Counter-storytelling: toward a critical race praxis for participatory action research

Abstract

As university-based educational researchers who have engaged in participatory methods with marginalized populations, we have rising concerns about how interpersonal and institutional power dynamics affect co-researchers from racial and ethnic minority groups. In this manuscript, we use critical race and critical whiteness theory and counter-storytelling methodology to examine three experiences of the same event, which occurred in the context of an ongoing participatory action research project with youth of color, from the perspectives of three female, early career scholars: an Asian American doctoral candidate, a Black doctoral candidate, and a White junior faculty member. Our goals are to encourage increased reflexivity about racial dynamics in participatory research and to grapple with the ways in which educational institutions often subtly perpetuate colorblind ideologies and prop up White privilege. We conclude with considerations for enacting a critical race praxis in intergenerational and multiracial educational research.

Keywords:

• participatory action research
• critical race theory
• critical Whiteness theory
• counter-storytelling
• critical race praxis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The details of the project are described in other publications including Call-Cummings, Hauber-Özer, et al., 2020.

2 Pseudonym; unlike the other facilitators, who were graduate students, Janelle is an artist we hired as a consultant for the event.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melissa Hauber-Özer

Melissa Hauber-Özer completed her Ph.D. in International Education at George Mason University and instructs teacher education and research methods courses. Her research focuses on language and literacy education in migration contexts and employs critical participatory methodology to examine issues of equity and access for linguistically and culturally diverse learners.

Meagan Call-Cummings

Meagan Call-Cummings (PhD, Indiana University Bloomington) is an Assistant Professor of Research Methods at George Mason University's School of Education. Her most recent project, Courageous Conversations, is a youth participatory action research project that uses critical arts-based inquiry to create spaces for dialogue about topics that are important to youth.

Sharrell Hassell-Goodman

Sharrell Hassell-Goodman is a PhD candidate at George Mason University in the Higher Education program with a concentration in Women and Gender Studies and Social Justice. Her current research interests are first-generation college students, Black women in higher education, DEI pedagogy, social justice advocates in higher education, and critical participatory action research.

Elisabeth Chan

Elisabeth Chan has 15+ years of experience as an activist educator and critical scholar. She strives to center intersectionality, criticality, and relationality in her advocacy, research, writing, and pedagogy, drawing upon her lived experiences as a second/fourth-generation Chinese American woman from the U.S. South.