Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities

Rethinking Race and Power in Design-Based Research: Reflections from the Field

“…Our own design projects have sought to be in partnership with (not just in service to) marginalized communities of color. However, we recognize that conducting what we perceive to be democratizing and humanizing forms of research (Paris & Winn, 2013) does not automatically relieve the inherent tensions of design research. Racialized relationships and hierarchical power dynamics are still in play and shape how research is conducted.…”

Leveraging Identity, Gaining Access: Explorations of Self in Diverse Field-Based Research Settings

“…When researchers engage in an intentional reflexive process, there is the potential to break down notions of "authority" (Finlay, 2002). Employing methods that are driven by a heightened sense of awareness of self and the population with which one seeks to work-and the intersection of the two-one has the opportunity to create a new, more human understanding of how context impacts one's individual-level outcomes (Paris & Winn, 2013). In total, with a more complete understanding, one has the potential to use the data collected to bridge research and practice.…”

Tensions in ethnographic research

“…She notes that many, "researchers have spoken 'of' and 'for' Others while occluding ourselves and our own investments, burying the contradictions that percolate at the self-other hyphen" (70). Although Fine made this statement over 20 years ago, it is a challenge that continues to be relevant in contemporary research (see Paris & Winn 2014). In this century, we can see new forms of Othering emerge while old notions of class, race, gender and sexuality tenaciously persist, in both recognisable and altered states.…”

“…In order to notice this, we have to at once supress and make visible our assumptions about these young people, the limits of everyday conversation, and listen with as much openness and awareness as possible (Souto-Manning 2014;Madison 2012). This is also a contradictory practice as we commit to critical praxis (Paris 2014), to contesting prejudice, while also valuing deep and open listening (we give an example of this in the final section). In this, we are framed by the in-between spaces that reinscribe colonial power, the space between the researcher and participant; the indigenous and settler; the colonised and colonial other.…”

“…However, we focus the bulk of our analysis on the three methodological tensions: challenging colonial discourses versus reinforcing colonial discourses in research settings; collaborating versus co-constructing methods; being critical versus being a listener. In each of these we maintain a strong intension to do, what Paris (2014) refers to as, moving beyond a critique of power and "toward the praxical (taking action to dismantle unequal power relations)" (176). We are simultaneously aware of the dangers of such an approach in terms of risking reinscribing the very power relations we seek to dismantle.…”