (described below) integrate the authors’ interdisciplinary perspectives and advocacy experiences across secondary and postsecondary education sectors, as well as the theoretical contributions of Freire (1970), Gramsci (1971), Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva (2008), and Bell (1980), amongst others.

1) Relational advocacy toward mutual engagement, asserts the importance of multiple counterstories to challenge dominant narratives across multiple spheres of influence (e.g., policy debate and public consciousness/debate), and collective reflection/leveraging across different positionalities (e.g., community members, students and teachers, educational researchers, political lawyers) and within and across intersectional identities and power relations.

2) Redefining dominant and hegemonic systems requires a commitment to naming the world and the word in order to transform it (Freire, 1970), while consistently cultivating a critical consciousness that informs the application of theory to practice. Naming the context of oppression includes understanding different resistances and their co- optations; it entails an iterative process that requires redefining the context once it adapts to the resistance, in order to continue to challenge oppressive policies and practices.

3) Research as a dialectical space acknowledges the racist legacy of White research and methods (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008), and requires a commitment to interrupting the assumption of research as neutral and objective.

4) Critical engagement with policy calls for strategic advocacy within the policy context that involves an understanding of the dynamics of interest convergence constriction and expansion (Bell, 1980); by both recognizing when interest convergence expansion is happening and to see that this expansion can be leveraged to advance more just policies and practices.

The presenters will share the ways in which they utilized CRP–Ed within their own constricting institutional contexts (e.g. seventh grade classroom & masters level university course, respectively) while also highlighting how they embraced the contradictions and tensions alongside their students. CRP-Ed supported strategically leveraging our collective knowledge demonstrating how the tensions and contradictions were mutually beneficial for countering oppression across multiple contexts. They do so by sharing,

1) The problem students named in their context/community
2) The collective action students and teacher/professor engaged with
3) The transformations/solutions that were cultivated at each site of resistance (e.g. seventh grade gardening elective approved by school board & student Activist Manifesto in collaboration with and in support of Black Student Union demands for racial justice on college campus.)

Presenters will conclude with illustrating how engaging with CRP-Ed supported strategically leveraging their collective knowledge in order to contribute toward the advancement of racial justice.

Authors

• Uma Madhure Jayakumar, University of California - Riverside

• Annie S. Adamian, California State University - Chico