Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education E-Book

Penny Pasque

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B ASHE-ERIC Report Series (AEHE)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 203

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Join the dialogue on the future of qualitative inquiry for equity in higher education. Beginning with the premise that equity is of paramount concern in the study of higher education, this text explores the promise and pitfalls of qualitative inquiry with respect to addressing issues of in/equity and fostering social change at micro, meso, and macro levels. Building upon contemporary qualitative higher education scholarship, the authors advance a critique of the reductive and generic conceptions of qualitative research that dominate the field and call upon scholars to examine the transformative potential embedded within critical qualitative inquiry. In addition to exploring the opportunities and tensions associated with engaging in critical qualitative inquiry, this monograph issues a call to action through intervention, describing strategies for challenging and resisting oppressive research norms that undermine the equity aims of higher education research. This is Volume 37 Issue 6 of the Jossey-Bass publication ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph in the series is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education problem, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

Leseprobe

Contents

Executive Summary

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education

On Equity

On Dangers

Responding to Dangers

Outline of the Monograph

Challenge to the Reader

Confronting Qualitative Inquiry in Higher Education

Brief Notes on Qualitative Research in Higher Education Scholarship

Beyond Method: Matters of Ontology, Epistemology, Axiology, and Methodology

Paradigms and Worldviews

The Promise and Hope of Critical Qualitative Inquiry

Innovation as Research Revolutions

Concluding Thoughts

Critical Concerns for Qualitative Inquiry in Higher Education

Critical Qualitative Higher Education Research in the Era of Methodological Conservatism

What Is at Stake in the Era of Methodological Conservatism?

Opportunities for Resisting Methodological Conservatism: A Call to Action

Reflexivity as Intervention

Institutional and Organizational Intervention

Intervention Through the Socialization of New Educational Researchers

Intervention Through Working and Speaking with Multiple Educational Research Constituencies

Conclusion

References

Name Index

Subject Index

About the Authors

Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education: Methodological Innovations, Implications, and Interventions

Penny A. Pasque, Rozana Carducci, Aaron M. Kuntz, and Ryan Evely Gildersleeve

ASHE Higher Education Report: Volume 37, Number 6

Kelly Ward, Lisa E. Wolf-Wendel, Series Editors

Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, c/o John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River St., Hoboken, NJ 07030; [phone], fax [phone], www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Cover image by Birthe Lunau/©iStockphoto.

ISSN 1551-6970 electronic ISSN 1554-6306 ISBN 978-1-1183-7727-7

The ASHE Higher Education Report is part of the Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series and is published six times a year by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, California 94104-4594.

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The ASHE Higher Education Report is indexed in CIJE: Current Index to Journals in Education (ERIC), Education Index/Abstracts (H.W. Wilson), ERIC Database (Education Resources Information Center), Higher Education Abstracts (Claremont Graduate University), IBR & IBZ: International Bibliographies of Periodical Literature (K.G. Saur), and Resources in Education (ERIC).

Advisory Board

The ASHE Higher Education Report Series is sponsored by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), which provides an editorial advisory board of ASHE members.

Ben Baez

Florida International University

Edna Chun

Broward College

Diane Dunlap

University of Oregon

Dot Finnegan

The College of William & Mary

Marybeth Gasman

University of Pennsylvania

Shouping Hu

Florida State University

Adrianna Kezar

University of Southern California

Kevin Kinser

SUNY – Albany

William Locke

The Open University

Barbara Tobolowsky

University of Texas at Arlington

Susan B. Twombly

University of Kansas

Marybeth Walpole

Rowan University

Executive Summary

This monograph seeks to foster a dialogue on the future of qualitative inquiry for equity in higher education. Beginning with the premise that equity is of paramount concern in the study of higher education—permeating research on students, faculty, administration and governance, funding, educational policy, and so on—the text explores the promise and pitfalls of qualitative inquiry with respect to addressing issues of in/equity and fostering social change at micro, meso, and macro levels. Specifically, building upon five years of thought experiments and dialogic inquiry projects on the status of contemporary qualitative higher education scholarship, we advance a critique of the reductive and generic conceptions of qualitative research that dominate the field of higher education and call upon our higher education colleagues to examine the transformative potential embedded within critical qualitative inquiry.

The book’s central argument is that equity-minded qualitative scholars of higher education can no longer simply fixate their critical eyes upon the content of their research (their object of analysis) but rather must extend their critical perspectives to the very methodological assumptions that make such content visible in particular ways. In more direct terms, we contend that investigations into manifestations of in/equity in higher education need to self-reflexively consider the ways in which research practices may actually serve to reinscribe the very in/equity the scholarship seeks to document and eradicate. This argument is consistent with the current eighth moment in qualitative research (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005b), which is concerned with critical conversations about democracy, race, gender, class, nation-states, globalization, freedom, and community. Importantly, the eighth moment is more than a focus on studying about these critical issues; the eighth moment strives to operationalize qualitative methodologies and congruent methods that directly reflect an emancipatory approach to research. In line with the eighth moment, we assert that critical qualitative inquiry, as an ever-expanding paradigm of understanding, provides a strategy by which to generate knowledge in service of equity and social justice.

Unfortunately, the epistemological and methodological perspectives associated with critical qualitative inquiry remain muted and marginalized within the higher education scholarly community, overshadowed by generic notions of qualitative research which offer little insight into the philosophical assumptions (matters of ontology, epistemology, axiology, methodology) that distinguish frameworks of inquiry such as post/positivism, constructivism, and critical inquiry. The absence of explicit discussions concerning researcher ways of knowing within the higher education scholarly community serves to reify dominant research paradigms that valorize the production of authoritative and deterministic truths, ultimately perpetuating the inequitable status quo.

Countering the limitations of dominant perspectives on qualitative inquiry in higher education, we highlight innovations and paradigmatic shifts particularly promising with respect to advancing higher education equity agendas. Consistent with the central argument of the book, these shifts occur at the level of philosophy, specifically ontology and epistemology, but have practical consequences with respect to how research can be thought of, designed, implemented, and shared. Unfortunately, discussions regarding innovative research practices fixate all-too-frequently on method, as though alterations to specialized techniques of research alone will bring about shifts in how we understand ourselves in relation to others, or draw new awareness to previously absent voices and identities within higher education scholarship. We hope to change such thinking—to challenge readers to resist simplistic notions of innovative methods in favor of more epistemological and ontological concerns, and to do so in the name of equity and inquiry for social justice in higher education. We anchor our argument in specific examples, elaborating on the innovations arising from work on dialogic inquiry, embodied knowledge, and critical geography—all three approaches to inquiry with implications at the level of epistemology and methodology and which contribute to revolutionary research capable of affecting material social change within institutions and systems of higher education.

Cognizant of the fact that higher education scholars are currently working in era of methodological conservatism (Denzin and Giardina, 2006; Lincoln and Cannella, 2004a, 2004b) defined by organizational practices and principles of inquiry that actively undermine the adoption of critical epistemological and methodological perspectives, we present a candid discussion of the tensions and challenges encountered by higher education scholars seeking to engage in methodologically innovative scholarship. Specifically, the text examines the increasing dominance of two inextricably connected disciplining discourse regimes—academic capitalism and scientifically based educational research—and takes up the question, “What is at stake for both historically marginalized communities and critical qualitative higher education scholars if dominant post/positivist methodological perspectives continue to frame the principles and practices of higher education inquiry?”

The implications of methodological conservatism for individuals and communities who regularly encounter individual, institutional, and/or societal oppression include the preservation of discriminatory educational practices, policies, and environments and perpetuation of the inequitable status quo. Higher education scholars who dare to disrupt, interrogate, and challenge the disciplining regimes of truth that characterize methodologically conservative promotion and tenure standards, funding and publication peer review processes, as well as human subjects research approval are subject to professional censure and scholarly punishments (for example, diminished funding and publication opportunities) that undercut the norms of academic freedom and job security historically associated with tenure track and tenured faculty positions. Our aim in shedding light on the material consequences associated with methodological innovation is not to discourage critical higher education scholars from engaging in transformative scholarship, but rather to raise awareness of the consequences that may stem from enacting critical methodological commitments in the hopes of better preparing critical scholars to productively navigate and overcome professional roadblocks.

In the monograph’s final chapter, we issue a call to action through intervention, drawing upon extant qualitative methodology scholarship to describe numerous opportunities and strategies for confronting the oppressive knowledge systems that undermine the equity aims of critical qualitative higher education research. Specifically, we highlight the transformative potential embedded in researcher reflexivity activities, participation in institutional and organizational activism (for example, membership on institutional review boards, promotion and tenure committees, conference planning teams, etc.), new approaches to socializing emerging scholars to the roles and responsibilities of academe, and the cultivation of the abilities associated with speaking to and collaborating with multiple constituencies within and beyond the academy.

Without a doubt, actively engaging in efforts to expand one’s understandings of emancipatory epistemologies, becoming social media savvy, transforming educational inquiry curricula, and initiating change from within organizations as members of influential committees while simultaneously meeting traditional promotion and tenure expectations is emotionally and physically exhausting work. We believe, however, it is far more costly to perpetuate dominant traditions of qualitative inquiry that fail to address the fundamental philosophical underpinnings of in/equity in higher education. We contend that critical qualitative inquiry toward educational equity need not always be about immediate large revolution in terms of the grand sense of things, but may happen through daily practices of intervention. Small steps that build toward radical transformation cannot be underestimated. We invite both emerging and seasoned critical higher education scholars to interrupt the violence of methodological conservatism and answer the call to action through intentional contributions to cumulative social change and educational equity.

Foreword

Calls for research that are relevant and geared toward change abound on many college campuses. Educational researchers are often at the forefront of leading conversations about some of the critical topics related to research methods and methodologies. Penny Pasque, Rozana Carducci, Aaron Kuntz, and Ryan Gildersleeve in this monograph grapple with some of the critical issues facing researchers wanting to make a difference with their research. Emerging scholars, in particular, often find themselves constrained by calls for “objectivity” and “distance” in their research. Dominant discourses related to research that are often taught in graduate school direct students toward perspectives that are disconnected from passion and place. Researchers can find themselves in a quandary: do I meet the conventions of traditional research perspectives or can I make meaningful and critical contributions to the vexing problems facing education today? This monograph gives permission and validity to research approaches that incorporate critical perspectives, but more importantly, it offers readers the tools necessary to carry out research that is geared toward social justice, equity, and change.