Arts Research and Decolonizing/Humanizing Research Methods

• In Event: Out-of-School-Time Youth Arts Programs: What Are the Big Juicy Questions?

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:
This paper explores how OST organizational leaders, teaching-artists, and the youth they serve can join the research process as co-constructors. The motivation behind this was to center the voices and onto-epistemological perspectives of marginalized voices. We intentionally identified BIPOC organizations that were led by Black, Latinx, and Indengenous leaders and worked with them to explore moments when they hijacked the interview and co-constructed the research experience. In an effort to accomplish this objective we asked:

1) What does research that centers BIPOC voices look like?
2) What does it look like when organizational leaders co-construct the research experience?

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework:
We draw upon ideas from critical qualitative inquiry and endeavor to put marginalized voices at the center of the research process (Cannella, 2015). Through reciprocal dialogic communication the goal was to stifle the power dynamics present in traditional qualitative interviews and have the onto-epistemological perspectives of the OST leaders take center stage in the research process. Centering relationships, being flexible and building friendships were key components of the interviews and focus groups and are ideas drawn from humanizing research methods (Paris, 2014). This focus on relationships and homemaking was used as an attempt to decolonize research methods and allow greater agency from the participants and programs being researched.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The methods used for this study were twofold. First, we began by analyzing design choices such as the use of emergent interview protocols and features that allowed for more agency and co-construction from participants. We analyzed the protocols, looked at expectations and assumptions from the interviewers, and considered the ways in which participants “pushed back” on our research perspective including examining ways that various participants “hijacked” the interviews to differing levels. We compared these departures to the original protocol and looked for ways the design features allowed for these departures.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
This study was conducted using a collection of 10 interviews and four focus groups with OST arts education groups as well as the data collection protocols used to conduct sessions.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
Intentional design features included: the use of emergent interview protocols and the use of gift giving activity as an integral part of collective sensemaking. Participants’ “push back” ranged from rejecting the premise of questions framed and asked by the research team, the inclusion of personal information as part of the structured interview, and mutlilingual code switching as a way to mark membership in multiple communities of practice (Majors, 2003).

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
We are in the midst of an educational movement with growing and ebbing momentum. Common characteristics of arts programs are white leadership and teaching artists regardless of the demographics of participants in the programs. Finding ways to ensure the voice of marginalized groups are paramount to creating more equitable research in education and therefore for greater equity in education.

Authors

• Jonathan Tunstall, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Andy Stoiber, University of Wisconsin