Undergraduate Scholars as Intermediaries: Negotiated Questioning as Transformational Resistance

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Getting to the Station: Mobility, Community, and Collaboration in Higher Education Research

Abstract

In this youth participatory action research inquiry, we highlight the experiences of undergraduates of Color examining issues of systemic and individual racism in their educational contexts. These educational issues have historically and continually polarize the United States. Yet, less work has been done to examine these issues with and alongside undergraduate researchers who are also preservice teachers of Color, whose lived experiences position them as experts intermediaries between and among varied educational stakeholders. We conceptualize these intermediaries and ethnographers as griot, who hold powerful possibility as go-betweens their communities and practitioners, researchers, and policy makers. Our findings, from three years of our collective and coalitional research, suggest that suchYPAR inquiries hold powerful possibilities.

Authors

• Vaughn W.M. Watson, Michigan State University

• Rae L. Oviatt, Eastern Michigan University

• Terry Kyle Flennaugh, Michigan State University