Power, participation, and representation in conducting research with underrepresented communities in India, Belize, Mexico, and Pakistan

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Improving education for a more equitable world; the central theme for the 2023 CIES conference invites educational researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to critically engage with the complex meanings, processes, and structures associated with educational research focusing on social justice issues. This proposal focuses on the conceptual and methodological tools needed to reflect on and respond to the power hierarchies embedded in educational research. Through employing ethnographic research focusing on India, Belize, Mexico, and Pakistan, the authors engage with the complex, and at times contested, processes of conducting “relational” research with underrepresented communities in these locations. Following decolonizing research methodologies (Battiste & Youngblood Henderson, 2009; Kanu, 2011; Ledoux, 2006; Mignolo 2009; Smith, 2021), we define relational research as something that centers not only on the lived experiences and identities of the participants but also the underlying epistemologies that participants employ to make sense of the world and of their relationship with the research and the researchers. Each paper engages with the processes of developing and conducting relational research with underrepresented communities in different geopolitical, cultural, and socioeconomic locations. Our work aims to highlight not only the exclusionary practices of mainstream educational institutions but also the resilience of these communities who have continued to teach and learn in ways that are aligned with their ways of being (Kawagley, 2006; Nelson, 2008; Smith, 2021; Smith, 2000; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015).

Paper 1 focuses on the meanings and implications of conducting feminist ethnographic research during the COVID-19 pandemic with women participants of an educational project supported by the non-governmental sector in India. This research aimed to provide the space for women to organically present and provide insight into the multiplicity of factors that influence their decision-making authority and ability, illuminating the connections between education, agency, and empowerment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The author discusses the nuances as well as on-the-ground limitations of developing collaborative and relational research in contexts with massive material and structural constraints. The paper shows the need to examine closely what collective belonging, duty, and responsibility looks like for researchers in the development and implementation of such feminist projects during crisis.

Paper 2 examines how the Maya Yucatec women healers from Belize produce and transfer Indigenous healing knowledge that is being lost. The development and implementation of this research was grounded in the realization of how Indigenous populations around the world have been historically marginalized and misrepresented by research (Smith, 1999). This paper explains the use of Kirkness and Barnhardt (1991) four R’s – respect, relevance, responsibility, and reciprocity- to examine how these Maya healer women lived and practiced the Mayan worldview of well-being as the balance between the physical, spiritual, and emotional across time and space. The author examines how the Indigenous methodologies can serve as conceptual and methodological tools to privilege communities’ views and experiences throughout the research process.

Paper 3 critically engages with the meanings and implications of consent from participants as part of conducting decolonizing research with a Muslim rural community in Punjab, Pakistan and a Maya Tzotzil community in Chiapas, Mexico. This paper reflects on the recruitment and participation of women from two different geopolitical and cultural locations to examine what it meant for these participants to consent to participate in ethnographic research focusing on gender, education, and Islam. Following Indigenous methodologies that position relational research as ethical and quality research (Kawagley, 2006; Smith, 2021; Smith, 2000; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015), this paper examines the roles and responsibilities of individual researchers and institutions to create spaces and opportunities to use research to privilege the voices and epistemologies of research participants from underrepresented backgrounds.

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Chair

• Lesley Bartlett, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Engaging in transnational feminist praxis: Ethical and methodological considerations around power and participation in India - Payal Shah, University of South Carolina

• From respect to reciprocity: Negotiating and understanding consent in the process of the recruitment of Yucatec Maya healers. - Melba M Marin-Velasquez, Florida State University

• Trusting the research or the researcher? “Consent” in Research with underrepresented communities in Mexico and Pakistan - Ayesha Khurshid, Florida State University

Discussant

• Lesley Bartlett, University of Wisconsin-Madison