Co‐creating knowledge with undocumented Filipino students: Kuwentuhan as a research method

Abstract

We conceptualize kuwentuhan as a methodological disruption to Western constructs of research. The purpose of this article is two‐fold: first, to conceptualize and explicitly name kwentuhan as a research method and two, to reclaim Filipino epistemology and ontology through language. We orient kuwentuhan within the framework of Sikolohiyang Pilipino and more specifically, the concept of kapwa and discuss three elements of kwentuhan as a research method to use with and for undocumented Filipino students. Our implications offer conceptual nourishment in conducting critical and humanizing research and practice with and for undocumented students rooted in their culture.Practical Takeaways Researchers and practitioners must get to know people as people first or kapwa‐tao (fellow human being), an ontological orientation of kwentuhan. Researchers and practitioners need to understand undocumented students’ narratives do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, individual narratives, when talking story with another individual, are part of a larger constellation of stories or a collective story of one's own people shaped by broader sociopolitical and historical contexts. Researchers and practitioners must hold themselves accountable to continuously educating themselves about the cultures of students they are working with outside of the professional space and how contemporary sociopolitical discourses are impacting undocumented students’ daily realities. Researchers and practitioners should critically reflect about their positionality, or position in relation to power, and the dynamics and contexts in which power shifts throughout their working relationship with undocumented students from different racial and ethnic groups.