Reflections on Positionality: A Call Toward Reimagining Roles, Responsibilities, and Relationships in Research

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

While positionality statements open the theoretical and methodological space in which to engage the ethics of doing research with and for diverse communities, they also run the risk of becoming a mere box-checking exercise for researchers. Taking these ideas as a point of departure, the papers in this session interrogate and problematize conventional practices around the writing of positionality statements in order to invite new ways of taking up positionality, reflexivity, and relationality in educational research. Collectively, the examples offered herein demonstrate the ways in which critical engagement with positionality can expand the boundaries of political and ethical engagement in our scholarship.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 6: Inquiry in the Social Context of Education

Chair

• Christopher Jadallah, University of California - Los Angeles

Papers

• Position, Positionality, and Relationality in Education Research - Cati V. de los Rios, University of California - Berkeley; Leigh Patel, University of Pittsburgh

• Our Spatial Orientations: The Case for Unearthing Where We Know from through Anti-Displacement Epistemologies - Kaleb Germinaro, University of Illinois at Chicago

• The power and possibilities of positioning enacted - Mildred Boveda, Pennsylvania State University; Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

• Being a Good Visitor: Relational Research and Responsibilities to Land - Christopher Jadallah, University of California - Los Angeles

Discussant

• Amanda R. Tachine, University of Oregon