Passionate Pursuits of Transformation from an Emic Perspective: African American Female Doctoral Candidates Reconfiguring the Subjective Center
Abstract
A group of African American female doctoral students, assume emic researcher positions (Lett, 1990) in order to highlight the narratives, honor the voices, and expose the possible selves of previously silenced participants while concurrently expanding the bounds of what counts as social science research.
Presentation Description
This presentation will share the lived and researched experiences of African American female doctoral students as they delve into the oft silenced dialogues of triumphant minority educators and seek to enliven the possible selves development of minority students. Narrative inquiry, through the Sankofian lens of looking back in order to inform the present, is the research methodology used to capture the experiences and insights of the research participants and those of the researchers. The inquiries brought forward in this presentation exist as the Passionate Pursuits of the researchers. They seek to highlight experiences that emanate from a personal, often silenced standpoint, and extend out to their axiologically-situated philosophies that are culturally framed. Their inquiries are situated in their lives and their lives are situated in their inquiries. The power of such inquiries lies in its potential to locate experience within complex ethical, social, cultural, gendered, generational, and racial contexts. As cultural inquirers, these researchers are committed to making their inquiry methods align with culturally bound research situations as they are inspired by what Wynter’s (2003) has descried as an unsettling of the hegemonically-lingering, colonially-based view of ethics in curriculum development. These researchers also seek, through the recentering of their subjectivity, to respond to Herbert Spencer's (1859) question, What knowledge is of most worth? The exploration of these varied forms of inquiries is important to the development of a comprehensive and ever-deepening understanding and acceptance of this evolving research paradigm. These Passionate Pursuits connect culturally relevant qualities with educational inquiries and transforms the existing educational environment of coloniality into one that is more culturally inclusive and engenders greater degrees of social justice potentiality. The researchers hope to discuss future directions of culturally relevant inquiry, while looking to inform and foster pedagogical modifications among teachers, educators, educational researchers, administrators, and educational policy makers. We believe this repositioning of the center of research is vital to the establishment of culturally relevant and situated inquiries, as well as a reconceptualization of viewpoint around what counts as research.
Keywords
Education, Research, Cultural, Possible selves, Triumphant educators, Minority researchers, Narrative inquiry, Lived experiences, Social justice, Coloniality, Reconceptualization
Location
Talmadge
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Scott-Simmons, Wynnetta, "Passionate Pursuits of Transformation from an Emic Perspective: African American Female Doctoral Candidates Reconfiguring the Subjective Center" (2016). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 33.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2016/2016/33
Passionate Pursuits of Transformation from an Emic Perspective: African American Female Doctoral Candidates Reconfiguring the Subjective Center
Talmadge
A group of African American female doctoral students, assume emic researcher positions (Lett, 1990) in order to highlight the narratives, honor the voices, and expose the possible selves of previously silenced participants while concurrently expanding the bounds of what counts as social science research.
