The Praxis of Decoloniality in Researcher Training and Community‐Based Data Collection

Abstract

In this paper, we detail our praxis of decoloniality in the context of a community‐based study that employs a quantitative experimental methodology to evaluate an intervention for girls involved in the juvenile legal system. We resist the essentializing of methodology that positions quantitative paradigms as impermeable to reflexivity and decoloniality, and describe a model for training and supervising researchers engaged in an experimental randomized controlled trial of an advocacy program for girls, most of whom are girls of color and about half of whom identify as LGBT. In this way, we consider researcher training as a critical teaching context and describe the ways in which our training, community‐based data collection, and supervision structure are anchored in de/anti/post colonial and indigenous scholarships. Specifically, our praxis is centered on conducting research as a site of resistance to hegemony, and practicing a critical compassion rooted in remembering complex personhoods. We further discuss the boundaries and limitations of our own epistemic power in relation to two central questions: how can researchers influence how knowledge is produced? How can researchers influence how knowledge producers are themselves produced?

Building power through reindigenization: Sharing the story of Menīkānaehkem

“…The team decided that using only one facilitator-one who knew the group and their community organizing practices well-would support a process that felt more owned by Menīkānaehkem and grounded in their understanding. Through this participatory analysis process, the team continuously reflected on how to best approach a praxis of decoloniality (Singh et al, 2018). The session was audiorecorded and transcribed, and quotes from the session are included along with quotes from the original interviews in the results below.…”

Traumatic Incidents and Experiences of Racism and Sexism: Examining Associations with Components of Critical Consciousness for System‐Involved Girls of Color

“…Data for this study are informed by adolescent girls whose caregivers consented to their study participation. All data collection was community‐based (see Singh, Granski, Victoria, & Javdani, 2018) and conducted using study procedures approved by the Institutional Review Board of New York University, and the City and State Human Subject’s Research offices.…”

When Diversity is Not Enough: An Intersectional Examination of How Juvenile Legal System Actors of Color Experience the System’s Welfare Mandate for Girls of Color

“…Examining power dynamics is core to the knowledgegeneration process articulated by intersectionality scholars. As scholars ourselves who have offered examples of resistance to the myth of researcher and methodological neutrality, we name an intersection of collective, lived experiences as racialized, immigrant-origin, people of color (first, second, third, and fifth authors), and White allies (fourth and sixth authors) committed to structural change that guided this work (Javdani et al, 2017;Singh et al, 2018).…”