Platicando y Mapeando: Toward a Chicana/Latina Feminista Geographic Information System Methodology in Educational Research

• In Event: Chicana/Latina Feminista Pláticas in Educational Research: Methodological Considerations and Tensions

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to present a new multimethod methodology for educational researchers who critically engage geographic lenses and tools, like geographic information systems (GIS), to interrogate issues of race, space, and educational (in)opportunity. Within the fields of geography and GIS, there is an inherent power differential in the map-making process that has been widely overlooked. Accordingly, this paper proposes the Chicana/Latina feminista GIS methodology of platicando y mapeando to disrupt the relations of power embedded in the research process (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016) and to honor students as co-cartographers of their educational and spatial realities. Merging pláticas and GIS to surface a Chicana/Latina feminista GIS methodology reveals the possibility of map-making that refuses masculinist “God’s eye” portraits of the world, and instead insists on maps from the “ground” (Vélez & Solórzano, 2017), anchored in the relational and lived experiences of Communities of Color.

Theoretical Framework: This paper draws on Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE) (Delgado Bernal, 1998) and Critical Race Spatial Analysis (CRSA) (Vélez & Solórzano, 2017) to conceptualize the multimethod methodology of platicando y mapeando. CFE is an epistemological framework in educational research that questions notions of objectivity and involves research participants in the meaning-making process of research. CRSA is an explanatory framework and methodological approach that accounts for the role of race and racism in geographic and social spaces and grounds the map-making process in the lived experiences of Students and Communities of Color.

Methods & Data Sources: To formulate this methodology, the researchers drew on the methodology of pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), the tool of GIS, and secondary data from the American Community Survey (ACS). This methodology was first used with 16 rural Latinx high school students. Following the first plática with students, the researchers extracted secondary data from the ACS to map relevant variables consistent with students’ educational and spatial realities in GIS software. These maps were then introduced to students during the second plática to solicit their critical expertise as co-cartographers. Students’ insight led to the creation of an updated set of maps.

Findings: A platicando y mapeando methodology offers the following principles to educational researchers: (1) honor students as co-cartographers, (2) ground secondary data and maps in the lived experiences of Students of Color, and (3) heal collective wounds about educational and spatial inequities. These principles challenge traditional practices of objectivity and neutrality entrenched in the field of GIS and embrace a more subjective and gendered understanding of knowledge construction and map creation. Students’ identities and spatialities were privileged in the overall research design and in the map-making process in particular to identify and examine inequities in their communities.

Significance: The Chicana/Latina feminista GIS methodology of platicando y mapeando offers educational researchers with an iterative methodological approach to challenge dominant power relations in fields like GIS and in the overall research process by employing pláticas as a complementary method that relies on principles of reciprocity, vulnerability, and researcher reflexivity. The significance of this methodology lies in its critical, iterative, and multimethod approach to map-making in educational research.

Authors

• Mayra Puente, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Verónica Nelly Vélez, Western Washington University