Episode 25: Episode 25. Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage

In this special episode, Qualitative Conversations hosts a panel discussion with scholars who weren't able to present at the 2021 AERA conference due to technical difficulties. The particular panel session discussed in this episode was titled Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage and included the following participants: Meagan Call-Cummings, George Mason University; Giovanni Dazzo, George Mason University; Sharrell Hassell-Goodman, PhD candidate in the Higher Education Program with a focus in Women and Gender studies and Social Justice at George Mason University; Alexandra S. Reed, George Mason University; Rodney Hopson, U of Illinois-Urbana Champaign; Melissa Hauber-Özer, George Mason University & Jesuit Worldwide Learning; Elisabeth L. Chan - Northern Virginia Community College & George Mason University.

The following is the transcript of the conversation.

Rodney 0:24

Good morning. Welcome. I'm Rodney Hopson, a faculty member at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign professor and evaluation in the queries division, Interim Director of Korea, really excited to have some colleagues here today talking about some really critical issues. If you didn't get an opportunity to hear a Ura, I was discussing for the roundtable disruption, interruption and change. It's not enough. What we need is sabotage, critical participatory inquiry as sabotage in and of the Academy. So I'm going to open up by having our colleagues introduce themselves and their key ideas and then come back around with questions of dualism.

Melissa 1:16

I'm Melissa Hauber-Özer, as I recently completed my PhD at George Mason University in the international education program. And our first paper in the panel was a collaborative counter storytelling piece that I co authored with Megan, Sharrell and Elizabeth which examine an incident that occurred within our ongoing YPAR project or youth participatory action research project. And this incident, and then our conversations about it after the fact pushed us to consider our power relations within the collective and then especially around race and gender. And then our relationships or interactions with the host institutions within which you're doing this critical, participatory work.

Giovanni 2:05

Great. Thanks, Melissa. My name is Giovanni Dazzo. I'm a doctoral candidate in research methodology at George Mason University. My article was titled small acts of sabotage, unraveling expertise to push for restorative forms of inquiry. And in this paper, I've been reflecting on my personal background and how I needed to bring this into my own methodological work. And as a doctoral candidate specializing in critical methodology, I needed to acknowledge my identity as a child of Sicilian immigrants being raised in small rural California town, into a family of farmers and laborers. For example, in farming communities, when we see smoke billowing from an open field of crops, this isn't necessarily a sign of danger, but one of renewal of coordinated and careful sabotage. And when done carefully, this practice called slashing burn or slashing cover has been ecologically sustainable for millennia. So I started to think about qualitative research in this way, what type of lens needs to be cleared, burned and left uncultivated for some time, and reflecting on which methodological processes have been around for so long, that they're worth burning down? So in this paper, I discussed three areas. How often are We inspired by the words of our co researchers and community members, so much so that they should be cited alongside the greats who have 1000s of citations, but where we relegate their words to the finding sections of our papers? Second, I started questioning my parsimonious citation practices. So in some cases, I simply use terms like double consciousness and simply include parentheticals for WEB Dubois, and our usual APA and Chicago styles. But it's almost an eraser divestment of knowled(continued)