Ethical Dilemmas of Emerging Latina Researchers: Studying Schools Serving Latina Communities (original) (raw)
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Ethical Dilemmas of Emerging Latina Researchers: Studying Schools Serving Latin@ Communities
This article explores some of the ethical dilemmas we have encountered as emerging Latina researchers in dual language school contexts. Informed by Chicana Feminist Theory, we attempt to analyze power in more nuanced ways, shifting the analysis of ethics away from traditional notions of power based only within the researcher rather than the participants. While we do not offer solutions to these dilemmas, we raise questions that we hope will spur thoughtful reflection and move the field of educational research into more equitable and ethical research practices across contexts. As researchers, we enter our work with our own particular values, biases and interests–which is how many of us end up studying the communities that we do. Who we are shapes our interactions with our research participants and what we want to accomplish in our research projects. As early career Latina scholars engaged in qualitative research in communities predominantly of color, we have wanted to make positive contributions to the communities that we feel an affinity to. Within our role as researchers, we have wanted to improve learning conditions for both students and teachers – which is part of the overall goal of educational research – without disregarding the immediate complexities that we notice as critical scholars. This often creates ethical dilemmas for us as Latinas, in terms of whose agenda we ultimately serve when we critique, and how these dual goals of improved educational conditions and critical analysis are best accomplished. Many researchers have explored the idea of positionality – the fact that who we are and how our various subjectivities affect our perceptions, interests, interpretations, and therefore, even our findings (Behar, 1996). This is true in both qualitative and quantitative work, as our ideas and beliefs affect what questions we choose to study, our method for studying those questions, and to whom and how we present our findings. Even as many researchers have given up the claim of research objectivity, they have not always been willing to discuss the ethical, emotional, and political aspects of their work, believing that it interferes with validity (Riddell, 1989). An area that has not been well examined is how one's various subjectivities affect how we are perceived, and therefore, our ability to conduct our research work in the first place. In addition to how our own subjectivities affect who, what, and how we study, they also influence the particular ethical dilemmas we face as researchers, issues that other researchers (in other bodies) may not face. Perhaps influenced by who we are, and by our own intimate understandings, we have specific concerns for communities of color, immigrant communities, and working-class communities. We believe in contributing to the creation of more equitable educational opportunities for these communities. Perhaps because we have benefited from becoming educated ourselves, we realize its importance in the broader sense
An introduction: Chicana/Latina feminista pláticas in educational research
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2023
Historically, pláticas have existed in Chicana/o/x and latina/o/x communities for generations. Yet, it is not until the late 1970s that we begin to see Chicana/o/x and latina/o/x scholars from various disciplines employ pláticas, not as a methodology, but as a way to get to know their participants before conducting research. Since that time, pláticas have been used and discussed within academia, primarily in three distinct ways: (1) as a "gateway" to the data but not considered as data itself, (2) as a culturally familiar practice expressed and utilized by Chicana/o/x and latina/o/x scholars and communities, and (3) by scholars who ground their use of pláticas in Chicana/latina feminista frameworks and other frameworks used by Women of Color that view "kitchen table talk" as central to understanding their theorizations in the flesh (Moraga & anzaldúa, 1983). this special issue situates itself in this last strand and focuses on what a Chicana/latina feminista (ClF) plática methodology entails. in 2016, Fierros and delgado Bernal's (2016), Vamos a Pláticar, article helped change the conversation on the use of pláticas in research by shifting them from simple entryways or "small talk," to a valid methodological approach. Since that publication, there has also been a clear increase in the number of dissertations/thesis and published articles that engage pláticas in the research process. When we first drafted the call for proposals in March 2021, we did a quick search on Proquest and found 234 manuscripts that used Chicana/latina feminista pláticas; presently in February 2023, there are 604 manuscripts, nearly a threefold increase. this shows the growing interest and commitment to the development of a pláticas methodology. as scholars who have utilized and contributed to this development, the growth in the use of pláticas nudged us to explore the many ways in which this methodology was being extended and theorized by scholars. For example, we noted how Gaxiola Serrano (2019) had conceptualized walking pláticas in her dissertation and how rivera (2019) had paired pláticas with critical race frameworks to center the experiences of queer Chicana/latina higher education leaders in her dissertation. they, and others, offer original directions for pláticas in the field of education. our desire to further examine pláticas grounded in Chicana/latina feminista frameworks stems from wanting to highlight how scholars utilize this methodology and articulate its connection to Women of Color and their theorizations of oppression and resistance tied to colonialism, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy. after some discussion between the four of us and numerous inquiries from graduate student scholars interested in utilizing a pláticas methodology, we decided that a special issue would allow us to curate a space for scholars to continue theorizing and providing examples of the use of a pláticas methodology. in the Spring of 2021, our call was made public and more manuscripts than we could accept were submitted (over 70), all of them engaging pláticas in innovative ways. the final collection of articles we include in this special issue fills a critical gap in published research that addresses the structure, nuances, and messiness of Chicana/ latina feminist pláticas methodology. together, the contributions to this special issue begin to answer at least three guiding questions: (1) what are the methodological ways that pláticas can be used in educational research and praxis? (2) what are the processes of "doing" pláticas? and
Educational Studies, 2018
We write this book review as the Testimonio Study Group (TSG). The TSG is an emergent, growing, and open-ended research collective whose members have been Texas residents with strong ties to the education systems of the US/Mexico Borderlands and Latin America. We write this review of Dolores Delgado Bernal, Rebecca Burciaga, and Judith Flores Carmona's Chicana/Latina Testimonios as Pedagogical, Methodological, and Activist Approaches to Social Justice to express a debt of gratitude to Delgado Bernal et al.'s edited volume for advancing testimonio research in education and for advancing decolonizing and transcontinental testimonio traditions in education research. In this review, we situate the book within the emergent scholarship on Chicana feminist research epistemology and characterize its contents by exploring three chapters that are representative of the book's contents. We conclude this review with an invitation to a subjunctive dialog emphasizing the view to the South, or la mirada al Sur, as old/new historicized, decolonizing, and transcontinental direction for testimonio research in education.
Special Issue: Chicana/Latina Feminism(s): Negotiating Pedagogical Borderlands
Journal of Latino-Latin Amercian Studies (JOLLAS), 2013
This special issue of JOLLAS is a reflection and extension of Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies (CLFEs) in education. Using the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and other Chicana feminist educators, such as Dolores Delgado Bernal, in conjunction with concepts of nepantla, testimonios, and Chicana feminist-third space, the contributors exemplify how CLFEs are embodied in education research in order to provide new pedagogical understandings and visions.
A testimonio of a queer Chicana researcher in education
Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2019
This piece of scholarship provides the testimonio of being a queer Chicana in academia. There is a long history of claiming space, exposing injustice, and truth telling in many Latinx cultures. As an ethnographic methodology testimonios have been used to provide insight of the experiences of marginalized communities. In bringing an indigenous methodology of narrative to bear witness this scholarship must be read as an experience of weaving the many strands of a person together, with endings and beginnings intertwined and revisited. This piece provides a glimpse into the difficulties of bringing, surviving, and salvaging a multiplicity of marginalized identities in academia, a space that are unsafe and unwelcoming for those of us who are not White, straight and male.
Community Literacy Journal, 2009
Upon reading the preface to Chicana/Latina Education in Everyday Life, I was reminded of early childhood moments when women in my family would gather around my grandmother’s kitchen table to platicar (chat). Similarly, editors Dolores Delgado Bernal, C. Alejandra Elenes, Francisca E. Godinez, and Sofia Villenas began this anthology around a kitchen table with pláticas about their “understandings of pedagogies that recognize knowledge, power and politics as central to all teaching and learning” (ix). Together they identified a need in the field of education to merge existing interdisciplinary scholarship concerned with nontraditional pedagogies from a Chicana/Latina perspective.
Special Issue-- (Re)envisioning Chicana/Latina Feminist Methodologies
2014
JOLLAS (Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies) Special Issue Guest Editors: Cinthya M. Saavedra & Michelle S. Perez. Contributors: Dolores Calderon, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Judith Flores Carmona, Karleen Pendleton Jimenez and Ruth Trinidad Galvan. The articles in this special issue of JOLLAS center critical methodologies in educational research. As Chicana/Latina scholars have reimagined pedagogical spaces, so too have they reinvented the methodologies needed for such rearticulations. The Chicana/Latina contributors help us navigate methodological landscapes and offer critical conversations needed in qualitative research. In particular the scholars focus on anticolonial conversations, critical ethnography, theories and methods of the flesh, critical reflexivity, Chicana feminist film-making methodologies as well as push us to consider the global North/South divide by decolonizing conocimiento and forming global alliances.
Judith Flores Carmona and Silvia Garcia (University of Utah) draw from the work of their mentor, Rina Benmayor and Telling to live: Latina feminist testimonios to establish an organization for Latinas who are staff, faculty, students, alumni, and community members at a predominantly White institution (PWI). Critical race feminism (CRF), Latina/o critical theory (LatCrit), and foundational work from US Third World feminists, informed the need to create a space where Latinas could discuss issues such as body image, language, sexual orientation, how to navigate academia, mentorship, genealogy, epistemologies, immigration status, and educational backgrounds among others. Flores and Garcia write about the need for the formation of a ‘Latina space’. They evaluate the impact of this space where experiential knowledge is fostered and nurtured. The authors accentuate on the benefits and areas for improvement to strengthen the Latinas Telling Testimonios (LTT) group as it evolves in its third year. Flores and Garcia argue that when students and scholars of color are the minority on PWIs, a way of coping with issues of alienation and isolation is by ‘testifying’, bearing witness and telling their testimonios in order to succeed at a predominantly White campus, especially as women of color.