“We Must Learn to Sit Down Together (Online) and Talk About a Little Culture”
A Web-based Training Institute in Black Education Research Practice

 

Co-sponsor:  AERA Commission on Research in Black Education (CORIBE)
Directors:  Joyce King, Associate Provost, Medgar Evers College and Chairperson, CORIBE Annette Henry, Associate Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago

Table of Contents

Abstract:  African (American) graduate students, faculty/mentors and interested others will be involved in piloting and evaluating four web-based modules and a minicourse session that will provide culturally-mediated opportunities for the participants to reconceptualize and critically assess educational research practice from an Africana worldview perspective using a rubric (framework) which the online participants will develop through on- line mentoring and research training experiences.

Primary Audience(s): 15 invited online graduate student participants and 15 additional graduate student mini- course participants (at the annual meeting).  Secondary audience:  Users of the Commission on Research in Black Education web-site where selected examples of the online and mini-course training experiences can be viewed as part of the public record of the work of the Commission.

Substantive Area of Program: The online Institute and minicourse training experiences will provide collaborative, culturally-sensitive qualitative research training opportunities for graduate students and scholars of color who are critiquing mainstream educational research using alternative methods and conceptualizations. In addition to operationalizing an Africana worldview perspective, participants will experience the basics of political education for freedom and dialogue as inquiry, in a constructivist sense, as they work through some common issues as researchers of African descent (and others) interested in research on and for Africana populations (e.g., "objectivity vs. subjectivity"; "neutral" vs. engaged scholarship).

Expected Learning Outcomes:  Online participants will articulate and develop and all participants will learn to use a rubric (framework) to critically assess research approaches and theorizing from an Africana worldview perspective. Online participants will gain some experience translating research findings into various formats (e.g., online position papers for different audiences, web-liographies, readers theatre and data bases).  All participants will become more knowlegeable about and develop a deeper appreciation of the intellectual and methodological concerns of scholars whose work represents different perspectives in Black education research and practice.  A technology skills inventory will enable participants to configure their hardware and software (e.g, Acrobat reader, Real player) for online coursework and to enable faculty to assess participants' online know-how  (e.g., creating, sending and receiving e-mail, pdf files and accessing multi-media materials). Pre and post-Institute knowledge and understanding of an Africana worldview perspective will be assessed through on- line written assignments using the rubric.

Format: The 6-week Institute will consist of 1) four on-line modules for15 invited graduate students;  2) a four- hour AERA minicourse for 15 additional participants; 3) an Institute home-page on the Commission on Research in Black Education web-site; and 4) a participatory formative and summative qualitative evaluation that addresses the usefulness of this methodology for Black and non-Black graduate students and mentors.  Online participants will collaboratively develop an Africana worldview perspective rubric and use it to complete web-based assignments prior to the annual meeting and to critique an AERA session. These assignments will be demonstrated at the minicourse session; participants in the minicourse will also use the rubric to assess these presentations of the online group.

IV. Proposal Narrative

…this kind of silence, of the unsaid, can deprive the University. . .of a genuine sense of [our common] purpose. . .which begins to formulate itself  with our aware- ness of the University as a logical result of a common history stretching over some   four centuries; as a place where the descendants of Prospero-slave owner, and   Caliban-slave, can, by using the technological knowledge acquired by Prosper from   an unjust relation, mount an assault against that historical necessity, that scarcity of   food and shelter, which had, in the dark and terrible ages, impelled exploitation of   some by others; and still impels it.

Syvlia Wynter.

If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon Black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that would unto himself.

Wendell Barry

…In a people's rise from oppression to grace, a turning point comes when thinkers determined to stop the downward slide get together to study the causes of common problems, think out solutions, and organize ways to apply them.

Ayi Kwei Armah.

A. Rationale/Major Issues  This online Institute is a component of the AERA Commission on Research in Black Education, which was established to keep Black education issues--issues that affect every sector of the societyˆat the forefront of the Association's agenda.  The Commission's goals and strategies include addressing specific research training needs of African (American) graduate students, providing opportunities for trans-disciplinary discussion and online deliberations among scholars to address the perilous condition of Black education in the US and different contexts. Also of concern is the epistemological crisis in education research that the Task Force on the Role and Status of Minorities in AERA (Gordon 199 ) concluded is "contributing to tensions within AERA (Gordon xx). These tensions are reflected in responses to an informal online poll of  graduate students and faculty that underscore the need for a cultural approach in graduate student mentoring and development. (See appendix.)  Thus, this Institute actualizes Sylvia Wynter's theoretical proposition that to address fundamentally the crisis in education and the problematic status of Black people, "we must learn to. . . .talk about a little culture"ˆ not in the cultural deficit terms which the mainstream research paradigm continues to perpetuate. This Institute will demonstrate new possibilities for re-thinking and re-writing knowledge (Finkelstein, 1984; King, 1996; Wineburg.1999).  

It is expected that graduate students will be able to recognize and to use the intellectual and methodological advantage of the cultural inheritance of people of African ancestry in the research process.  Wynter notes that Black people have a "perspective advantage of alterity" because white supremacy/racism places "blackness" in an alter-ego role vis a vis conceptual "whiteness".  However, mainstream education research does not theorize or recognize these cultural strengths--whether the scholars themselves are Black or non-Black. Wynter argues that neither multicultural, left or right-leaning intellectual paradigms (in the humanities as well as education) explicate ways the cultural myths of the West "impel" the unjust relations of power and domination that are manifested in the so-called "Black-White educational achievement gap."  What remains "unsaid" in mainstream discourse, for example, is that despite their outstanding educational accomplishments "successful Black people"-- graduate students, scholars and corporate executives alike--experience white supremacy racism in these terms.  The Institute will explore the cognitive demands of surviving under conditions of cultural hegemony--including race, gender and class bias, and the ways that various research approaches treat (or fail to acknowledge) these issues.

Finally, this training course will model an online methodology that can foster collaborative, interactive and perhaps life-long relationships amongst graduate students as they work through some common issues as researchers of African descent (and others) interested in research on African populations or as one graduate student has suggested: “A collective (even if) <virtual> experience would provide space to build a network to resist, confront, create.”

C. Content and Methodology

Each online participant will be involved in a culturally-grounded online research/mentoring experience:

• Developing an online relational data base that documents the transgenerational transmission of culture and identity in the African world Nah Dove, Medgar Evers College, CUNY

• Editing submissions for the Research Focus on Black Education SIG online journal Mwalimu J. Shujaa, Medgar Evers College, CUNY

• Translating qualitative web-based research data into a Readersí Theatre performance for an invited Division G AERA symposium Cirecie Olatunji, Xavier University of Louisiana, Carolyn Mitchell, Union College, NY and Fannie Haughton, UC Berkeley (graduate student)

• Developing a critical analysis of the state of research on Black education in the AERA 2000 annual meeting program--Annette Henry, University of Illinois, Chicago, Shuaib J. Meacham, University of Colorado, Boulder and Heidi Lovett, Florida State University (graduate student)

• Producing a participatory qualitative evaluation of the Institute William Franklin, Pennsylvania State University, Linda Tillman, University of New Orleans and Jean Ishibashi, (graduate student) UC Berkeley

In conclusion, the commissioned papers and other materials that will be used in this Instiute will explore research questions, concepts, methods and findings generated from within a culturally sensitive conceptual framework that contrast with the epistemological perspectives and knowledge constructed within dominant mainstream research paradigms.  For example, recent publications of the National Research Council (e.g., "Improving Student Learning:  A Strategic Plan for Education Research, and Utilization," and "Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children") ignore empirical studies of the effective pedagogy of Black teachers and a pedagogical approaches shown to improve Black student learning that integrate findings from cognitive science, literacy and well-documented Black oral traditions. It can be argued that dominant paradigm research that conceptualizes Black students as "at risk" and "disadvantaged" has the "colonizing effect" of "othering" these students by placing them outside a normative standard that is not universal but culturally specific. The language used to frame the National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students, sponsored by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), is another example.  In contrast, this Institute will demonstrate a model approach to the epistemological crisis in education that develops and uses "knowledge for the 21stcentury"---from an Africana perspective--to support graduate student learning and development.

VII.Evaluation   The ability of all participants to articulate the Africana worldview perspective and to distinguish this perspective from other approaches as well as their ability to use the rubric that will be developed to operationalize this perspective will constitute formative and summative evaluation of the Institute (web-based coursework and minicourse).  After the AERA meeting, all participants will complete an online questionnaire and a self-assessment of Institute experiences which the evaluators will analyze to prepare a summative evaluation of Institute. The evaluation will be completed by William Franklin and Jean Ishibashi, both of whom will also participate in the Institute.

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