Using critical race theory and Latina/Latino critical race theory as a framework, this article utilizes the methods of qualitative inquiry and counterstorytelling to examine the construct of student resistance. The authors use two events in Chicana/Chicano student history—the 1968 East Los Angeles school walkouts and the 1993 UCLA student strike for Chicana and Chicano studies. Using these two methods and events, the authors extend the concept of resistance to focus on its transformative potential and its internal and external dimensions. The authors describe and analyze a series of individual and focus group interviews with women who participated in the 1968 East Los Angeles high school walkouts. The article then introduces a counterstory that briefly listens in on a dialogue between two data-driven composite characters, the Professor and an undergraduate student named Gloria. These characters’ experiences further illuminate the concepts of internal and external transformational resistance.
For too long, the histories, experiences, cultures, and languages of students of color have been devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings. In this article, the author uses critical race theory (CRT) and Latina/Latino critical theory (LatCrit) to demonstrate how critical raced-gendered epistemologies recognize students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. In doing so, she discusses how CRT and LatCrit provide an appropriate lens for qualitative research in the field of education. She then compares and contrasts the experiences of Chicana/Chicano students through a Eurocentric and a critical raced-gendered epistemological perspective and demonstrates that each perspective holds vastly different views of what counts as knowledge, specifically regarding language, culture, and commitment to communities. She then offers implications of critical raced-gendered epistemologies for both research and practice and concludes by discussing some of the critiques of the use of these epistemologies in educational research.
In this article, Dolores Delgado Bernal outlines a Chicana feminist epistemological framework that is new to the field of educational research. This framework, which draws from the existing work of Chicana feminists, questions the notions of objectivity and a universal foundation of knowledge. A Chicana feminist epistemology is also grounded in the life experiences of Chicanas and involves Chicana research participants in analyzing how their lives are being interpreted, documented, and reported, while acknowledging that many Chicanas lead lives with significantly different opportunity structures than men or White women. As part of this framework, Delgado Bernal also introduces the concept of cultural intuition to name a complex process that acknowledges the unique viewpoints that many Chicana scholars bring to the research process. In the latter half of the article, she illustrates the importance of this framework in educational research by describing an oral history project on Chicana student resistance and activism as seen from this framework. Her conceptual discussion and research example together demonstrate that employing a Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research is one means of resisting traditional paradigms that often distort or omit the experiences and knowledge of Chicanas. (pp. 555-582) Schools. .. presuppose and legitimate particular forms of history, community, and authority.. .. The question is what and whose history, community, knowledge, and voice prevails? Unless this question is addressed, the issues of what to teach, how to teach, how to engage our students, and how to function as intellectuals becomes removed from the wider principles that inform such issues and practices. (Giroux, 1992, p. 91) Epistemological concerns in schools are inseparable from cultural hegemonic domination in educational research. The way educational research is conducted contributes significantly to what happens (or does not 10/9/08 4:53 PM Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research
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