i Counter-story as Curriculum: Autoethnography, Critical Race Theory, and Informed Assets in the Information Literacy Classroom Kim L. Morrison Smith MLIS, BA Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Information Systems Science and Engineering Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2018 KEYWORDS asset-based, autoethnography, counter-stories, community colleges, critical race theory, culturally relevant, culturally revitalizing, culturally sustaining, first generation students, informed asset-based, informed assets, indigenous knowledge, informed learning, information literacy, intersectionality, revitalizing pedagogy.
Transcript
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Counter-story as Curriculum: Autoethnography, Critical Race Theory, and
Informed Assets in the Information Literacy Classroom
Kim L. Morrison Smith MLIS, BA
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
School of Information Systems
Science and Engineering Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
2018
KEYWORDS
asset-based, autoethnography, counter-stories, community colleges, critical race theory, culturally relevant, culturally revitalizing, culturally sustaining, first generation students, informed asset-based, informed assets, indigenous knowledge, informed learning, information literacy, intersectionality, revitalizing pedagogy.
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ABSTRACT
The assets and lives of people of color continue to be misinterpreted and underrepresented
in higher education classrooms throughout the United States. This neglect and distortion
stems from the centuries of enslavement, genocide, and assimilation that mark this
country’s emergence. This research study applies critical race theory to reveal structural
patterns of systemic racism that serve to deform and dismiss the cultural legacy and
knowledge assets of students of color in a North American community college classroom.
In the tradition of resistance among African American and other oppressed peoples in the
United States, this study positions autoethnographic analysis as a tool to amplify the
deconstruction and reconstruction of the lived realities of the author and her students.
This dissertation examines the use of asset-based, critically explicit, racialized and
situated pedagogies within a library class curriculum. This collaborative, co-constructed
curriculum emerges from the researcher’s and the students’ lived experiences and from
our shared experiences in a Hip-Hop themed community college library course. This
study displaces the dominant deficit paradigm to posit an additive framework that
incorporates multiple student assets and their explicit racialized situatedness. This study
also seeks to understand how students acquire new knowledge and integrate it within their
experiential knowledge base and culturally and racially-situated context.
The study’s theoretical frames of asset-based pedagogy combined with critical race
theory, tenets of informed learning, decolonizing theories and methodologies, and
interdisciplinarity support the articulation and emergence of counter-stories. Counter-
stories are self-generated narratives that challenge externally-imposed narratives that seek
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to document students’ experiences. Critical autoethnography is used to reflect upon
students’ counter-stories and lived experiences. An analytic autoethnographic approach
allows the researcher to analyze her own situatedness as both insider and outsider in the
classroom and in the broader academic realm. Findings from this research may guide
future academic library praxis by demonstrating students’ use of cultural wealth and assets
and by identifying the racialized cultural context that informs their classroom experiences
and knowledge acquisition.
QUT Verified Signature
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people deserve thanks and acknowledgement for the help, support, and love
given to me during this journey, but first I would like to thank the students of my Chabot
Community College Information Literacy Classroom and their authentic engagement in
class, conversations, and in their education autoethnographies. Without them, this journey
would not have been possible. Thanks and much love to my wife kyzyl fenno-smith who
rode alongside me on this rollercoaster ride toward a PhD. Much love and a huge thanks
goes to my eight-year old son ellison morrison smith, who at times helped me highlight
words and phrases in the scholarly articles I was reading, and for the never ending
encouragement to finish my thesis. To luella morrison smith, my miracle baby, hugs,
kisses, and a big thanks for waiting so very patiently with story books to be read wrapped
in your arms. Though he passed away during this journey, with tears in my eyes, and
emptiness in my heart and soul, I’d like to give thanks to Raymond McInnis, my mentor
librarian at Fairhaven College, who encouraged my informed asset-based pedagogy. You
are the sole reason why I became an academic librarian.
Thanks, and much love goes to my supervisors, Dr. Sylvia Edwards, Dr. Christine
Bruce and Dr. Virginia Tucker, for their belief in me and what I wanted to do for this
thesis, and for also treating me as a friend and colleague. Yes Black Minds Matter.
Many thanks to my family and friends who supported me, and held a light at the
end of a tunnel sometimes dark. Thanks to my fellow doctoral students for courage and
support.
A big shout out and thanks goes to Constance Faulkner and Mary Somerville who
proofread and engaged me in meaningful conversations about my work.
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Finally proofreading and copying-editing services were provided by professional editor Rachel
Rosekind, according to guidelines that are laid out in the university-endorsed national
“Guidelines for editing research theses’.
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Dedication
This thesis is dedicated to all of the students who stepped up and shared their
stories with me and each other. Who have not only survived in academic environments
that did not see them and the worth they possess, they maintained a sense of agency for
themselves . They held onto what it would mean for themselves, their families, and
communities if they furthered their education. Thank you for inspiring me. You are why
I love to teach and what makes this work meaningful. And yes,
“If you can’t fly, then run, If you can’t run, Then walk, If you can’t walk, Then crawl, But whatever you do, Keep moving (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)
This thesis is dedicated to Ola and Emanuel Morrison. Thank you for the
principals and foundation of what it is to be a part of community. Thanks for instilling
within me, to not only look back, but to reach back and give. Though you did not go far
in your schooling, it is an honor to honor you with this work.
Last thesis dedication,
“Five in the air for the teachers not scared To tell those kids that’s livin' in the ghetto That the… holdin' back, that the world is theirs Yeah, yeah, the world is yours, I was once that little boy Terrified of the world, now I’m on a world tour I would give up everything, even start a world war For these ghetto girls and boys I’m rappin' round the world for” (Lupe Fiasco)
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Thesis Related Publications and Presentations
1. Morrison, K. L. (2017). Informed Asset-Based Pedagogy: Coming Correct,
Counter-stories from an Information Literacy Classroom. Library Trends, 66(2),
176-218.
2. Morrison, K. L. (2016) “Ain't no love for us ghetto children, so we cold”: Critical
Information Literacy, Hip Hop & Asset Pedagogy. April, 2016. Show + Prove Hip
Hop Studies Conference: The Tensions, Contradictions, And Possibilities of Hip
Hop Studies. UC Riverside, Riverside, CA.
3. Morrison, K. L. (2015) "Who knows? A cultural wealth approach to knowledge
production, Information Literacy and civic participation. March, 2015. Assoc. of
College & Research Libraries (ACRL), Portland, OR.
4. Morrison, K. L. (2015) “Cultural Wealth & Information Literacy: A Critical
Approach to Participatory Literacy” March, 2015. National Association to
Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking
(REFORMA), San Diego, CA.
5. Morrison, K. L. (2015). Emancipatory Pedagogy: Students Developing Agency
and Academic Literacy Using Assets-Based Hip- Hop Pedagogy & Critical
Information Literacy. Paper presented at Canadian Association of Professional
Academic Librarians, Ottawa, Canada.
6. Morrison, K. L. (2014) “Ain't no love for us ghetto children, so we cold”: hip hop,
information literacy and student agency. April, 2014. California Conference on
Library Instruction (CCLI), Oakland, CA. Invited speaker.
Publications and Presentations Arising from this Thesis.....................................................vii
LIST OF FIGURES.............................................................................................................xiiFigure 1: Photo of page in student reflective journal....................................................................xiiFigure 2: Photo of whiteboard after class research topic brainstorming......................................xiiFigure 3: Graphic of theoretical frame in practice.......................................................................xiiDrawing of representation of informed asset-based pedagogy.....................................................xiiFigure 4: Photo of whiteboard after class research topic brainstorming......................................xiiFigure 5: Documentary films about the Black Panthers used in research projects and curriculum......................................................................................................................................................xiiFigure 6: Photo of whiteboard after class brainstorming topics...................................................xiiFigure 7: Representation of Informed Asset-Based pedagogy......................................................xiiFigure 8: Last Day Reflection in journal......................................................................................xii
LIST OF TABLES..............................................................................................................xiiiTable 3.1. Basic tenets of critical race theory..............................................................................xiiiTable 3.2. Decolonizing theories & Methodologies with informed assets reframes the curriculum.....................................................................................................................................................xiiiTable 3.3. Basic tenets of this study: informed assets.................................................................xiiiTable 4.0. Chabot College Students Race-ethnicity Fall 2017......................................................xiiiTable 4.1: Chabot College Staff Characteristics by Race-ethnicity Fall 2017.............................xiiiTable: 4.2. Percentage of First Generation Students-Race-Ethnicity Groups.............................xiiiTable: 4.3. Percentage Assessed into Basic Skills English............................................................xiiiTable: 4.4 Percentage Assessed into Basic Skills Math................................................................xiiiTable 4.5 Persistence Rates for Library Skills via Hip hop and Popular culture........................xiiiTable 4.6 Success Rates for Library Skills taught by other librarians 2008-2015.......................xiiiTable 6.1. Distillation of findings for research questions w/o quotes...........................................xiiiTable 6.2. Students engage with informed assets pedagogy.........................................................xiiiTable 7.1. Elements of an informed asset-based classroom.........................................................xiiiTable 7.2. Elements of informed asset-based curricula................................................................xiiiTable 7.3. Teaching Strategies and Practices...............................................................................xiiiTable 7.4. Experiences of Informed Learning..............................................................................xiii
PREAMBLE.....................................................................................................................xxiiiCHAPTER 1: Introduction to Study: They Want to Categorize Us As Children of a High Crime Rate............................................................................................................................1
1.2 CONTEXT OF THE PROBLEM:............................................................................................11.2.1 A Historical Struggle for Freedom and Literacy among Marginalized Peoples.....................11.2.2 Literacy and Assimilation in the Lives of People of Color.....................................................21.2.3 History and Issues of Student Engagement in the Educational Environment........................31.2.4 Statement of the Problem: “No Love for Us Ghetto Children”..............................................51.2.5 “We Seek the Knowledge Your Colleges Lack” blue scholars (2004)....................................7
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1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS.......................................................................................................81.4 Study’s Objectives: Took My Dogs on a Private Plane from the Public Housing.....................91.5 Practitioner positionality: “Doing Scholarship”.....................................................................101.6 Researcher positionality: My Education via Autoethnography..............................................13
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.............................................................................172.1IntroductiontoLiterature.........................................................................................................172.2 Past curricular and pedagogical approaches to educational bias............................................17
2.3 Literature influencing study and Classroom Pedagogy.................................................182.3.2 Funds of Knowledge...............................................................................................................202.3.3 Community Cultural Wealth.................................................................................................212.3.8 Culturally Revitalizing Pedagogy..........................................................................................272.3.9 Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy (CHHP).....................................................................................292.3.12 Literature Summary.............................................................................................................352.3.13 Implications from literature findings for Information Literacy classrooms...................36
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN: “Mama taught me how to make a Silver Spoon out of plastic” (Drake)................................................................................................................38
3.1 Situating Epistemologically.....................................................................................................393.2 Analytic Situatedness..............................................................................................................403.3 Theoretical Frames..................................................................................................................413.4 Research Strategy....................................................................................................................463.5 Critical Ethnography: A Research Strategy for seeking equity in education.........................473.6 Stages of Carspecken’s (CQR) critical ethnography applied in this study.............................503.6.1 Stage 1: Building a primary record: What is going on?.......................................................513.6.2 Stage 2 Preliminary Reconstructive Analysis Researcher interpretation:...........................513.6.3 Stage 3 Dialogical data generation: Collaborative Stage......................................................523.6.4 Stage 4 Describes systems relations to broader context: Analysis of findings......................533.6.5 Stage 5 Explains relational systems......................................................................................53
Chapter 4: Method: I could teach you how to speak my language, Rossetta Stone (Drake)544.1 Introduction to methodological tools.......................................................................................544.2 Autoethnography.....................................................................................................................554.3 Analytic Autoethnography......................................................................................................554.4 Autoethnography in this study................................................................................................584.5 Research Site Context.............................................................................................................594.6 Context inside the Classroom in this Study.............................................................................654.7 Data Collection........................................................................................................................674.9 Data collection and researcher positionality...........................................................................754.10 Conversations: Setting, Context, and Content......................................................................764.11 Initial conversation................................................................................................................784.12 Second conversation..............................................................................................................794.14 Data Analysis.........................................................................................................................814.15 Ethics.....................................................................................................................................834.16 Verification and Trustworthiness..........................................................................................844.17 Research limitations..............................................................................................................844.18 Methods Conclusion..............................................................................................................85
CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS: “I didn’t invent THUG LIFE, I diagnosed it”. (Tupac)..........86
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5.1 Flipping the Western script.....................................................................................................865.2 Our Counter-Stories................................................................................................................885.3 Participant Introductions: Tell it like it is, student counter-stories.......................................885.5 Our counter-stories from Our Conversations.........................................................................985.6 Informal information networks and survival skills.................................................................995.7 Engagement of student assets in academic classrooms..........................................................1025.8 Substantive conversations about race in the classroom........................................................105
CHAPTER 6: STORYING FINDINGS.............................................................................1126.1 Building a Bridge to Culturally Relevant Information Literacy Instruction........................1156.2 Students engage with additive pedagogy...............................................................................1186.2 Student cultural assets and explicit racial cultural situatedness...........................................119Students engage with informed additive pedagogy.....................................................................1226.4 Summary of Storying Findings.............................................................................................124
CHAPTER 7: Discussion..................................................................................................1247.1 Revisiting the Study’s Literature Review and Its Impact.....................................................1267.2 Intersectionality: Its Impact on the Study, Class Pedagogy, and Epistemology....................1277.3 Student Engagement with Informed Additive Pedagogy......................................................1297.4 Informed cultural assets: honoring and revitalizing student assets......................................1307.5 Classroom Informed Assets Pedagogy..................................................................................1347.6 Informed Asset-Based Learning Materials...........................................................................1617.7 The Value of Seminar-Based Classroom Discussions............................................................1667.8 Education for self-transformation and determination..........................................................1677.9 Reflecting on the house we built: Informed Asset Pedagogy.................................................170
CHAPTER 8: Conclusion, Contributions, and Implications.............................................1738.1 My Peculiar Sensation of Informed Asset-Based Research Instruction................................1738.2 How I Got Here.....................................................................................................................1768.3 Learning I Had Assets to Guide My Education as a First-Generation College Student.......179“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others”. (Marianne Williamson).................................................................................................1798.5 Going Forward......................................................................................................................1828.6 Deconstructing dominant narratives to Build Deeper Understandings................................1888.7 Contributions of informed assets: building upon and revitalizing Information Literacy.....189
8.7.1 Contributions of Study to the Field of Research, Students, and Educators....................1898.7.2 Research Contribution Summary.......................................................................................1928.7.3 Future Directions: Autoethnography & Participatory Action Research in the Classroom194
Cultural Capital: Whiteness constitutes cultural, social, and property value. Being white
guarantees hierarchical standing over minorities (Bourdieu,1973; Yosso, 2005).
Cultural Interface: “The intersection of the Western and Indigenous domains…the place
where we live and learn, the place that conditions our lives, the place that shapes our
futures and, more to the point, the place where we are active agents in our own lives,
where we make our decisions our life world” (Nakata, 2002, p. 285)
Culturally-Relevant Pedagogy (CRP): Pedagogy that reflects and includes students’
current and historical cultural background and experiences. Teachers must possess
relevant cultural knowledge and competence to engage diverse students.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: Sustaining pedagogy that incorporates cultural
relevance (Paris & Alim, 2014), e.g. learning to speak in one’s native tongue and
transmitting to the next generation. In terms of this study, pedagogy is informed by
students’ assets and by historical and cultural community wealth.
Dominant Culture: The customs of the group of people with the most power in a given
society constitute the dominant culture of a country (Spring, 2006).
Double Consciousness: The experience of having two selves, as experienced by African
Americans, first noted by Du Bois.
Decolonized Frame: A frame of mind wherein one is aware of the lived social, cultural,
and historical reality beyond the scope of the colonial dominant narrative.
Deficit Model of Education: Teachers and educators not seeing students as possessing
strengths held within their cultural contexts. Instead many marginalized populations are
viewed as lacking or in deficit because they do not possess or are successful in
Eurocentric standards of education in the United States and abroad.
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Embedded Indigenous Knowledge Perspective (EIP): In order to move toward or
attempt a decolonizing curriculum, the perspective and knowledge of Indigenous peoples
must be embedded by academics (McLaughlin & Whatman, 2007).
Ethnography: “Ethnography can be defined as the study of people in naturally occurring
settings or ‘fields’ by means of methods which capture their social meanings and ordinary
activities, involving the researcher participating directly in the setting” (Brewer, 2003, p.
2). In the case of this study, ethnography means the systematic study of culture in order to
see beyond one’s own lens/world.
Flip the Script: A Black vernacular a slang term meaning to reverse a situation, making it
into a positive one or to make a situation more useful and relevant to one’s experience.
Funds of Knowledge: A reference to “the historically accumulated and culturally
developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual
functioning and well-being” (Moll, 2001, p. 133).
Funds of Identity: “Funds of knowledge—bodies of knowledge and skills that are
essential for the well-being of an entire household—become funds of identity when people
actively use them to define themselves” (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014, p. 31).
Hip Hop: Hip hop also known as rap music is a music genre created by African
Americans in the late 70’s. Hip hop consist of singing, rhyming or reciting poetry styled
lyrics to a rhythmic beat.
Indigenous Knowledge: “[Indigenous knowledge] includes the cultural traditions, values,
beliefs, and worldviews of local peoples as distinguished from Western scientific
knowledge. Such local knowledge is the product of indigenous peoples’ direct experience
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of the workings of nature and its relationship with the social world. It is also a holistic
and inclusive form of knowledge” (Dei, 1993, p.105).
Intentional Space: Culturally relevant space where members cultivate conversational
intimacy to tell their stories, discuss shared experiences, and think critically about social
and cultural contexts (morrison, 2017).
Information Literacy (IL): Is about “engaging in information practices in order to learn;
engaging with the different ways of using information to learn” (Bruce, 2008, pg. 5).
Interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinarity involves the use of more than 2 academic fields in
an academic class or research project.
Lived Experience: Someone’s life experience as articulated by them and only them (Paris &
Alim, 2014). Lived experience is a first-hand account and reflection. “Lived experience, as it is
explored and understood in qualitative research, is a representation and understanding of a
researcher or research subject's human experiences, choices, and options and how those factors
influence one's perception of knowledge” (Given, 2009, pg. 490).
Mindful Inquiry (MI): A, research approach where one must “be attentive to and
conscious of the cultural, political, social, linguistic and ideological origins of one’s own
perspective and voice as well as the perspective and voice of those one interviews and
those to whom one reports” (Patton, 2002, p. 65).
Participatory Action Research (PAR): “aims to produce knowledge and action directly
useful to people, and also to empower people through the process of constructing and
using their own knowledge” (Miller, & Brewer, 2003, p. 226).
Street Knowledge: Resourcefulness to survive at society’s margins
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Student Knowledge/Standpoint: Addresses issues of importance to students; working
with students’ (subjugated) knowledge about the way school works; allowing
marginalized perspectives and voices to take center stage; using student experiences to
develop approaches and tools; disrupting academic power relations, which includes but is
not confined to those that are age-related; geared toward making a difference (Thomson &
Gunter, 2007).
Subtractive Education: Education that is subtractive “refers to curriculum policies, processes,
or practices that remove students' culture or language from classroom contexts as a resource for
learning or as a source of personal affirmation” (Sloan, 2010, pg. 826). For the student’s this
means abandoning their traditional culture and language to assimilate fully into the Eurocentric
American culture.
THUG LIFE: Thug Life is an acronym created by the hip hop rapper Tupac Shakur. In
Tupac explained it is not about being a criminal. He attributes THUG LIFE as being
about how white society treats and sees African Americans. African Americans live
THUG LIFE due to racism, police profiling, discrimination and segregation. This
includes unequal access to education, housing, and reparations and an official apology for
the genocide that Africans and African Americans endured during U.S. slavery. It is an
acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone”. Tupac said he diagnosed
THUG LIFE not created.
Traditional Knowledge (TK) “Traditional knowledge refers to the knowledge,
innovations, and practices of indigenous and local communities around the world.
Developed from experience gained over the centuries and adapted to the local culture and
environment, traditional knowledge is transmitted orally from generation to generation. It
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tends to be collectively owned and takes the form of stories, songs, folklore, proverbs,
cultural values, beliefs, rituals, community laws, local language, and agricultural practices,
including the development of plant species and animal breeds” (Convention on Biological
Diversity, 2006, n.p.).
Traditional Schooling: Dominant pedagogical methods and content, often devoid of
indigenous knowledge and ways of teaching.
Underrepresented/Marginalized: Groups that identify in terms of physical, cultural, and
class characteristics (i.e., race, class, gender, caste, tribe, minorities) that are
underrepresented in dominant cultural institutions, forms, and discourses (Solórzano &
Yosso, 2002).
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PREAMBLE
“It is our opinion that one of the most fundamental principles of Aboriginal research
methodology is the necessity for the researcher to locate him or herself. . .We resist
colonial models of writing by talking about ourselves first and then relating pieces of our
stories and ideas to the research topic” (Brown, L., & Strega, S. (Eds.). (2005, p. 99).
Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) statesin his book, The Authentic Dissertation: Alternative
Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation (Jacobs, 2009) that, “the diverse short
dissertations stories in this book are authentic. They are, in essence, spiritual undertakings and
reflections that honor the centrality of the researcher’s voice, experience, creativity, and
authority. As such, these researchers created dissertations that:
1. Focus more on important questions than on research methodologies per se;
2. Seek to make the world a better place
3. Regard the people’s version of reality;
4. Are situated in experience;
5. Respect multiple culturally determined ways of thinking and knowing;
6. Respect multiple culturally determined ways of thinking and living;
7. Challenge all forms of oppression
8. See service to others as a component of research;
9. Honor traditional Indigenous ways of knowing—just to name a few” (p. 2)
It is my hope that I, too, have created research much like what Four Arrows has stated.
I am attempting to decolonize my mind (Tuhiwai Smith, 2008; Tuck & Yang,
2012) so I can describe the conditions of being a colonized scholar and student (Hodges,
2010). I am in a state of reaction against the rules, against the dominant narrative, which
is exactly the state my students are in, and why the curriculum and pedagogy I use works
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for them. In traditional academic spaces, students’ knowledge and cultural wealth is
“disavowed, displaced, negated, and engulfed” (Silva, 2009, p. 42), and dismissed by a
process of remediation. My students and I reject this exclusion and negation. We
formulate our own narrative and pedagogy of affirmation.
The format of a traditional education dissertation (Duke & Beck, 1999) does not speak
truth to power (Tronsgard, 1963; Beckmann & Porter, 1982), does not allow for authenticity of
experience (Duke & Beck, 1999; Hartley & Betts, 2009; Hill et al., 2011), and does not embody
the forms of knowledge transfer in my community, my students’ lives, or our classroom. The
structure in which I present information differs from that of “traditional dissertations.” The
structure and methods used, I feel, are the best way to present what my students and I have to
say. Jacobs suggests that “any format can be sufficiently ‘valid’ if it makes a unique and
substantial contribution to understanding the world better or to making it a better place to
live…alternative ‘dissertation stories have proven this so’” (2009, p. 5). My dissertation
embodies the spirit and intention of our authentic expression. Please honor and engage with it.
As my study and this dissertation have evolved, “the form this research has taken
is a reflection of my shifting focus throughout the process” (Hansen, 2016, p. 41). This
mobility has allowed me to explore and share the complicated, personal, political, and
emotional aspects of research (Hansen, 2016, p. 41). I write in the first person to reflect
my autoethnographic approach, and incorporate data collection, reflection, analysis, and
findings to amplify my theoretical standpoint.
Situating Myself in Academia as a Black Woman “If they find out about you it is all over…. Cultivate normalcy. Stress sameness, blend in. For God’s sake don’t pile difference upon difference. It’s not safe.” (Michelle Cliff, The Land of Look Behind, 1985.)
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Entering the academic conversation as a scholar of color, I find I am situated in a
system that bell hooks (1994) characterizes as one circumscribed by race, as it is
concurrently and perpetually working in the lives of colonized and marginalized people.
Hooks describes this as “White supremacist, capitalist patriarchy: interlocking systems of
domination that define our reality” (Ryan, 2011, p. 1). So, in my efforts to earn a PhD,
not only do I confront this interlocking system, I also possess a double consciousness, one
I must articulate using academic discourse—how others would have me perceived, and
how I perceive/situate myself. As a doctoral student, I concur with Croft (2015): “I am
attempting to un-do myself, un-doing kardiya (whitefella/non-indigenousness) learning
then relearning all I have been taught through a Western pedagogy, and then redoing, re-
making myself” (p. 232). Croft explains that the tools needed for this dismantlement and
reconstruction are themselves products of academic discourse and methodology. Yet,
even while using this language and these strategies, she must remain present, accountable,
connected, and situated in her community. I bring these insights and considerations to
bear on the pedagogical framework of informed assets I employ in my Hip-Hop-themed
library class.
I am struggling to articulate myself in freedom (Madison, 2012), to draw from and
represent a decolonized perspective that invests power and significance in the voices and
experiences of the marginalized. This is the source and substance of my work: the active,
reactive student-scholar-educator. My research seeks “not to replace the historical values of
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academic research in the Western tradition but only to challenge some of these values and offer
alternative ideas that stem from different sometimes opposing values” (Jacobs, 2009, p. 4). It
demands an understanding of the knowledge, experiential base, and struggles of indigenous
communities and people of color.
The U.S. educational system’s curriculum and practices evidence a deficit-based
framework to the languages, literacies, and cultural traditions of many students and communities
of color. In this model, these inherent attributes are viewed as obstacles to learning (see Lee,
2007), and (Truebridge, 2013), for further discussion of the deficit-to-resource paradigm
trajectory in research and practice). Deficit-based approaches seek to eradicate the linguistic and
cultural forms students of color bring from their homes and communities and to replace them
with “superior practices” (Paris, 2012). Counter to this formulation, I developed a teaching
model for building on students’ strengths. My students are predominantly African American,
Latino, Indigenous Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders, and White students who identify with
Hip-Hop culture. I engage them through a dynamic IL curriculum that builds upon their
strengths and life experiences.
The pedagogical intersections I employ are practiced in other fields and disciplinary
contexts, as represented in the study’s literature review. It is unclear to me why they are not
practiced in the LIS field. In 2016, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)
produced a report identifying five information trends that will shape what information is in the
world. IFLA contends that in the future, “Hyper-connected societies [that] will listen to and
empower new voices and groups” (i Calvo & Kuzmin, 2013, p. 43).
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So, I ask: How does the LIS community account for our students’ lived experiences?
How do we integrate what underserved populations know with what they learn on campus?
There are other academics that are teaching by building upon students’ strengths, among them:
• Huston, M. M. (1989). May I introduce you: Teaching culturally diverse end-
users through everyday information seeking experiences. Reference Services
Review, 17(1), 7-11. and Huston, M. M. (1987).
• Researcher response to the politics of information. Research Strategies, 5, 90-93.
• Akom, A.A. (2009). Critical hip hop pedagogy as a form of liberatory praxis.
Equity & Excellence in Education, 42(1), 52–66.
This dissertation represents my contribution to students of color, to those who are
the first in their families to attend college, and to academics striving toward educational
equity. I cannot assume the neutral position asserted in dominant educational paradigms
and research. Neutrality does not exist in my classroom; there is nothing about educating
folks of color and the poor that has ever been neutral. Mainstream education serves the
purpose of replicating the "status quo": a status quo that is based on exclusion, the
promotion of assimilation to dominant norms, and a sweeping culture of surveillance
directed toward people of color. Mclaughlin & Whatam (2007) posited embedded
indigenous perspectives (EIP) in an effort to decolonize the curriculum, arguing that
“successful attempts at embedding Indigenous knowledge may result from critical models
of curriculum development, rather than outcomes based education” (pg. 11). Along the
lines of (EIP) I believe the use of autoethnography and counter-stories as pedagogy
provides student produced curriculum and provides culturally relevancy.
xxviii
I understand that people will respond to my study and label it “alternative,” and
that my research is unfamiliar and challenging. Although the study’s asset-based
framework is somewhat new in academic circles, it builds upon a historically-rich
foundation pioneered by such educators as W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Zora
Neale Hurston, and Gloria Ladson-Billings, all of whom “used race as a theoretical lens”
(Tyson, 1998, p. 22). According to Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011),
scholars began recognizing that different kinds of people possess different
assumptions about the world—a multitude of ways of speaking, writing, valuing
and believing—and that conventional ways of doing and thinking about research
were narrow, limiting, and parochial. These differences can stem from race
Dykins Callahan, 2008), education (Delpit, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999), or religion
(Droogsma, 2007; Minkowitz, 1995). (p. 4)
The context of my work demands the methodology and theoretical framework that I
employ in this study and dissertation. I cannot address assets and cultural wealth if I do
not enter this academic space and declare, “this is what is valued.” Our counter-stories.
I want to get to the point, and I don’t want to jump through a bunch of hoops to get
there. Marginalized populations are often subjected to demands, assumptions, and “extra
tasks” to demonstrate their competence or eligibility, e.g. in financial transactions and
within educational environments. My students experience this when they are provided at
the outset of a course with a laundry list of rules and specifications. This list declares, here
xxix
is the knowledge that is validated and these are the regulations that you must adhere to. I
foreground student voices in this thesis and in my library classroom not to perpetuate
“cursory linkages to students’ communities” (Valenzuela, 2016, p.110), but to take up the
torch and inspire others to teach in a way that recognizes students’ experiential and
cultural lives (Valenzuela, 2016, p. 110.) I align myself with Valenzula, who writes,
“Education is conceived not as a process of replacing accumulated community knowledge
with school knowledge, but rather as leveraging both in ways that support collective
intellectual, cultural, and spiritual well-being” (Valenzuela, 2016, p. 111). I honor the role
and power of students’ counter-stories, as they define their educational context, lived
experiences, and the cultural and familial narratives that constitute their identities.
Tell It: A Dissertation Translation: Code-switching/Double-Consciousness
“My philosophy to win is calling me to spit this shit . . .” (Blue Scholars, 2003). Throughout this dissertation, I write with a sprinkling of Black English, code-
switching, and double consciousness that represents authentic African American
experience, Hip-Hop culture, and my class environment. The use of code-switching
reflects a double consciousness: the awareness of how to navigate between a white
dominant culture and one’s own community. I often label subheadings in the form of
Hip-Hop lyrics or metaphors to reflect my students’ lived experience. These metaphors
represent a combination of street language, knowledge, and lived experience, as opposed
to what is deemed “academic” language: code-switching/double consciousness literacies
situated in the cultural and social practices of everyday life that translate and reinvent
linguistic construction, usage, and cultural interaction. Many African Americans and
communities of color extend the limitations of standard language to serve as a
xxx
communicative code that reverses the power of the dominant culture and its linguistic
colonization (Alim, 2011). My subheadings reflect and reinvent this tradition.
I’d like to welcome you to the home we created in our library classroom, a space
that extends the definition and skill sets implied by the concept and practice of
information literacy. I draw upon IL’s tenets to promote skills and introduce tools that
bear cultural relevance to our lived experiences, that revitalize learning to make space for
decolonized healing, and that celebrate students’ cultural wealth and the value of
Indigenous Knowledge. I wholeheartedly believe that we created a place “where we are
active agents in our own lives—where we make our decisions—our lifeworld”
(Mclaughlin & Whatam, 2002, p. 5).
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xxxii
1
CHAPTER 1: Introduction to Study: They Want to Categorize Us As Children of a High Crime Rate
1.2 CONTEXT OF THE PROBLEM:
1.2.1 A Historical Struggle for Freedom and Literacy among Marginalized Peoples
“For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” -James Baldwin (sonny’s Blues)
Prior to the European slave trade, settler colonialism, and the post-colonial and
civil rights eras, African people and the indigenous peoples of what is referred to as the
United States passed down multiple forms of literacy and cultural traditions from
generation to generation. Over the course of European colonialism, much of that
transmission was lost or overwritten. As a result, many groups today struggle to
remember, reclaim, and revitalize the cultural traditions and forms of expression
suppressed by colonization (Trask, 2004, Fisher, 2009). My pedagogy honors and
contributes to those efforts.
Many slaves learned to read and write despite the brutal consequences that often
ensued. As Fisher (2009) reminds us, “…The idea of a literate ‘slave’ was dangerous and
offensive to most whites” (p. x). Slaves often used their fingers as pens and dirt for paper
and confronted great risks in order to teach one another to read and write. They regarded
the acquisition of literacy as an imperative in the quest for individual and collective
liberation: “Part of becoming literate was to assume the responsibility to contribute to
one’s immediate and at large community” (Fisher, 2009, p. 18). At great risk, many
2
literate and free slaves took it upon themselves to educate those within their communities.
Free and enslaved blacks who participated in the makeshift schools ranged in age from the
young to the very old. Learning to read and write was seen as an imperative—especially
if one had their sights on freedom, and on ways to get ahead. This notion of self and
community betterment would remain strong among blacks and other communities of color
throughout segregation and desegregation and attempts to assimilate them to the dominant
norm. This link between self and community uplift continues to animate political and
social activism in marginalized communities.
1.2.2 Literacy and Assimilation in the Lives of People of Color
The creation of indigenous boarding schools in the United States and abroad
fostered the linguistic and cultural assimilation of native populations and the subsequent
destruction of indigenous traditions. Jacobs, (2009, pg.xx) posits that the colonizers’
forced removal of Aboriginal and American Indian children represented an act of colonial
control rather than assimilation, and that their subsequent educational curriculum was
designed to create an exploitable labor force. The generation and modification of
curriculum to serve the labor market extended beyond the institutionalization of
indigenous boarding schools: trade schools’ curricula was also designed to assimilate
newly emancipated blacks into the labor force. This radical shift in power relations and
broader economic and social forces dictated educational paradigms for the newly freed
blacks. Anderson, (1989, p. 8) contends, “this system of second-class education for blacks
did not just happen. It was a logical outgrowth of a social ideology designed to adjust
black southerners to racially qualified forms of political and economic subordination”.
3
Today, our menial labor forces are heavily populated by people of color. Our
schools provide market driven education for people of color and the poor, and is lacking in
pedagogy relevant to students experiences. Attempts to integrate culturally relevant
pedagogy into mainstream academic institutions are stymied by the dearth of faculty
drawn from indigenous, ethnic, and marginalized populations. According to the U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, in the fall of 2015, “of
all full-time faculty at degree-granting postsecondary institutions, 42 percent were White
males, 35 percent were White females, 6 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander males, 4
percent were Asian/Pacific Islander females, 3 percent each were Black females and Black
males, and 2 percent each were Hispanic males and Hispanic females 2017” (p. 144).
Having staff and faculty of color on our campuses is integral to the overall experience and
success for students of color. According to
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217 (U.S Census, 2014) Black
Americans comprise 13.4% of total U.S. population.
1.2.3 History and Issues of Student Engagement in the Educational Environment
A number of theorists have focused on the cultural biases inherent in curriculum and
pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014). In the educational environment, the “struggle over the
curriculum, over whose experience would be represented as valid or whose language or history
would be taught—are unquestionably long-standing” (Buras & Apple, 2006, p. 24). What is
knowledge? Who can create knowledge? Whose stories are told and how are they told? Whose
lived experience is valued? The answers to these questions define the scope and acquisition of
knowledge in educational settings.
4
Marginalized groups have fought for inclusion and representation and against the
forces of cultural assimilation and historical omission in the educational domain. Houston
(2007) states, “At the heart of this recognition is a belief in the need to challenge the
established ways of acquiring knowledge, particularly knowledge that is collected,
analyzed, published, and taught about the ‘Other,’ the ‘colonized,’ the Indigenous” (p. 1).
Fisher, (Fisher, 2009, p. 63) reminds us that the “historical nature of education in the
context of the United States makes it far too easy to forget how schools sought to
assimilate Black and Latino youth, thus marginalizing if not outright devaluing these
student’s familial and community contributions”. This process is evident in various
outcomes emergent from the government’s efforts to desegregate schools, e.g. the
displacement of African American teachers and community members and the battles over
student busing (Alim, 2011). As the desegregation process fragmented social and
geographical ties, the church served as a source of unity and strength for community
members (Fisher, 2008). Today, marginalized populations are struggling to rectify,
reclaim, and revitalize their cultural practices, wealth, and literacies. Apple states,
“common struggles to build and keep alive aesthetic and insurgent meanings are so much
a part of a people’s past and present” (Apple, 2009, p. xi). The growing body of counter-
stories from marginalized populations speaks to this.
There is a growing body of research on the experiences of first-generation and
underrepresented students attending institutions of higher education in the United States
and abroad (Tinto, 1993; Orbe, 2004; Tinto, 2008; Miller, 2011; Woosley & Soria, 2012;
McKenzie, 2005; Battiste, 2011; Hall, 2013; Deer 2014). The federal government coined
the nomination “first-generation student” to target disadvantaged students for federally-
5
funded outreach programs (Graham, 2011; Davenport, 2014). These students were then,
as they are now, drawn from disproportionately poor communities of color. Many have
attended chronically underfunded public schools, are employed during their undergraduate
studies, and often bear multiple familial responsibilities, including caring for children and
elders. Most of these students commute to campus and rely on various forms of financial
aid to pay their educational expenses (Nuñez & Carroll, 1998).
First-generation college students cannot draw from the background knowledge and
experiences of their family and friends. They often enter college academically unprepared
to withstand the rigors of a higher education curriculum. First-generation college students
may feel alienated from higher education environments, and may come to campus without
the necessary social and informational contexts to maximize their experiences. Students
drawn from underrepresented groups perceive that their experiences, cultural wealth, and
knowledge base are regarded as deficits in mainstream educational institutions: as things
to be extracted, excised, removed, or otherwise overcome and replaced with White
cultural values (Alim, 2011, Yosso, 2005). Educators, like myself have sought to reframe
this position by telling students, Yes, you do know how to do things, you’ve been told that
that does not work here—but it does (Gay, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1992; Moll, 1992).
These educators strive to increase equitable education (Ainscow, 2013; Chapman, 1997,
Ainscow, 2013; Vasquez, 1998) and make the classroom a culturally relevant space
(Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014; Gay, 2002, 2010).
1.2.4 Statement of the Problem: “No Love for Us Ghetto Children”
“Outsiders they refuse to help us, yes they do, And they down us for living the way we do,
6
But when you're born the child, the child of a poor man, ooh, They say the ghetto is the only place for you”. (Staple Singers) Community college students, many of whom are first-generation, are particularly
subject to the discrepancy between what is valued in their native cultures and what is
important in academia (Tierney & Colyar, 2006; Valenzuela, 1999). For these students, it
is important to consider whether their information seeking processes, the ways in which
they think about, seek, and use information, apply to their college educational experience.
Does the current academic climate help them to acquire the information literacy skills they
need in a higher education setting? Are these students encountering a deluge of
information in their courses within a climate that often conflicts with, or even denies, their
knowledge and experience and situatedness (Alim, 2011; Yosso, 2002; Valenzuela,
2016)? My pedagogy aims to transform the wealth these students already possess into
“translate that wealth, and this is how.” Their prior knowledge and cultural wealth is the
catalyst to explore and find cultural context, knowledge of and from their communities via
information literacy. I posit an informed asset-based approach, which encompasses an
explicit racialized context pedagogy. This model incorporates students’ real-world
literacies, historical contexts, and lived experiences. It is largely absent from current IL
research literature and curriculum. In the rare instances of inclusion, this approach is
often merely a supplement to existing curriculum rather than an independent field of
inquiry or pedagogical model.
7
Although educational research reflects decades of theoretical engagement with
asset-based models, IL theorists and practitioners have not substantively explored or
invested in this pedagogical framework. My study represents an intervention; I apply
asset-based approaches to the IL classroom at a community college located within the
traditional territory of the Muwekma Ohlone, in what is now referred to as San Francisco
Bay Area in the United States. In this study and within my classroom pedagogy, I seek to
ascertain whether encouraging students to share their lived experiences, cultural assets,
situatedness, and inherent knowledge can ease their transition into an academic setting
and, breathe life into IL instruction and expose students to the wealth of Indigenous
knowledge coming from their own communities.
1.2.5 “We Seek the Knowledge Your Colleges Lack” blue scholars (2004)
They aint teachin us nothing but how to be slaves and hardworkers…They ain't teachin us nothin related to solvin our own problems…Ain't teachin us how to get crack out the ghetto. They ain't teachin us how to stop the police from murdering us and brutalizing us, they ain't teachin us how to get our rent paid…They ain't teachin our families how to interact better with each other… They just teachin us how to build they shit up, knowhatimsayin? That's why my niggasGot a problem with this shit, that's why… droppin out that Shit cuz it don't relate…school don't even relate to us. (Dead Prez, 2000)
The persistent problem of cultural bias in curriculum and pedagogy has driven the
development of numerous theoretical and practical responses discussed in Chapter 2
(below). Inviting marginalized students to share their lived experiences illuminates
history and contemporary cultural contexts (Alim, 2011; Akom, 2009; Ladson-Billings,
8
1995; Yosso, 2005, 2006). Information literacy praxis provides a unique opportunity to
guide the inclusion and acculturation of those who have been underrepresented and
underserved in academia. Whether this occurs in one-shot orientations, a research project,
or in a collaborative project with a colleague from a different discipline, librarians must
begin to look at the diverse populations they serve and make IL relevant (Bruce, Edwards,
& Lupton , 2006; Accardi, et al., 2010). In this model of transformative IL praxis,
students drive the engagement and instruction. This curriculum draws from critical IL
(Accardi, et al. 2010), asset-based pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014; Akom, 2009), and what
I term “explicit racialized situatedness/context pedagogy,” an approach that capitalizes on
students’ knowledge, and cultural wealth. The goal is to maximize student engagement by
building upon the assets they already possess. My study provides a model to guide these
efforts.
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. (Morrison, 1987, p. 9)
This study seeks to document how students use their cultural wealth, real-world
literacies, and lived experiences to acquire information literacy in a community college
setting. The following questions will be addressed:
1. How do community college students use their cultural assets in an IL class? 2. How do community college students participate in additive pedagogical practices in an IL classroom? 3. How do community college students experience explicit racial and cultural situatedness in an IL classroom?
9
These questions exemplify this study’s asset-based framework. They are articulated in an
autoethnographic voice because this style of address is “capable of powerful examinations
of the relationships between self and other from the perspective of self. These questions
encourage the authentic engagement of one’s lived experience to counter the
misrepresentations and omissions performed by others. Starr (2010) believes
“autoethnographic investigation has the potential to address some of the tensions that exist
as a result of the cultural multiplicity present in... schools” (p. 7). The questions that
frame this study address culturally relevant, sustaining, and revitalizing pedagogy to
encourage students to link their lives outside of the classroom with what they are learning
within it.
1.4 Study’s Objectives: Took My Dogs on a Private Plane from the Public Housing (Big Sean, “Bounce Back,” 2017) First and foremost, the purpose of this study is to provide a legitimate space for
students to voice their academic counter-stories and to present their experience in an asset-
based research classroom. Thus, this study and student voices within it provide insight
about teaching practices that acknowledge cultural assets, and the important role they play
in engaging them and helping them see the relevance of their lived experiences.
“we wouldn’t ask why a rose that grew from the concrete for having damaged petals, in turn, we would all celebrate its tenacity, we would all love its will to reach the sun, well, we are the roses, this is the concrete and these are my damaged petals, don’t ask me why, thank god, and ask me how” (Shakur, Tupac, 1999).
10
This study seeks to understand how curricular engagement of students’ cultural
wealth and informed assets impacts IL acquisition within an academic environment. How
do these components contribute to resuscitating, making relevant, and sustaining IL
curricula that students feel is not culturally and personally relevant? This study:
Uses student autoethnographies to identify culturally relevant curricula that resonate with
their lived experiences on and off campus;
Examines how student’s cultural assets inform IL instruction;
Identifies which components of IL instruction encourage lifelong learning (CRT,
decolonizing knowledge framework).
This study demonstrates the impact and potential of IL instruction performed
within a decolonized frame. In describing “history told from below” (Rickertt, 2007;
Harvey, 1993), this study addresses the need to incorporate student-articulated experience
of critical race theory and informed asset-based pedagogy into academic instruction. This
explicit integration is often frustrated by traditional IL instruction’s adherence to an
agenda of objectivity or neutrality. My work and my students’ stories push beyond this
position to insist that racial identity and cultural situatedness are central to a revitalized
Upon my hiring as the Information Literacy and Outreach Librarian at Chabot
College, I was directed to reinvigorate the library’s curriculum. At the time, student
participation in library research skills classes was low. As I set about to change this, I
observed the students who came into the library and situated their race, class, gender, and
socioeconomic affiliations within the scope of broader campus demographics. Chabot
11
College has a high percentage of African American and Latino students, mostly drawn
from nearby cities, which are themselves mainly populated by these marginalized groups.
The 2015 Census table below identifies the college’s racial and ethnic demographics.
Table 1 Chabot College population distribution by race
Students Spring 2015 Census Race-ethnicity
Number 13,355
Percent
African American 1,604 12%
Asian American 2,094 16%
Filipino Pacific Islander 1,043 8%
Latino 4,900 37%
Native American 31 <1%
Pacific Islander 227 2%
White 2,433 18%
Multiracial 802 6%
Unknown 221 2%
In this new role, I reflected upon my own experience as a first-generation student
of color, as someone who regarded higher education as a means to improve my skills and
move into a higher socioeconomic bracket. I pondered what the “hook” was that sparked
12
my interest in research and information literacy. In my case, the cultural knowledge that I
possessed prior to my matriculation became an asset when I was encouraged to investigate
something I already knew about for a research assignment. I decided that I needed to
identify and implement a “hook” to assist students like me to feel safe in the unfamiliar
academic environment. I wanted to convince students that my IL class would value their
assets.
I participate in the cadre of critical educators who regard education as a liberatory
tool. Likewise, I view my approach to IL as integrated with other disciplinary fields. This
inclusive and holistic paradigm is one of the categories of informed learning (Bruce,
Edwards, & Lupton, 2006). Compartmentalizing disciplines works against the notion of
education as liberation. In my approach to IL, I employ a “racially explicit informed
asset-based” pedagogy and use a mixed ethnographic approach, decolonized history, and
student assets to guide curriculum. As an undergraduate, I was encouraged to tap into my
own cultural wealth and my personal assets. This practice impacts my pedagogy and
informs the research questions that frame this study. Rather than viewing and engaging a
student’s background from a deficit-based standpoint (Milner, 2008b; Volk & Long,
2005) or labeling students as “at risk,” an additive, assets-based approach strives for
inclusivity and continuity. Culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and
culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2014) are asset-based approaches which
challenge deficit-based models. Smith-Maddox and Solórzano (2002) link funds of
knowledge (Moll, 1990) scholarship to this new model: “asset-based research is grounded
in the recognition that a unique combination of assets exists in each community.
Specifically, the assets can be found in at least four places: a) with individuals in the
13
community, b) in community associations, c) within community institutions, and d) in
indigenous forms of knowledge ‘native’ to the community. Indeed, an asset-based
strategy emphasizes the development of policies and practices grounded in the capacities,
skills, and assets of people and their neighborhoods” (p. 78). Asset-based pedagogy will
be further explained in Chapter 2, the literature review.
The informed assets-based framework (Morrison, 2017) I use in my classes and in
this study contains elements of cultural wealth/assets, critical race theory, and
decolonizing theories and methodologies, all of which assume that what students know
has intrinsic value. It is explicit about race’s omnipresence in personal identity and
educational contexts. Moreover, these theoretical frameworks and methodological
approaches insist that students’ cultural assets serve as aids in their acquisition of more
knowledge. This recognition “emphasizes strengths over weaknesses, resilience over risk,
and assets over deficits” (Rose, 2006, p. 236), displacing the deficit model of pedagogy
that has characterized most educational approaches in the U.S. (Paris & Alim, 2014, p.
87).
1.6 Researcher positionality: My Education via Autoethnography
“When I first got my big break, I said that I would never bend/ And discredit my character to keep up or contend” (Green, 2002).
I was initially unfamiliar and uncomfortable with autoethnography. The process of
my subsequent engagement has been a journey of discovery and resonance. As a student,
and now a professor, I have often felt as misaligned and out of place as my students:
surrounded by faculty who do not understand or engage with our cultural context. This
14
lack of comprehension and appreciation often leads to students’ labeling as “at risk”,
“underachievers,” or students with only basic skills; they are the “other” students.
Like many of the students who participated in this study, my low-income family faced
challenges due to unequal access to society’s valued resources e.g. decent housing, food,
and equitable education. I am the first and only child of ten to attend college. My Lived
experience of racism, poverty, violence, crime and drugs and drugs made it hard for me to
succeed academically. Students like me must struggle against dominant societal messages
that juxtapose economic wealth and white privilege with social validity and moral worth.
I have had to develop the strength and resiliency to survive with limited financial
resources, and against a barrage of pernicious societal messaging. My students must
cultivate these survival skills as well.
I connected immediately with my students by telling my story and by privileging
their autobiographies. This connection is foundational to my thinking and teaching. The
sharing of my story lets them know who I am, where I come from, and what/that I
understand. It also helps them imagine themselves as scholars and teachers, like me: as a
teacher who shares biographical information that resonates with her students. I honor the
lived experiences of young people of color and those who are the first to attend college in
their families by using the cultural content of Hip-Hop. Our classroom dynamics position
Hip-Hop as an articulate and powerful cultural expression.
1.7 Thesis Outline
The dissertation contains seven additional chapters. Chapter 2 offers a review of
the literature and a compilation of sources on previous pedagogies used to dismantle bias
within education and curriculum. Toward the end of the literature review, information is
15
presented on the asset-based and culturally relevant pedagogies some academics utilize to
address bias in education and to create equitable environments. I also offer some
description of current curricula. In Chapter 3, I explain the research design, covering
epistemological and analytic situatedness and this study’s theoretical frames.
Chapter 4 outlines the study method: a qualitative mixed ethnographic approach,
drawing upon the fields of critical and analytic autoethnography. This hybrid
methodology serves to engage researcher and participant narratives and counter-stories
describing experiences in American educational environments. Chapter 4 also addresses
research site context, interview questions and protocol, and introduces student
participants. It discusses how the traditional methods of data collection and analysis are
misaligned with students’ lived experiences and counter-stories, and outlines alternative
methods and implications for IL instruction. Chapter 4 documents ethics approval
procedures, verification and trustworthiness, and the study’s research limitations.
Chapter 5 describes the study in greater depth and includes student profiles. I
provide counter-stories from interview conversations, classroom discussion, and students’
reflective journals, and I identify emergent themes: the importance of informal
information networks to college students of color and first generation college attendees;
the power of using student cultural wealth/assets in academic classrooms; and substantive
discussion of the impact of racial identity on the lives of students and its role in American
society.
Chapter 6 reviews students’ stories on the following topics: student cultural assets,
explicit racial cultural situatedness, and student interaction with additive pedagogy. Next,
a summary of findings is presented in graphic and narrative forms. In chapter 7 I share
16
my educational autoethnography, situate myself as a first-generation student and in
relation to the study, and document how I entered the teaching profession and began to
practice informed assets within IL classrooms. I insert a visual interpretation of informed
asset-based pedagogy in the form of a tree to suggest the house we created in our
classroom. Next, I revisit the literature influencing the study and outline three
overarching themes from the study’s counter-narratives and their potential impact on
theory and practice. Chapter 8 encompasses the conclusion, contributions, and
implications of the study. I also present elements of an informed asset-based classroom to
outline curriculum, teaching strategies, and practices.
In the literature review in the following chapter, we call upon several people who
have come and gone (historical context), those still present (current context) in the home
we have created as a class, in a library that is an intentional space. The ones we call upon
have, in various ways, tried, and are still trying, to dismantle bias in education, whether in
our neighborhoods, communities, school grounds, or classrooms. Many of the theoretical
and methodological approaches engaged within the literature review and this study stem
from discourses “operating from the fringe of dominant culture; on distant outskirts of
academia, where the voices of the “Other” cry out to be heard” (Houston, 2007, p. 45).
The discourses used within this dissertation and classroom articulates the importance of
having and valuing cultural assets that are not seen as deficits but as, rather, the
compounded knowledge and lived experiences of the communities we, as people of color,
come from. Though the list and examples are not exhaustive, they are primary in our
cultural context, and the classroom pedagogy in this study.
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
“If knowledge is power then understanding is liberation (Meyer, 2001, p. 125).”
2.1 Introduction to Literature This literature review traces multiple curricular frameworks and pedagogical
approaches designed to address educational bias. It highlights culturally-focused higher
educational research in the United States: pioneering work in multiculturalism, culturally
relevant pedagogy, and contemporary work aimed at eradicating bias in the desegregation
era. It examines scholarship that frames students’ cultural assets as a form of literacy,
including theories of funds of knowledge, cultural capital, critical race theory in
education, and Hip-Hop pedagogy.
2.2 Past curricular and pedagogical approaches to educational bias “How could there be a now if there never was a then? That is unbalanced just like the yang without the yen?” (Cee Lo Green, BIG OLE WORDS, 2002).
Early equity-focused educational approaches employed to address unequal access
and bias faced by marginalized peoples within educational settings were that of
Multiculturalism, Funds of Knowledge, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and Community
Cultural Wealth. Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Valencia & Solórzano 1997); (Delgado &
Stefancic, 2001; Bell, 1995) and (Yosso, 2005 and 2006) all encompass the ideas of
racism, social justice, and the dismantling of dominant praxis. The lived experience of
people of color, along with interdisciplinary tools to achieve social justice in academic
venues, were introduced during and after the civil rights era. This era was a period of
18
political and social unrest recognized by communities that were experiencing
discrimination.
2.3 Literature influencing study and Classroom Pedagogy
The following theories and methods emphasize working with communities of color
in ways that are driven by an asset-based framework and reflective of racial situatedness.
They are theories that engage the ideas of equity and justice in schools, for communities
of color that have had their experiences placed at the margins in society, and education.
They reposition and revalue the experiences of those marginalized within society and
educational institutions. In doing so, they overturn the colonial narrative of displacement
by foregrounding the cultural wealth of marginalized communities in the educational
sphere.
2.3.1 Multiculturalism
Contemporary educators who promote cultural literacy build on the early
contributions of individuals such as Du Bois (1903, 1989) and Woodson (1933) in their
efforts to create a foundation for unbiased and accessible education. As early as the
1930s, Woodson observed a colleague in the Philippines using “objects and experiences
from students’ own environments and knowledge of local history and folklore to teach
students about themselves and the world” (Banks, 2001, p. 105). Acknowledging and
engaging with students’ knowledge has deep roots within the African American
pedagogical counter-tradition, but the broader educational environment has not embraced
this important aspect of decolonizing education.
19
Banks (2001) defines multicultural education as “an idea, an educational reform
movement and a process” (p. 3). His iteration builds upon the work of other educators
who explored the creation of knowledge and experiences within marginalized groups.
Banks asserts that these pioneers charged themselves with making “the teaching and
learning of history a community affair” (p. 109). In subsequent work (2010), he outlines
a conceptual framework that articulates five dimensions of multicultural education: “(a)
content integration, (b) the knowledge construction process, (c) prejudice reduction, (d) an
equity pedagogy, and (e) an empowering school culture and social structure (Banks and
Banks, pg. 20)”. His framework evidences the later foci of culturally-focused education
scholars.
Attempts to incorporate multiculturalism into educational institutions and
curriculum (Dilworth, 2004) have proceeded alongside efforts to provide more access and
information to marginalized populations to improve their academic achievement (Zirkel,
2008). Educational institutions often only reflect and engage with multiculturalism or
“diversity” on a superficial level. In order to decolonize the curriculum and reach
marginalized communities, they must extend beyond surface-level engagement (Dei,
2012; Smith 2012; Calderon 2016; Tuck 2009). Decolonizing the curriculum must
include “a search for an anti-colonial curriculum that allows us to re-engage questions of
pedagogies, classroom instruction, teaching materials, including texts and other non-texts
that may include: social events, oral cultural stories, and arts-informed pedagogies” (Dei,
2016, p. 37). Decolonizing educators argue that marginalized students should benefit from
the teaching of culturally-literate academics, of which there are currently very few; as
Payne (2008) writes, “so much reform and so little change” (pg. 1).
20
Decolonizing theories and methods can galvanize and create needed systemic
change. Howard (2003) states that “teacher educators must reconceptualize the manner in
which new teachers are prepared, and provide them with the skills and knowledge that
will be best suited for effectively educating today's diverse student population” (p. 195).
This new preparation must be inclusive of white privilege and its impact within an
academic environment. Solórzano &Yosso argues that “critical race theory advances a
strategy to foreground and account for the role of race and racism in education. This
works toward the elimination of racism as part of a larger goal of opposing or eliminating
other forms of subordination” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 25). These “other forms”
refer to the oppression people have suffered as a result of their race, socioeconomic
background, sexuality, language, gender, place of origin, and other attributes that mark
their difference from the dominant culture.
2.3.2 Funds of Knowledge
Concurrent with early work in multiculturalism, anthropological and sociological
scholars developed theories of cultural and social capital, e.g. funds of knowledge. In
developing this model, the anthropologists Greenberg and Vélez-Ibáñez (1992) explored
the systems of cultural exchange employed by a community of Mexican Americans in
Arizona. Educational researchers refined the funds of knowledge model (Moll, Amanti,
Neff, and Gonzalez, 2001) “to refer to the historically accumulated and culturally
developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual
functioning and well-being” (p. 133). In this model, communities harness their shared
experiences and alliances to build their cultural wealth. This wealth is transmitted from
21
and augmented by generation after generation, and comprises the assets that students bring
to their educational experiences. Esteban-Guitart and Moll’s current work (2014)
translates funds of knowledge into funds of identity to evoke “the historically
accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for
a person’s self-definition, self-expression, and self-understanding. Funds of knowledge—
bodies of knowledge and skills that are essential for the well-being of an entire
household—become funds of identity when people actively use them to define
Bell, 1995) and (Yosso, 2005 and 2006) all encompass the ideas of racism, social justice,
and the dismantling of dominant praxis. The theorists of culturally sustaining pedagogy
(CSP) (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2014) promote pedagogy that is
culturally relevant (Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1992, 1995) and sustaining in
the lives of students (Paris & Alim, 2014). This sustaining force contains the
35
decolonization frameworks in their lives. Decolonization is a tool for dismantling and re-
envisioning /re-purposing the language and ideology of the oppressor/dominant cultural
values (Smith, 1999 and Tuck, 2012). Critical hip hop pedagogy (CHHP) is a composition
of five elements (Akom, A. A. 2009, pg. 52.): "1) The centrality of race and racism and
their intersectionality with other forms of oppression; 2) Challenging traditional
paradigms, texts, and theories used to explain the experiences of students of color; 3) The
centrality of experiential knowledge of students of color; 4) The commitment to social
justice; and finally 5) A transdisciplinary approach". All educators can employ these
elements as teaching strategies to engage and promote students’ assets and active
participation in the pedagogical process.
2.3.12 Literature Summary
Chapter 2 presents selected literature on approaches used to address educational
equity, many of which emerged from a space of resistance and struggles for social and
academic inclusion. Though most of these strategies emerged and were developed in
fields other than LIS, their implementation can revitalize the IL curriculum and convey
added relevance to an important and underserved segment of the student body.
In the first wave of this literature, scholars documented the centrality of home life,
culture, and community to the academic experiences of students of color (Jordan, 1985,
Gay, 2000, Ladson-Billings, 1992, 1994, 1995). Subsequent research focused on
countering the deficit-based approach to educating underserved and marginalized students,
replacing it with the notion of “funds of knowledge,” a grasp of the community and
cultural wealth students bring with them to the classroom. CRT literature proposed that
36
academic environments must acknowledge and account for race and racism in schools,
both in its historic and contemporary manifestations (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995;
Milner, 2008). McCarty & Lee (2014) fuse previous strategies of engagement with
revitalizing pedagogy for students to gain interest, learn and maintain cultural traditions.
Most IL instruction geared toward communities of color has not drawn inspiration and
direction from these pedagogical and social theories. However, practitioners that promote
engagement with materials through the practice of critical information literacy voice many
of the same concerns. This study adds to that chorus to amplify the intersections of
explicit racial and cultural situatedness and the tenets of informed student assets, with its
base in informed learning. In the chapters that follow, I provide evidence that IL
instruction can and indeed must encompass many of the additive pedagogies discussed in
the literature review.
2.3.13 Implications from literature findings for Information Literacy classrooms Now is the time and place for information literacy pedagogy to embrace relevant
and significant theories that have evolved outside the field in order to render instruction
more equitable and inclusive of knowledge that rests outside of the dominant framework.
The theories presented in the above literature can move the practice of IL and the field
toward what is needed to have impactful engagement of an ever-increasing population of
those from the margins. Attending to cultural literacy instruction for those within the field
with the theories above can offer tools to make IL instruction equitable and inclusive of
knowledge outside the dominant frame. Informed asset-based theory fused with the
practice of informed learning can counter the marginalization imposed by students’ race,
37
historical, cultural, and social context, and experience in the academic environment. This
provides an important platform for students to articulate their own vision of educational
attainment and advancement. Freire and Macedo (1995) propose that educators must
“help students gain a rigorous understanding of their historical location so that they can
turn this understanding into knowledge, thus transcending and universalizing it” (Freire &
Macedo, 1995, p. 385).
The pedagogies referred to in this study have emerged from individuals who
consider themselves to be from underserved, underrepresented, and/or colonized
populations. These scholars have managed to achieve academic success despite great
odds, using decolonized educational methods. However, many theorists have not taken
into account discussions of race or bias in education or decolonized history. This study
asserts that academic librarians need to be inclusive of pedagogies that aim to challenge
bias in education and become cognizant of multiple literacies.
There is a nascent population of educators “inspired by what it means to make
teaching and learning relevant and responsive” (Paris, 2012) when interacting and
engaging diverse student bodies with culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012; Paris &
Alim, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2014) and CRP (Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-Billings,
1992, 1995). Critical information literacy is a praxis that can train and produce academic
librarians that use a suspended colonized information literacy instruction. This study
augments that instruction by framing asset-based critical Hip-Hop pedagogy as a
transformative conduit in the acquisition of IL in academic contexts. This hybrid
instruction relies heavily upon decolonized culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogy to
38
discover a more conducive way to address curricular bias and the multi-dimensional
experiences of marginalized students.
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN: “Mama taught me how to make a Silver Spoon out of plastic” (Drake)
My research design prioritizes the role of counter-stories to acknowledge
indigenous communities’ embrace of oral knowledge and traditions and to combat the
dominant cultural narratives produced about these populations. The voices in this study
emerge from the lived experiences of students of color, from those who are the first in
their family to attend college, and from myself, a researcher with an insider perspective. I
explore the significance of students’ prior knowledge and cultural assets in the learning
process and academic engagement in the classroom. According to Lewis-Beck & Byman
(2004, page 2) “lived experience forms the starting point for inquiry, reflection, and
interpretation”. I do not have the time nor space to adequately delve into defining and
providing the etymology of lived experience. However, in terms of this study, the
expressed lived experience by the participants are first-hand accounts. “Student’s lived
experience is the curriculum, the counter-story, findings and discussion of this study. In
terms of this study and its participants, lived experience comprises of their counter-
narratives, and critical ethnographies. Their lived experience is not what the colonial
historical and current day narrative espouses about them, nor the learned about them
within an academic environment; it is what they suffered, survived, know, and gained
from their families and community. This chapter presents my epistemological and
39
analytical positioning, the study’s theoretical frames, data collection methods, and modes
of analysis.
3.1 Situating Epistemologically “We, the blacks, are in trouble, certainly, but we are not doomed, and we are not inarticulate because we are not compelled to defend a morality that we know to be a lie” (James Baldwin, 1993, p. 374).
In developing my epistemological framework, I drew from a wide range of
scholarly work in multiple disciplines. Studies on decolonizing literature and settler
2001) informed the theoretical approach and adopted methodology that I used to frame
and guide my own work.
In my IL classroom and in this study, the situatedness of racial identity plays a
central role. What I am doing in my information literacy classroom is positioned within
the U.S. context and with the acknowledgement that if you are a person of color, your race
is a constant defining factor. In reality, if you are of a marginalized group more than
likely you have experienced education within a racist colonized framework. Our reality
“is a product of multiple constructions woven from the fibers of individual and collective
context, perception and action” (Loppie, 2002, p. 277). I value, emphasize, and defend
the voices, stories, and knowledge emergent from marginalized communities. In this
40
study, I position myself as an insider and as a community member, (re)claiming power to
tell the truth of our experiences.
3.2 Analytic Situatedness
I am a situated researcher. Neumann & Neumann (2015) posit that the three areas
of analytical situatedness “take[s] place pre-field; there is autobiographical situating; in
field, there is field situating, and post, there is textual situating” (p. 1). Bell hooks (1994)
explains that it is an “intertwined situated system that renders the colonized experience in
relation to whiteness, white capital, and domination that define (my) our reality. These
function simultaneously at all times in our lives” (1994, p. 130). A researcher’s
situatedness, their autobiography, must be taken into account prior to engagement with
participants. Then, once involved in the study, the researcher situates herself in that
specific context. Finally, the act of “textual situating” articles influencing researchers’
epistemology. A researcher can situate herself either analytically or reflexively; this
choice dictates divergent modes of data collection and researcher/participant relations and
engagement. Neumann & Neumann (2015, pg. 1) maintain that “Where a reflexivist
researcher tends to handle the relation between interlocutor and researcher by asking how
interlocutors affect her, an analyticist researcher tends to ask how the researcher affects
them”. Whereas a reflexivist is more like a cultural tourist in relation to the study’s
population, an analyticist researcher situates herself within the cultural/social phenomena,
and her context is partially defined by those immersed in similar realities. Hesse-Biber
and Leavy (2006) contend that “investigators’ characterizations of participants should be
grounded in actual displays of participants themselves using such characterizations to
41
perform and understand their actions” (p. 66). When these similar realities are
acknowledged and engaged, this context provides the learning connection and venue for
transformation and rich data (Hesse- Biber & Leavy, 2006). Student participants and
researcher situate themselves in the context of schooling and racial/cultural context then
reflect on this.
3.3 Theoretical Frames
In this study, I consider several theoretical frames: cultural wealth/assets (Yosso,
2005, 2006; Villalpando and Solórzano 2005) which are skills, knowledge, capabilities,
abilities, resources held and used by communities of color, CRT, with roots in critical
legal studies from the 1980s (Bell, 1980a; Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, & Crenshaw,
1993), and current applications of CRT in education (Solorzano, 1997). The latter
acknowledges race and racism as intrinsic in the experiences of people of color and
decolonizing theories and methodologies (Smith, 1999, 2013).
The cultural wealth framework assumes that students’ prior knowledge and
experience have value and aid them in the educational process. This approach
“emphasizes strengths over weaknesses, resilience over risk, and assets over deficits,”
(Rose 2006) and displaces the deficit model of teaching minority populations in the
United States (Paris & Alim 2014).
Critical race theory positions race as a cultural asset. CRT dictates that there is
nothing neutral or objective about race (Ladson-Billings 2000; Bell 1995; Delgado Bernal
1998) and poses a direct challenge to the dominant narrative and ideology around racial
identity, history, and performance. Its practitioners display a commitment to social
42
justice, experiential knowledge, and a transdisciplinary outlook (Yosso & García, 2007).
Not acknowledging race makes learning neutral and abstract and denies much of the lived
experience of the diverse populations we serve. With the acknowledgement of race comes
the opportunity for decolonizing one’s frame.
Decolonizing theories and methodologies revitalize and build upon what students
already know in the form of indigenous knowledge: knowledge that is directly relevant to
students’ experiences, yet has been omitted from most of their educational settings. These
newly uncovered assets serve as catalysts for the decolonization of students’ acculturation
to dominant discourses. They are also the platform upon which to build their information
literacy.
Table 3.1. Basic tenets of Critical Race Theory
CRT foundation
Definition Source
Interest convergence
The interest of other racial groups will only be accommodated when it converges with the interest of Whites.
Bell (1980)
Ordinariness Racism is systemic and deeply embedded in American life.
Bell (1980)
Counter-storytelling
The counter-story is also a tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege. Counter-stories can shatter complacency, challenge the dominant.discourse on race, and further the struggle for racial reform.
Solorzano and Yosso (2002)
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In the table above, I identify three basic tenets of critical race theory, the topics
comprising CRT’s foundation, and the authors associated with its iteration and/or practice.
Table 3.2. Decolonizing theories & Methodologies with Informed Assets reframes the curriculum
Undoing how you have been educated, acculturated, interpolated, assimilated
In the table above, I highlight the necessary components to decolonize and reframe
curricula with informed asset-based pedagogy.
Decolonization promotes a deconstructive process that explores the aspects of
one’s identity and educational experience. It looks at how the external world has depicted
you and takes it apart. The cultural wealth are the assets you carry with you. The
combination of cultural wealth, current and historical cultural context, dominant narrative
alongside counter-stories with information literacy is the foundation of informed asset-
44
based information literacy instruction. Its’ use with Rap and Hip-Hop to provide an
academic space for students to engage in critical thinking and to build upon their cultural
assets. My Informed Asset-based Information Literacy instruction approach fosters
informed, culturally relevant, revitalizing, sustaining, lifelong learning. Green (2009)
explains that the term “critical” relates to “approaches that consider learning and teaching
as socially constructed within particular social (and power) relations” and that it connotes
an element of indispensability (p. 10). I contend that in order to push the boundaries of a
“critical approach,” educators must be explicit in placing race and its historical and
contemporary context at the forefront of their pedagogical agenda.
In the table below I present on the next page (Table 3.3) the basic tenets of
Informed Assets. Informed Assets is the pedagogy I use in this study and IL classroom.
This pedagogical method I believe provides a path to making education more equitable.
“Thinking critically is at the heart of anybody transforming their life and I really believe that a person who thinks critically, who, you know, may be extraordinarily disadvantaged, materially, can find ways to transform their lives, that can be deeply and profoundly meaningful in the same way that someone who may be incredibly privileged materially and in crisis in their life may remain perpetually unable to resolve their life in any meaningful way if they don’t think critically.” (Sut Jhally, 1997)
Information Literacy is concerned with the teaching of authority in most aspects of
education in the U.S. IL is in conflict with the teaching via a decolonized knowledge and
cultural wealth frame. So, it is not that people have information needs based on their
context, they also have the need for counter narratives and counter-stories—because their
information environment and societal messages dominate their life experiences which
actively denies their reality. Critical Race Theory foregrounds race in
everything. Therefore, we can assume that an explicitly racialized context is missing from
45
the majority of classroom curricula. Green expounds that the idea of the term critical
relates to “approaches that consider learning and teaching as socially constructed within
particular social (and power) relations” (2009, p. 10). I contend that we must go beyond
essential, to being outright explicit, about race and its power and lack of power and how it
dictates an un-decolonized power dominance in U.S. society and education.
Table 3.3. Basic tenets of Informed Assets
Definition Source
Asset-based foundation
Asset-based approaches spring from a capacity focused community development process. A philosophy of full community mobilization based on mapping the skills and capacities of individuals and community based organizations
Critical Race theories are an address to the racist structures, whether these structures are in education, research methodologies, within society as a whole. Undoing the colonial structures in place, I am applying these decolonizing theories to these pieces of the existing structure. They are used in the examination of the U.S. schooling system we work and learn within, the pedagogy that is delivered in that system, and the methodologies shown for research.
(CLS) Critical Legal Studies laying foundation for CRT (Crenshaw, 2011; Tate,1997)
(CM) Critical Multiculturalism Kubota, (2004); May (1999)
(CRT) In education (Landson-Billings and Tate (1995),
Culturally Relevant, Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies
Information, knowledge, education engagement that is relevant in the lives of the marginalized. Sustaining in a way that builds on the cultural assets marginalized communities of color already have. Revitalizing cultural assets, cultural traditions, languages that were nullified by the colonization.
Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) Paris 2012 McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014)
Decolonizing theories and methodologies
Undoing how you have been colonized, (mis)educated, acculturated, interpolated, assimilated
Smith 2012, Calderon, 2014, Tuck, 2009
3.4 Research Strategy The insider-researcher model emerged from research design that foregrounded and
unified the voices of both the researcher and their subjects (Costley, Elliot & Gibbs, 2010;
Bonner & Tolhorst, 2002; Irvine & Roberts, 2008). This methodology appealed to those
47
engaged in qualitative inquiry (Guba & Lincoln, 1989) and the field of Indigenous
Knowledge (Castellano, 2000).
I used a mixed ethnographic approach to observe and engage students and researcher in
this study. The methods used in this study are Analytic Autoethnography, and Critical
Ethnography (CE). Analytic auto-ethnographers approach the method of autoethnography using
reflexivity as a foundation, it relies upon the researcher analyzing and theorizing from an insider
perspective (Anderson, 2006, p. 382). Whereas the use of Critical Ethnography (CE) Carspecken
1996) provided me the tools to record, identify and explain the articulated lived experiences of
student participants. The use of Critical Ethnography “subverts the normal practice of
knowledge and policy development as being the primary domain of researchers and
policymakers (Thomas, 1993, pg. 28)”. With the use of Critical Ethnography researchers become
active in confronting explicit problems that affect the lives of subjects—as articulated by the
subjects—rather than remain passive researcher acknowledges participants are competent to
shape method, theory, and outcomes.
3.5 Critical Ethnography: A Research Strategy for seeking equity in education
This study’s theoretical frames structure my methodology and ability to answer the
questions posed by my investigation. An explicit racialized information literacy pedagogy
requires a consideration of social, cultural, historical, and contemporary context and the
impact of race and colonialization (Hardcastle, Usher & Holmes, 2006) and how this and
the forces of colonialization (genocide, chattel slavery/ black diaspora) permeate
everything. Madison (2012) argued that CE morphed into critical qualitative research
48
(CQR) (Georgiou & Carspecken, 2002). This method brings an ethically-minded focus on
social justice to disrupt the status quo by illuminating obscure operations of power. The
use of CE/CQR in this study and within my classroom helps counter colonial forces and
actualize and advocate for access and equity within an academic environment (Creswell,
2007; Madison, 2012).
Critical ethnography is a qualitative research method that addresses the experiences
of those who have been underrepresented in dominant discourses and institutions.
According to Schwandt (2007), “Critical ethnographic studies of social practices and
cultural institutions specifically aim to criticize the taken-for-granted social, economic,
cultural, and political assumptions and concepts (e.g., family, work, self, agency, power,
conflict, race, class, and gender) of Western, liberal, middle-class, industrialist, capitalist
societies” (p. 3). Critical ethnographers employ a variety of theoretical frames such as
critical theory, critical race theory, praxis, and queer theory. This model informs my study
and examination of asset-based Hip-Hop pedagogy within a critical information literacy
curriculum. Carspecken’s CE model (1996) does not provide a remedy “for helping the
poor and downtrodden; it rather gives us principles for conducting valid inquiries into any
area of human experience” (p. x.). This approach diverges from the interventionist aspects
of the deficit model—it is an assets/additive approach. CE works outside of these
channels to allow students to approach IL with their own skill set and prior experiences as
guidance. In a library research skills class centered on the theme of Rap and Hip-Hop,
students’ use of ethnographic tools illuminates the absence of their voices and experiences
from most curricula and offers an opportunity to discuss openly taboo subjects like race
and colonization.
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As seen in the table below, Carspecken (1996) provides a guide for the
implementation of CE in studies that incorporate tenets of critical theory. He leaves it to
the researcher to utilize these five stages in alignment with their overall objectives. Thus,
the stages are mutable: “As a result, the researcher will often move from one stage to
another and back again” (Hardcastle, Usher & Holmes, 2006, p. 153). In this study I did
not adhere to the five stages, but rather allowed the five stages to inspire my engagement
throughout.
Table3.4. Carspecken’s Five Stages of Critical Qualitative Research (CQR) Stage Description Data Collection Analysis
4 Describes systems relations to broader context: Analysis of findings
Conducting systems analysis between locales/sites/cultures (discovery)
System analysis
5 Explains relational systems
Links findings to existing macro-level theories (explanation)
System analysis
(Hardcastle, Usher, & Holmes, 2006, p. 153) The first three stages provided the framework for critical analytic models to reconstruct cultural
structures and themes. The last two “discover how routine social actions form and reproduce
system relations that coordinate activities across various reaches of space and time” (Georgiou &
Carspecken, 2002, p. 690).
3.6 Stages of Carspecken’s (CQR) critical ethnography applied in this study In this study, I recount the divergence between community college students’ experience
as part of a colonized educational environment and their participation in IL instruction built upon
issues of relevance and significance to their lives. In this class, I used Hip-Hop and Tupac
Shakur to engage their racial and cultural assets and lead classroom discussion. Carpecken’s
(1996) five-stage approach for critical ethnography is appropriate to use in this type of
engagement and study for the same reasons Hardcastle, Usher and Holmes (2006) declare “it
advocates for simultaneous data collection and analysis, identifies cultural structures and themes,
and helps to reveal the culturally pragmatic material from which actors mutually construct their
worlds (pg. 154)”. In this study, I used autoethnography to gather data and CE “to organize the
research tools, that is, the set of principles detailing how to conduct research and apply theory
51
(i.e., narrative inquiry, ethnography)” (Barton, 2001, p. 906). Carspecken’s five stages model
provided flexibility and adaptability to fuel my adaptation.
3.6.1 Stage 1: Building a primary record: What is going on?
Stage 1 entailed data collection from a two-hour long class that ran twice a week for 16
week. The data included multiple facets and materials. I used a phone recorder and a taped voice
recorder to record participant interviews. I kept a reflective journal and made field notes as the
work progressed. Students also recorded their experiences in journals, and I captured whiteboard
discussions on film to triangulate data. I was satisfied with the data saturation from student
interviews and student reflective journals, and found that the amassed materials evidenced the
In stage 2 of Carspecken’s critical ethnography, consisted of researcher reflection on how
class came about, and in what context. During this process, I considered how my own
educational autoethnography situated me within the study and framed my asset-based pedagogy.
Data analysis explored the classroom environment, assignments, use of media, transcription of
recorded interviews, student journaling, and final research presentations. I presented media to
share documentary background information on the Black Panthers, Tupac, and the historical and
contemporary social, political and cultural aspects that frame the experience of people of color.
Instruction, class discussion, and assignments were all generated by an informed asset-based
classroom pedagogy. An example would be the discussion of the use of the word nigga and its
use in hip-hop and popular culture, its’ current context and historical context in students’
52
experience. The final research projects provided an opportunity for students to merge their
informed assets with newly acquired information literacy skills. To analyze data, a list of themes
were gathered and compiled from interviews, student journals, and corresponding student
quotations. I applied Ladson-Billings’s (2014) three criteria for culturally relevant pedagogy to
portions of the data: students must experience academic success; students must develop and/or
maintain cultural competence; and students must develop a critical consciousness through which
they challenge the current status quo of the social order. Critical Race Theory in education
(Landson-Billings & Tate, 1995), was also garnered for data analysis; I applied this theory to
pieces of the existing structure. They are used in the examination of the U.S. schooling system
we work and learn within, the pedagogy that is delivered in that system, and the methodologies
shown for research.
3.6.3 Stage 3 Dialogical data generation: Collaborative Stage Multiple topics informed and generated critical reflection in class discussion and during
participant writing: equity and access in educational environments and the use of critical race
theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and decolonizing theory and methodologies within the
information literacy classroom. The generation of data spanned several months over the course
of a 16-week semester and was drawn from student reflections based on assigned readings,
classroom discussion, and students’ educational autoethnographies. Scheduled interviews lasted
up to 40 minutes in duration.
Themes from generated data were checked and compared throughout the study to adhere
to the “integrity of the study” as recommended for this stage (Georgiou, Carspecken, et. al.,
1996, pg. 320). I performed data collection and analysis triangulation (Patton 1980, 2002;
Creswell, 2007) to improve validity and the findings’ trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985):
53
as “a validity procedure where researchers search for convergence among multiple and different
sources of information to form themes or categories in a study (Creswell & Miller, 2000, p.
126). I used more than “my own senses when compiling the record” (Carspecken, 1995, p. 88).
The triangulation process involved collecting dialogical data from multiple audio device
recorded interviews, my field notes, classroom discussions, participants’ journals and
educational autoethnographies, and whiteboard documentation of class discussion. I performed
triangulation and data saturation by reviewing data systematically to identify recurrent themes
and concerns (Creswell & Miller, 2000). Students also participated in confirming data validity,
as they had an opportunity to review and amend transcribed interviews.
3.6.4 Stage 4 Describes systems relations to broader context: Analysis of findings
I used elements of cultural interface, critical race theory, and asset-based theory to
examine and evaluate cultural and societal norms and situate their relevance to my
study. Cultural interface theory aims to discover and acknowledge the “histories, politics,
economics, multiple and interconnected discourses, social practices and knowledge technologies
which condition how we come to know and understand our changing realities in the everyday,
and what knowledge we operationalize in our daily lives” (Nakata, 2007, p. 9). The discussion
of dominant narratives, stereotypes, and counter-stories contribute to describing systems in place
mirrored by counter-stories.
3.6.5 Stage 5 Explains relational systems
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This stage concluded my research design. It focuses on system relations in order to
explain findings. I used the interpretive schema of critical race theory, decolonizing theories and
methodologies, and informed asset-based pedagogy to examine the relational systems that
impacted and influenced students’ experiences in education environments. During this stage I
presented students’ voices alongside my reflections on their observations. Students
demonstrated critical thinking and acute analysis of their own experiences within the class.
In this Chapter I explained the research design for this study, covering how I situated
myself epistemologically, and analytically. The theoretical frames of the study are articulated
along with an explanation of what tenets of critical ethnography inspired research design. Next I
delve into the methods used to generate the study’s data, research context, student counter-stories
and my reflections.
Chapter 4: Method: I could teach you how to speak my language, Rossetta Stone (Drake)
4.1 Introduction to methodological tools
In this study I drew upon the methods articulated in Carspecken’s (1996) and
Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) critical ethnography and Anderson’s (2006) analytic
autoethnography. Autoethnography provided an avenue for researcher and students to
voice counter-stories documenting their educational experiences. Analytic
autoethnography allowed students to theorize and deconstruct their collective experiences
of education, and critical ethnography helped move them away from the margins. We also
engaged in counter-storytelling: “a method of telling the story of those experiences that
are not often told (i.e., those from the margins of society) and a tool for analyzing and
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challenging the stories of those in power, and whose story is a natural part of the dominant
discourse the majoritarian story” (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001, p. 475). The methods used
in this study reinforced asset-based pedagogy and helped students produce knew
knowledge.
4.2 Autoethnography
Autoethnographic approaches are evocative and analytic. This methodology
emerged as an alternative to ethnographic approaches that relied on the bifurcation of
experience between researcher and subject. Though both methods combine elements of
ethnographic approaches with researcher narrative, analytic ethnographers seek different
forms to articulate autobiographic interpretations. Evocative approaches rely mostly upon
performance and creative narrative expression (Spry, 2001) and do not utilize analysis or
engage in reflection (Muncey, 2005). Evocative ethnography is a performance without
interaction, the gaze without interactive/interpretive dialogue, “with little relevance to our
understanding of actual social worlds” (Atkins, Coffey & Delmont, 2003, p.xi). Hip-Hop
culture and lyrics are a form of evocative and analytic autoethnography.
4.3 Analytic Autoethnography Analytic ethnographers approach research from a different angle than those who
employ an evocative framework. Using reflexivity as a foundation, this method positions
the researcher as an insider, and all analysis and theorization is performed from this
vantage point (Anderson, 2006, p. 382). In the field of academic research,
autoethnography is often dismissed as less rigorous than other methods. The analytic
ethnographic approach disrupts that categorization by situating rigor directly in its
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purview. As such, it has produced an “explosion in many disciplines and applied research
fields all over the world” (Jones, Adams & Ellis, 2013, p. 10) and maintains a strong
presence in scholarly literature.
Analytic autoethnography comports with this study’s theoretical asset-based
framework in providing the tools for critical information literacy and the articulation of
counter-stories. It allows both students and researcher to analyze and theorize about the
assets we bring into the classroom. Jones, Adams, and Ellis (2013) argue that
“Autoethnography presents the tools for (1) purposefully commenting on/critiquing of
culture and cultural practices, (2) making contributions to existing research, (3) embracing
vulnerability with purpose, and (4) creating a reciprocal relationship with audiences in
order to compel a response” (p. 22). In this study I also adhere to Anderson’s (2006, pg.
373), five components of analytical autoethnography: complete member researcher status,
analytic reflexivity, narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, dialog with informants
beyond the self, and commitment to theoretical analysis”.
With the previously mentioned tools, and with the practice of analysis, student and
researcher counter-stories emerge, stories that have been relegated residence in the
margins, stories that debunk inaccurate stories and stereotypes that have been articulated
about student and researcher experiences by someone who is an outsider. Wall (2006, pg.
148) articulates the need for a shift in research practices toward “the questioning of the
dominant scientific paradigm, the making of room for other ways of knowing, and the
growing emphasis on the power of research to change the world and create a space for the
sharing of unique, subjective, and evocative stories of experience that contribute to our
understanding of the social world and allow us to reflect on what could be different
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because of what we have learned”. These counter-stories animate this research study and
have the potential to revitalize the academic literature and IL pedagogy and curriculum.
The use of the autoethnographic method continues to extend to different subject
areas and topics. For showing some of the new research being done with the method of
autoethnography in various ways, I am listing a few titles here and within my reference
list. More recent scholarship on autoethnography include Snyder’s (2015), Leaning Into
Autoethnography: A Review of Heewon Chang’s Autoethnography As Method. Snyder
breaks down Chang’s (2008) interpretation of what she believes autoethnography is today,
and its potential use to guide autoethnographic work divergent of Ellis, Denzin, and
Bochner’s explanation of autoethnographic engagement. Authors Heewon Chang, Faith
Ngunjiri, Kathy-Ann C Hernandez in their article titled Collaborative autoethnography
(2016), provide techniques to guide collaborating scholars using the method of
autoethnography. They provide ways in which to collect data, analyze it and then write
about studies done collaborately. Others like Sandoval, Lagunas, Montelongo, and Díaz
(2016), in Ancestral knowledge systems: A conceptual framework for decolonizing
research in social science. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples,
work together to build upon Linda T. Smith’s pivotal work Decolonizing
Methodologies. They present self-reflection and their collaborative autoethnographies to
introduce the new method Ancestral Knowledge Systems (AKS) to be used in the sciences
as a study’s conceptual framework. Also, recently published Jones, Adams, and Ellis, C.
(2016) is the Handbook of autoethnography, and Boylorn, & Orbe, (2016) Critical
autoethnography: Intersecting cultural identities in everyday life are new additions on the
method of autoethnography. Upon doing a word search in google scholar, there have been
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over 6000 items on autoethnography listed since 2016. Autoethnography is gaining use as
a valid means for research, in various ways and in multiple disciplines. The following
scholars have provided insights on the method of autoethnography: (Adams, 2005),
2017), (Ellis, 2016). While educators are utilizing autoethnography within academic
environments tackling themes such as Immigrant women in higher education (Ngunjiri,
and Hernandez, 2017), Educational Equity (Marx, and Pennington 2017), and (Chang,
2017), Sexism in education, (Edwards, 2017), Inclusive Education, (Adams, 2017) to
name a few. They combine self-reflection and their collaborative autoethnographies to
introduce the new method of ancestral knowledge systems (AKS) to frame a study’s
conceptual framework.
The wide-ranging application of the autoethnographic method reflects its
adaptability to different disciplines and study contexts. Its use is relevant to the work I do
with students to flesh out cultural assets they bring into the classroom, and provides a tool
to express their counter-stories.
4.4 Autoethnography in this study This study provided the opportunity for community college students and the
researcher to act as ethnographers within a co-created learning space (Alim, 2011). In this
arena, our personal autoethnographies and collective experiences guide a culturally
relevant curriculum that challenges biased curricula and interrogates the production and
validation of knowledge itself. Houston (2007) states “autoethnography as research can
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be seen as a form of scholarly resistance–a method employed to challenge dominant forms
of knowledge, meaning and power. It is also a tool with which Indigenous people can
decolonize research practices and representations of themselves” (p. 48). Our
autoethnographies document our experiences in an asset-based Hip-Hop critical IL class,
and as such, they offer new ways to engage students and librarians in the practice of
information literacy.
Autoethnography guides students’ and researcher’s use of decolonizing frames to
understand the constitution of knowledge production and IL praxis. We cast this focus in
the shadow of “White supremacist, capitalist patriarchy: interlocking systems of
domination that define our reality. These function simultaneously at all times in our lives”
(hooks, 1994, p. 290). Then we apply it to IL skills, critical thinking, and theorize about
the counter-stories connected to ones’ cultural assets alongside the dominant narrative. We
create from what I call dangerous memories, wherein historical and current “secrets are
disclosed and histories are made known” (Jones, Adams & Ellis, 2013, p. 24).
Critical ethnography and analytical autoethnography both draw from ethnography: the
process of studying culture and writing about it. These approaches address and engage race,
class, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomics, marginalization, curricular bias, and history, and
they situate the researcher in relation to the study and participants as collaborators. This hybrid
methodology creates space for the incorporation of student assets, for their voices and their lived
experiences, so that they may lead, inform, and transform classroom curriculum.
4.5 Research Site Context Chabot College opened its doors to the community 51 years ago. The campus
spans 94 acres in Hayward, California. Its proximity to both Oakland and San Francisco
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generates student diversity in both ethnic composition and socioeconomic status. Many
attendees are first generation students or older adults returning to school to advance their
careers or chart a new professional path. The student body is composed of Asian/Pacific
Islanders, Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and international students. Although the student
population is diverse, its faculty is not. The tables below list the racial and ethnic
composition of Chabot’s students, faculty and staff, as collected in a Fall 2017 Census
compiled by the Chabot College Institutional Researcher.
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Table 4.0: Chabot College Students Race-ethnicity Fall 2017
Race-Ethnicity Number of students Pct. of total student population
African-American
1,529 11%
Asian-American
2,248 16%
Filipino
1,148 8%
Latino
5,760 40%
Native American
39 <1%
Pacific Islander
220 2%
White
2,307 16%
Multiracial
920 6%
Unknown
231 2%
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Table 4.1: Chabot College Staff Characteristics by Race-ethnicity Fall 2017 All Jobs Fall 2017 All Faculty Fall 2017
Asian 13% Asian 14%
African –American 9% African -American 7%
Filipino 4% Filipino 2%
Latino 14% Latino 12%
White 53% White 58%
Chabot offers over 14 programs for students who need extra support, e.g. low-
income students, veterans, first generation students, English Language Learners,
emancipated foster youth, and “basic skills” students. The college offers services to
welfare recipients, including childcare, employment assistance, financial resources, and
counseling. The tables below show the percentage of first generation students and those
who tested into Basic Skills English and Math classes, and categorize students according
to race and ethnicity.
Table: 4.2. Percentage of First Generation Students-Race-Ethnicity Groups
Percentage of First Generation Students-Race-Ethnicity Groups
Fall 2016
African Americans 74%
Asian 74%
Filipino 51%
Latino 88%
White 51%
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Table: 4.3. Pct Assessed into Basic Skills English
Pct Assessed into Basic Skills English
Fall 2016
African Americans 66%
Asian 54%
Filipino 62%
Latino 67%
White 39%
Table: 4.4 Pct Assessed into Basic Skills Math
Pct Assessed into Basic Skills Math
Fall 2016
African Americans 70%
Asian 27%
Filipino 48%
Latino 69%
White 53%
As a progressive institution, Chabot strives to foster a learning environment that
serves the educational needs of underrepresented populations. To achieve this goal, the
college created learning communities that give students of color a chance to participate in
service learning activities. Along with several librarian colleagues, I act as a liaison to
these students and conduct outreach to the broader academic community. The Daraja
program, started in 1988, boosts African American students’ academic success through
promoting curriculum covering African American history, literature, and relevant
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community issues. Begun in 1981, the Puente learning community supports Mexican-
American and Latino student success by exploring the distinct experiences of those
populations. And the Striving Black Brother Coalition strives to increase retention,
persistence, and transfer rates for African American males. The students in my classes
and in this study participate in various learning communities.
Chabot faculty members are dedicated to making a difference in the lives of our
students and the communities they come from. Many of us create opportunities for
students to participate in social justice initiatives. Change It Now (CIN) is an active
learning community on Chabot’s campus and in surrounding neighborhoods that provides
a rigorous academic program to empower students to be leaders in their communities
striving for social change. CIN students explore issues of personal resonance and
community relevance, such as education, budget cuts, health care, environmental issues,
poverty, and violence. The new Passion & Purpose program at Chabot is a one-credit
student-led course that explores the possibility of bringing lived experience into the
classroom and the development of initiatives and projects that impact Chabot’s
surrounding community.
Chabot’s learning communities are innovative, evolving, and dedicated to student
and community involvement. They provide a small glimpse of what I believe lay at the
heart of Chabot’s progressive mission. I am proud to say that several librarians are very
active in supporting the students and faculty of these learning communities. Chabot is not
a utopia, but we do have many students, faculty, and staff that strive toward equity in
education.
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4.6 Context inside the Classroom in this Study
“Oh, wow. That class was awesome. I was telling everybody about it, like to come join it and everything. What attracted me to it was the Hip Hop. Years ago, I couldn't take the Tupac class because of my schedule. I said, Whenever she teaches another class again, I'm going to take that one. I wanted to take your black exploitation class but I didn't get to take that one. When I took this class, I just learned so much about rap, about research”. (Mz. M student participant)
My Hip-Hop themed information literacy course is designed to nurture first generation
and students of color in an academic environment. In this course, we work together to apply
students’ love of Hip-Hop, their cultural expertise, and their knowledge/assets to the academic
environment. I draw upon students’ experiences and knowledge of Hip-Hop culture to
encourage them to voice, examine, and fuse these assets with their academic work and research
skills. Bell hooks’ discussion of Theory as Liberatory Practice in her work on Frierian
educational theory (1994) and Shawn Ginwright’s notion of emancipatory knowledge (2008 )
have guided my connection with students and my incorporation of critical information literacy
pedagogy.
My 16-week, two-hour elective seminar based class met bi-weekly and is open to all
Chabot students. It is a two-credit transferable information literacy course that examines
research themes and topics associated with the rapper Tupac Shakur. The class is conducted in a
designated library classroom situated within the heart of the library and contains 44 computers
and round tables for seminar discussion. It is specially outfitted for this class with a large
projector and surround sound for optimal audio and video effects. This class, like all Chabot
classes went through the Chabot College Curriculum committee requirements in order to be
offered. There are three Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) linked to this course and to Chabot’s
Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILO):
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• SLO 1. Creation of an annotated bibliography, connected to ILO’s: (a) Critical Thinking
and (b) Communication
• SLO 2. Draw references to one’s personal life from materials used within class (articles,
films, discussions).
• SLO 3. Evaluation of both information and its sources, connected to ILO’s: (a) Critical
Thinking, (b) Global and Cultural Involvement, (c) Civic Responsibility, (d)
Communication, (e) Development of the Whole Person.
These SLO’s are connected to the following ILO’s:
(a) Critical Thinking,
(b) Global and Cultural Involvement,
(c) Civic Responsibility,
(d) Communication, and
(e) Development of the Whole Person
Table 4.5 Persistence Rates for Library Skills via Hip hop and Popular culture
Semesters taught Students persisted Pct Students didn’t persist Pct Total Initial enrollment
6 70 81% 14 19% 74 136
Table 4.6 Success Rates for Library Skills taught by other librarians 2008-2015
Semesters taught Students persisted Students didn’t persist Initial enrollment
6 10 28 70
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Currently, my class is the only information literacy class at Chabot College that uses the
informed asset-based approach. As noted in the above table, for the period of 6 semesters of the
Library Skills Via Hip Hop and Popular 70 students persisted. Whereas in the library skills
classes taught by other librarians over the same amount of time only resulted in 10 students
persisting. The other one- and two-credit IL classes approved by Chabot College and the Chabot
Curriculum committee have been cancelled for the last three semesters due to low enrollment. I
have offered the “Library Skills via Hip-Hop and Popular Culture” course for the last six years
and have maintained consistently high enrollment. In the tables above, I present persistence rates
for students who succeeded in my class as well as other library courses. Success means they
passed the library skills course, and either received an AA degree or transferred to a four-year
college.
4.7 Data Collection As a situated insider, I participated in the study and acted simultaneously as instructor,
facilitator, participant, researcher, and student. Students were required to compose an
educational autoethnography and consented to utilize Thich Nhat Hanh’s notion of “right
speech” to guide discussion. Students submitted reflections on academic material, such as
articles, class discussions, popular culture videos, documentaries, songs, and lyrics. Although
the instructor framed most of the initial discussion topics, students’ assets and inquiry drove
much of the subsequent learning within the co-created classroom environment. Data was also
collected from participant interviews, final research projects and presentations, classroom
discussions/whiteboard captures, and reflective journals on the following films, songs, and
articles:
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Films: 1. bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation Patierno, M., & Hirshorn, H. (Eds.). (2002). Bell hooks: Cultural criticism & Transformation. Media Education Foundation
Believe: The Black Panther Party Library. 2. Tupac Resurrection: in his own words Lazin, L. (Director). (2003). Tupac Resurrection. United States: Amaru Entertainment Inc. (2003)
3. TUPAC: Hip Hop Genius Lewin, C. (Director). (2004). TUPAC: Hip Hop Genius [Motion picture]. United States.
4. All Power to the people The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the revolution Nelson, S. (Director). (2015). All Power to the people The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the revolution. United States: Firelight Films. (2015)
5. Thug Angel: The Life of an Outlaw Spirer, P. (Director). (2002). Thug Angel: The Life of an Outlaw. United States: QD3 Entertainment. (2002)
6. Holler if you hear me: Searching for Tupac Dyson, M. E. (2006). Holler If You Hear Me (2006). Civitas Books. 7. Death of a Warrior Poet Hersh, G. (Producer). (2015). Death of a Warrior Poet [Motion picture]. United States: Vanity Fair Confidential. 8. All eyez on me Boon, B. (Director). (2017). All eyez on me. United States: Morgan Creek Entertainment Group. (2017) 9. Grand Master Flash: The Message Robinson, S. (Producer). (1983). Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: The Message [Motion picture]. USA: Sugar Hill Records. 10. Dead Prez: Theys School and Hip Hop Hedrush, & Dead Prez (Producers). (2000). They School [Motion picture]. USA:Loud Records. 11. Juice Dickerson, E. (Director). (1992). Juice. USA: Island World. (1992) 12. Ice Cube: Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It HIDALGO, G. (Director). (2008). Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It [Motion picture]. USA:
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Rush Films. 13. Def Poetry: Julian Curry: Ni**er Ni**a & Ni**az Simmons, R. (Producer). (2005). Def Poetry Season 4 Episode 4: Julian Curry - Niggers Niggas & Niggaz [Motion picture]. USA: HBO. 14. 5 sides of a coin Kell, P. (Director). (2003). 5 sides of a coin. USA: The Anomaly Collective. (2003) 15. Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Hurt, B. (Director). (2006). Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes [Motion picture]. USA: ITVS. 16. Shackles Winkler, C. (Director). (2005). Shackles. USA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.(2005) 17. Biggie & Tupac: The Story Behind the Murder of Rap's Biggest Superstars Broomfeild, N. (Director). (2012). Biggie & Tupac: The Story Behind the Murder of Rap's Biggest Superstars. USA: Fisher Klingenstein Films. (2012) 18. Slam Levin, M. (Director). (1998). Slam. USA: Off Line Entertainment Group. (1998)
Articles:
1. About Hip-Hop and Back in the Day: Origins and Definitions of Hip-Hop Keyes, C. (2008). About Hip-Hop and Back in the Day: Origins and Definitions of Hip-Hop. In T. Strode & T. Wood (Eds.), The hip hop reader (pp. 01-17). New York: Pearson Longman. 2. Rap’s Embrace of ‘Ni**er’ Fires Bitter Debate by Michel Marriott Marriott, M. (1993, January 24). Rap's embrace of `nigger' fires bitter debate. New York Times. p. 1. 3. Hip-Hop Women Shredding the veil: Race Class in Popular Feminist Identity Morgan, M. (2008). Hip-Hop Women Shredding the veil: Race Class in Popular Feminist Identity. In T. Strode & T. Wood (Eds.), The hip hop reader (pp. 110-117). New York: Pearson Longman. 4. The Son of a Panther”: A Postrevolutionary childhood Dyson, M. E. (2006). The Son of a Panther”: A Postrevolutionary childhood. In M. E. Dyson (Author), Holler if you hear me : searching for Tupac Shakur (pp. 47-69). New York city, NY: Basic Civitas Books.
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6. From Poetry to Rap: The Lyrics of Tupac Shakur Edwards, W. (2002). From Poetry to Rap: The Lyrics of Tupac Shakur. Western Journal Of Black Studies, 26(2), 61. 7. Followers of Black Jesus on Alert: Thoughts on the Story of Tupac Shakur's Life/Death/Life Pinn, A. B., & Easterling, P. (2009). FOLLOWERS OF BLACK JESUS ON ALERT: THOUGHTS ON THE STORY OF TUPAC SHAKUR'S LIFE/DEATH/LIFE. Black Theology: An International Journal, 7(1), 31-44. 8. Reaffirming African American Cultural Values: Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits as a Musical Autobiography Brown, T. J. (2005). Reaffirming African American Cultural Values: Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits as a Musical Autobiography. Western Journal Of Black Studies, 29(1), 558.
Songs/Lyrics:
1. Dear Mama Shakur, T. (1995). Dear Mama. On Me Against The World [CD]. Los Angeles, Ca: Interscope. (July, 1994)
2. Only God can judge Me Shakur, T. (1999). Only God can judge Me. On All Eyez on Me [CD]. Los
Angeles, Ca: Deathrow
3. Trapped by Tupac Shakur, T. (1991). Trapped. On 2pacalypse now [CD]. USA: Interscope. 4. Holler if you hear me
Shakur, T. (1993). “Holler If Ya Hear Me”. On Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z [CD]. USA: Interscope
5. Me Against the world Shakur, T. (1995). Me Against The World. On Me Against The World [CD]. Los
Angeles, Ca: Interscope. (July, 1994)
6. It aint easy Shakur, T. (1995). It Aint Easy. On Me Againset The World [CD]. Los
Angeles, Ca: Interscope. (July, 1994)
7. Ambitionz Az a Ridah Shakur, T. (1996). All Eyez on Me [CD]. Death Row. (October 13, 1995)
8. California Love
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Shakur, T. (1995). California Love. On All Eyez on Me [CD]. Death Row. (October 13, 1995)
Reflective Journal topics: 1. Reflective writing during class on the above items, after class discussions, films, and music 2. Freewrite on Tupac, Rap and Hip-Hop Because the curriculum was co-created the course materials themselves, as well as the
conversations the students had had in the classroom prompted their ethnographic reflections.
Below is a student journal on an article and discussion about the use of the word Nigga in Rap
and hip hop lyrics and popular culture.
Figure 1: Student journal reflection on assigned article Above, King’s heartfelt and thoughtful contemplation
Students were required to select a research topic for the final project. That assignment
required students to submit a typed project statement, a search strategy statement, and an
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annotated bibliography of 15 or more sources. Students also maintained a research notebook
documenting the information-gathering process for their chosen topic, the physical evidence of
their research methodology, and their search strategy.
4.8 Participants
The participant sample group was drawn from students from Chabot Community College
who were previously or currently enrolled in the Rap and Hip-Hop-themed information literacy
Class. These students were in their first or second year of college and agreed to participate in the
study on a voluntary basis. Prior to the study’s beginning, I obtained ethics clearance from the
college’s institutional review board. Students were assured that all answers and data gathered
would be treated as confidential, and that recorded interviews would be destroyed upon
completion of the researcher’s dissertation. All other data would be destroyed within 5-7 years
of research completion. The participants were also assured that their responses would be used
anonymously and that all data would be stored securely, as per Queensland University of
Technology’s management of research data policy.
To begin my study, I approached past students to engage them in a conversation
about their educational experiences. All of these students had previously participated in
one of two library research skills classes that I offer: one centered on the theme of Rap
and Hip-Hop, the other on images of Black women in film, music and literature. I
explained to students that our dialogue would take the form of a conversation, rather than
an interview, about our shared and lived experiences with schooling. In class we defined
schooling as our bumpy and at times traumatic experience within a predominantly
Eurocentric academic environment.
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I recorded, transcribed, and listened to interviews several times and journaled after
each session. I took photographs of classroom whiteboard discussions, student
homework, and journal entries. I transcribed recorded interviews within hours of their
occurrence. I then played back the recorded interviews to ensure the accuracy of my
transcriptions. When I felt that I had captured their voices accurately, I asked students to
read through the transcripts and add anything that they felt was missing in my account.
This technique, called “member-checking,” allows students to assess the textual accuracy
of their oral discourse. The practice correlates with Carspecken’s (1996) assertion that
“good stage 5 analysis comes not from the researchers’ gaining an insider position in the
culture she studies but also from the subject’s gaining an insider’s position in the
researchers’ culture” (p. 197).
My data collection was modeled on the frameworks of mindful inquiry (MI) and
seeking vs. researching. Mindful inquiry (Bentz and Shapiro, 1998) is a qualitative
research approach that requires the interviewer to “be attentive to and conscious of the
cultural, political, social, linguistic and ideological origins of one’s own perspective and
voice as well as the perspective and voice of those one interviews and those to whom one
reports” (Patton, 2002, p. 65). The seeking vs. researching approach (Paris & Winn,
2013) emphasizes reciprocity, respect, and humanizing research. In this model,
interviewers engage participants in discussion that departs from and builds upon their
assets rather than asking a series of closed and irrelevant questions. This method of data
collection counters “techniques that colonize research, education, and the marginalized”
(Paris & Winn, 2013, p. 205) and affirms research participants’ unique voices and
personal contributions.
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MI is based on several assumptions (Bentz and Shapiro, 1998, pg. 7). The following
are most relevant to my study:
1. Awareness of self and reality and their interaction is a positive value in itself and should
be present in research processes.
2. Tolerating and integrating multiple perspectives is a value.
3. It is important to bracket our assumptions and look at the often unaware, deep layers of
consciousness and unconsciousness that underlie them.
4. Human existence, as well as research, is an ongoing process of interpreting both one’s
self and others, including other cultures and subcultures.
5. All research involves both accepting bias––the bias of one’s own situation and context–
–and trying to transcend it.
6. We are always immersed in and shaped by historical, social, economic, racial, political,
and cultural structures and constraints, and those structures and constraints usually have
domination and oppression, and therefore suffering, built into them.
7. Inquiry often involves the critique of existing values, social and personal illusions, and
harmful practices and institutions.
8. Inquiry may contribute to social action and be part of social action.
In the tradition of mindful inquiry, Kenny (2004) writes, “In qualitative research
there is a particular ethical responsibility, on the part of the researcher, to honour stories”
(p. 35). I employed MI in all student conversations, as I have in the classroom from the
outset. In the interview process, I apply its tenets by being “attentive to and conscious of
the cultural, political, social, linguistic and ideological origins of one’s own perspective
and voice as well as the perspective and voice of those one interviewed and those to whom
one reports” (Patton, 2002, p. 65).
Making decisions about which data, i.e. which stories, to use and which to omit is
one of an ethnographer’s core responsibilities. When I look at my students’ stories as an
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ethnographer, I do not regard them as data. Rather, I am looking at the information as a
tool for self-expression and the articulation of personal significance. The students’ stories
determine the scope and content of this field of inquiry. I use emergent themes as an
organizational framework to provide structure for the reader.
In their educational autoethnographies, students discussed their cultural
framework, K-12 schooling, family history and relationships, and their daily educational
experiences. For the purposes of my research study, I only looked longitudinally at their
responses to select the aspects of their stories that relate directly to their experiences as
college students. I am using only a slice of a much broader and more complex narrative to
frame my study and conclusion, but minority students’ educational experiences require far
deeper social, historical, and political contextualization. I hope that my discussion of
relevant research can partially compensate for that omission.
4.9 Data collection and researcher positionality In this study, my analytic situatedness helps to dispel the notion prevalent in many
research circles that “indulgence is our biggest enemy” (Sambrook, 2015, p. 98), i.e., that
the use of autoethnography will only produce information about the researcher. However,
when this practice is coupled with analytic autoethnography, “[T]he more the researcher
knows about why she has chosen to attempt data production about phenomenon X rather
than Y, how she goes about producing that data and how she produces her stories about X,
the better data, and the better texts” (Neumann & Neumann, 2015, p. 1). Doctoral
students are often encouraged to situate themselves only briefly and superficially, rather
than in the more involved manner prescribed by the autoethnographic method (Jacobs,
2009). As a result “there is limited space for doing and/or teaching qualitative research,
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and it is difficult to gain credibility for innovative approaches such as autoethnography”
(Sambrook, 2015, p. 92). This thin layer of engagement and situatedness produces
research that is disconnected from the cultural context and community under investigation.
Situated researchers have to calibrate their own inclinations and ideas with those of
the community under investigation; this “may mean losing analytic grip of the phenomena
that participants themselves regard as prominent” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, p.12).
Most research cited and conducted for this study examines the lived experience of
marginalized groups, and a good deal of it is written by members of those groups
performing research within their communities and with their students. Most if not all of
their counter-stories “challenge the story of White supremacy and continue to give voice
to those that have been silenced by White supremacy” (Dixson & Rousseau, 2006, p. 4).
These researchers are creating counter-stories to foster a more culturally relevant
curriculum and educational experience for their students.
4.10 Conversations: Setting, Context, and Content My main objective was to foster a dialogue with students that inspired them to
relate their experience with schooling in an open and organic way. I began the initial
conversation by relaying my own educational experiences in an effort to model
reciprocity. Cortes and Carmona (2014) posit that when researchers do not share our
“testimonies, we compromise our struggle for liberatory praxis. By not reflecting on these
experiences, and not encouraging our students to do the same, we unwillingly perpetuate
oppression. We suggest that the personal experience of all students be incorporated in all
forms of education” (p. 72). Though I provided students with a brief autobiographical
sketch on the first day of class, I expanded my account during participant interviews to
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break the ice. Once I incorporated this narrative into the initial interview, students’ stories
grew longer and exhibited a greater degree of openness and reflection on past and current
experiences with education.
I also learned that site location made a difference. I conducted the first interview
in a space with bright overhead lighting, an atmosphere that was unfamiliar to both myself
and the student. Thereafter, I decided to move the interviews to my office, a space that is
more akin to a living room: cozy and familiar with comfortable lighting and seating. I
also offered participants food and drink. I do the same thing in my classes: using and
sharing food to build community, echoing a cultural tradition of relevance to my students.
I also did this because I knew that most of my students often came to school hungry.
Many felt comfortable enough to share their lack of access to food in the classroom
environment. I related my own experience of being a hungry student in college and how
that impacted my degree of class participation. I also explained that it was not until my
junior year of college that a fellow student informed me of my eligibility for federal
assistance.
Informed asset-based pedagogy encourages students to use their assets as a
departure point to explore, deconstruct, and reconceive their historical context and
contemporary environment. Using this model, I guided students to examine critically the
experiences of marginalized groups alongside the dominant rhetoric that replicates this
process of marginalization. The following phases define my research process:
1. Produced interview questions
2. Identified potential participants
3. Scheduled participant sessions
4. Assured students of anonymity and confidentiality
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5. Allowed students time to read and sign QUT ethics approval (1500000895)
6. Explained the purpose of the conversation
7. Explained to students why they were selected
8. Spoke about the length of the conversation
9. Shared more about myself and my schooling experience
10. Used open-ended questions
11. Recorded conversations
12. Summarized key data at the end of conversation
13. Reflected in my journal
The initial conversation session was conducted in a prearranged, mutually agreed
upon site. Most interviews took place on the Chabot College campus. Conversations did
not extend past 90 minutes; I scheduled a 20-30 minute follow-up with participants to
gather more information if needed. I assured students that their participation in the
conversation would not impact our relationship as teacher/student/friend.
I opened each session by sharing more of my autoethnography. I then used the
following conversational script to guide the opening and subsequent session if needed.
4.11 Initial conversation 1. Can you share a little bit about who you are, where you come from, and how this has
played out in your experience of schooling?
2. Can you describe any schooling experience where prior knowledge and/or the
knowledge of your family or community was useful to you?
3. Can you talk about your experience(s) in our library class with the theme of Rap and
Hip-Hop? How might your prior knowledge and experience have shaped your
participation, learning, and engagement in this class?
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4. What haven’t we talked about in this interview that you think is meaningful?
4.12 Second conversation 1. What would your educational experience be like if other classes used themes drawn
from your prior knowledge and experiences?
2. Why did you take a library research skills class?
Probing Question:
You said you took this class because
…. can you talk a little more about why? What was your topic?
Why did you choose this particular topic?
1. What impact, if any, has this class had on your educational experience in other classes?
Three main themes emerged from the initial conversations: the importance of
informal information networks to college students of color and first generation college
attendees; the power of using student cultural wealth/assets in academic classrooms; and
substantive discussion of the impact of racial identity on the lives of students and its role
in American society. Connecting these themes to the primary research questions posed in
this study was integral to an investigation of asset-based, and explicit racialized situated
pedagogies in a library class curriculum. The primary research questions considered
community college students’ use of cultural assets in an information literacy class, their
participation in additive pedagogical practices, and how their explicit racial and cultural
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situatedness played out in an IL classroom.
4.13 Analytical Method and Outcomes
My objective in this study was to examine how engagement of student assets
impacts the educational experience. It is difficult to conceive of the stories shared by my
students as “data.” They are counter-stories with truth, depth and meaning. Thus, in the
analytical process, I worked to preserve the uniqueness and significance of each student’s
narrative even as I identified and coded the themes of collective significance. I examined
all data for significance and repetition. I used the following strategies by Ezzy, (2002) to
ensure trustworthiness as an ethnographer: “(1) initially code as you transcribe interview
data; (2) maintain a reflective journal on the research project with copious analytic
memos; and (3) check your interpretations developed thus far with the participants
themselves” (pp. 67-74). Calibrating my observations with students facilitates
transparency and ensures accuracy. Guba and Lincoln (1989) purport that an
autoethnography that is a success must be truthfully written for readers to “explore the
process, judge the decisions that were made, and understand what salient factors in the
context led the evaluator to the decisions and interpretations made” (Guba & Lincoln,
1989, p. 242).
My students’ stories are my stories, and the questions I pose in this study arose
from my own experience as an insider. The coalescent themes are similar to those that I
encountered as I navigated the educational environment, as a person of color, first
generation college attendee, and, later, as a professor. There was no recipe or step-by-step
process in my engagement with students, and the notion of replicability does not apply.
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The process was iterative, not linear. Asset-based approaches are not predicated on
identifying assets prior to the educational encounter. Rather, students and teachers are
continually identifying and translating them for use in the academic environment (Yosso,
2005, 2006; Alim & Paris, 2014). I have learned over time that I possess cultural wealth,
just as I have gained understanding and honor that of my students. My curriculum and
pedagogical engagement is emergent, drawn from my students’ autoethnographies and
interests. Rather than developing my research in a vacuum, I drew upon years of teaching
experience and student input to frame my field and method of inquiry.
4.14 Data Analysis This dissertation contains stories recounting the lived experiences of participants.
These narratives articulate their interpretation and analysis of the cultural context they live
in (Chang, 2008). In this study, I utilized the narrative inquiry process to structure and
restructure lived experiences into stories. I then gleaned themes from these stories to draw
common threads, locate broader significance, and facilitate the creation (Cobb & Sharma,
2015) of community cultural wealth and knowledge. McCormack (2004) defines the
practice of storying stories as “the researcher seeks personal experience stories and
generates stories by composing stories about those experiences” (p. 220). Storying our
stories retains the authenticity of our voiced experiences and assets, and allows the
entirety of their articulation, as reflective of decolonized methodologies. Naisilisili,
(2015 pg. 101), provides these examples “(Tongan Kala Framework Thaman, 1997);
(Fijian Vanua Research Framework by Nabobo-Baba (2008) and (Kaupapa Maori
Framework by Smith (1999)”. These stories provide “an alternative method to
reductionist coding and subsequent reconstruction of interviewee’s stories” (Fisher, 2010,
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p. 48). This method entails viewing transcripts via many lenses, intent listening, and
reflective process. Then, “using the views highlighted by those lenses to write interpretive
stories” (McCormack, 2000, pg. 282). These conversations occurred within an intentional
space that foregrounded the lenses of critical race theory and cultural assets. Research
findings drawn from the multiple sources I have cited previously reflect the study’s
broader aims: to develop culturally relevant curricula from student-articulated assets; to
examine research and instruction informed by student cultural assets; and to identify how
tenets of informed assets, e.g. CRT and decolonizing theories and methodologies, enhance
student learning in the IL classroom.
Solorzano and Yosso (2002) discuss the roles of theoretical sensitivity (Strauss &
Corbin, 1990) and cultural intuition (Delgado Bernal, 1998) in data analysis. Strauss and
Corbin define theoretical sensitivity as
“a personal quality of the researcher. It indicates an awareness of the subtleties of
meaning of data. One can come to the research situation with varying degrees of
sensitivity depending upon previous reading and experience with or relevant to the
data. It can also be developed further during the research process. Theoretical
sensitivity refers to the attribute of having insight, the ability to give meaning to
data, the capacity to understand, and capability to separate the pertinent from that
which isn’t” (1990, pp. 41-42).
Cultural intuition differs from theoretical sensitivity by extending “one’s personal
experience to include collective experience and community memory,” and emphasizes
“the importance of participants’ engaging in the analysis of data” (pp. 563-564). Much
like Solorzano and Yosso (2002), I cultivate counter-storied findings by using aspects of
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“(a) the data gathered from the research process itself, (b) the existing literature on the
topic(s), (c) our own professional experiences, and (d) our own personal experiences” (p.
38). These findings take the form of composite counter-stories. Solorzano and Yosso
(2002) articulate them as
“various forms of ‘data’ that recount the racialized, sexualized, and classed
experiences of people of color. Such counter-stories may offer both biographical
and autobiographical analyses because the authors create composite characters and
place them in social, historical, and political situations to discuss racism, sexism,
classism, and other forms of subordination (p. 33)”.
Each study participant’s counter-story stands on its own. At the same time, taken
together, these stories illuminate common themes, ideas and experiences of the inequity
experienced with pedagogy, educators, and academic environments. Most researchers
give the data collected meaning through an outsider lens. Yet, composite counter-stories
utilizing ethnographic methods and storying stories (McCormack, 2004) reflect a process
of narrative inquiry and analysis that draws upon researcher as insider, postmodernist,
feminist, and qualitative research. These approaches “humanize” research practice (Paris
& Winn, 2013) and bring inequities to the foreground (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).
Through this process, students have an opportunity to retell their stories in a context that
grants them legitimacy and respect.
4.15 Ethics After I was granted ethics clearance at Chabot College and Queensland University
of Technology, QUT granted its approval for this study to commence (Approval Number:
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1500000895 Approved Until:13/01/2018). All participants signed a consent form
approved by QUT and Chabot College. Students were notified that they could withdraw
themselves from the study at any time.
4.16 Verification and Trustworthiness I employed the process of member checking to ensure participant verification and
establish trust (Sandelowski, 2008; Carspecken, 1996). In this process, Member checking
consisted of study participants reviewing what the researcher captured from their dialogue
to make sure of consistency with what the study participant meant to say. It was also an
opportunity for participants to add thoughts that arose later. I was also guided questions
Creswell (2007, pg. 206) identified for researchers to measure the validity and
trustworthiness of interpreted data, they are the following “1) Are the results an accurate
interpretation of the participants’ meaning? 2) Are different voices heard in this
interpretation of the data? 3) Is there a critical appraisal of all aspects of the research? And
4) Are these investigations self-critical?
4.17 Research limitations This qualitative study is limited in scope by the small sample of participants.
Participants represent populations marginalized through a system of White privilege and
racial dominance, or by social, cultural, educational, and socio-economic status. All
researchers face limitations, “And all competent researchers must acquire not only the
ability to use various research skills but also the acumen to judge when some kinds of
research are likely to prove more productive than others” (Anderson, pg. 390, 2006).
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Though limited in scope, my hope is that this study provides a useful model or framework
for other researchers and educators working with and for this population.
4.18 Methods Conclusion The qualitative research method conforms to the autoethnographic approach
utilized in this study. Qualitative researchers begin by “asking people open-ended
questions about how things work from their perspective.” These methods “allow an
individual to frame the concept, idea, or situation and then elaborate on it” (Fetterman,
2008, p. 3). Contributing my own autoethnography to class discussion enabled students to
feel more willing and comfortable to relating their own stories. The use of
autoethnography proved to be invaluable in making the library classroom a space student
and researcher could make connections with lived experience in and out of the classroom.
The connections we forged based on shared history and context inspired collective
reflection and engaged conversations, both in the classroom and in the individual
interviews I conducted for this study.
The methodology used in this study was used to gather and articulate cultural
assets, construct curricula, and provide education counter-stories of marginalized students.
The next chapter presents this study results.
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CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS: “I didn’t invent THUG LIFE, I diagnosed it”. (Tupac) “There are different ways for understanding research impact and providing evidence for making informed policies and translating research findings into outcomes that make a positive contribution to society”. (Tuhiwai Smith, 2018, pg. 21)
5.1 Flipping the Western script
I am now shifting from my Western view of writing in my first four chapters to the
autoethnographic view and counter-stories of my students, which values their lived experience,
and increases their information literacy. It also leads to an incredible innovation in information
literacy praxis. It tells my students what you know works here, let's translate it, let's flip the
script on it. Let's talk about how what you have is incredibly valuable and how you can use that
in your education. What this does is brings in in my epistemological stance, the cultural wealth
of the communities that are coming to the community college. Informed Assets turns it into
something they can use and work with to get their education.
At the Critical Ethnic Studies Conference held at the University of British Columbia in
June of 2018 themed: Critical Insurrections: Decolonizing Difficulties, Activist Imaginaries, and Collective
Possibilities, participants engaged topics about what can be to Decolonize the University academic
practices. Critical scholars are attacking the issue of forcing graduate students to reproduce and
reify western imperial epistemological frames. A variety of indigenous scholars have taken this
on. Sandy Grande, Eve Tuck, Wayne Wayne, and Four Arrows. All of which are taking on the
issue of restrictions, structures, and the requirements that graduate students reproduce the
western state, the imperial state, the neoliberal state, the epistemological frame of European
dominance, and White supremacy. Indigenous scholars and scholars of color are being put in the
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situation of, in order to achieve their education goals, they must reproduce the thing that
oppresses them. Academic colonial structures. This is the thing that critical scholars are
attacking right now with graduate students and trying to overthrow these structures in
universities that require that you reify your oppression. This is what I’m up against.
Informed asset-based pedagogy attacks everything that universities are designed to do.
Universities are designed to strip all the knowledge from students of color and turn them into
people who reproduce whiteness. This is the price you pay for being educated, is you get the
color stripped off and you reify whiteness. Okay? What I am doing is profoundly radical,
although I would guess not understood by many folks, because they subscribe to university
literacy. Information Literacy is an idea that students can be taught additionally to reify
whiteness. Faculty are running into this problem where people who know things they don’t
know, did not actively subsume to their epistemic stance that says the only good knowledge is
imperial--white knowledge. Over the generations of information literacy myself and others see
that when we talk to students, we cannot lie to them and tell them that the knowledge of the
academy is true. While on the other hand saying to them that they matter to us. We encounter
these students who know so much and we must choose between the epistemic dominant white
supremacist stance of academia or our student's interest and helping our students turn their
knowledge and their community's knowledge and their access to education into power on the
ground. We are forced to make a choice between reifying whiteness or acknowledging our
students wealth and helping them use that to build their communities.
As mentioned previously in the preamble of this thesis, please honor and engage the structure of
this thesis and the counter-stories we are about to share.
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5.2 Our Counter-Stories We operate in an environment where people are influenced by dominant narratives
that organize behavior, experiences, and perceptions. These narratives are represented in,
maintained, and mediated by numerous domains: economic, social, cultural, and political.
Within our classroom, our collective understanding positioned people either as sheep, i.e.
members of “the herd,” or as those who question their environment, upbringing, and
situation. Students emphasized the importance of independent thought and critical
inquiry, despite frequent confrontation with notions and pretensions of “expertise.” In
these instances, they recalled that their questioning of authority figures often initiated a
defensive, dismissive, and ultimately annihilative response. Our counter-stories pose
challenges to traditional notions and figures of authority and expertise. We use popular
culture as a lens through which to redefine the boundaries of knowledge, narrative
authority, and scholarship.
All counter-stories testify to relevant, sustaining, explicit racial situatedness. They
call for meaningful engagement of communities’ cultural wealth. In my class and in this
study, informed assets/cultural wealth provides a new context for students’ individual
stories (counter-stories).
5.3 Participant Introductions: Tell it like it is, student counter-stories
“Autoethnography is an alternative, another perspective. It is research from the inside-out; providing an authoritative voice that offers insight into otherwise unknowable worlds
(Houston, 2007, p. 45).”
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This section begins with participant introductions to situate students’ biographical,
social, and cultural contexts. The students’ voices included here represent a larger group,
pared down in the interest of space.
Student profiles:
Jazz
Jazz, 19, describes her background as Fijian, since her mother was born in Fiji and
moved to the United States as a child, when she was about twelve. Jazz’s father was born
and raised in Fiji as well, and he moved to the U.S. when he married Jazz’s mom. Jazz
believes that being a first generation American has shaped her educational experience.
That experience was also defined by her parents’ expectations that she earn either A’s or
B’s throughout K-8th grades, although neither provided academic assistance or checked
her homework. Even without their help, she was still expected to get that A or B grade.
Jazz was constantly told that she was not going to do anything with her life—that she was,
fat, ugly, and stupid. These insults came from many different relatives. When she entered
high school, Jazz described herself as kind of screwed up. She was cutting class left and
right, but she was also smart about it, so she wouldn’t get caught. Although she graduated
from high school with a 3.5 GPA, she says “When I graduated, my mom told me, she was
like,‘You need to get a job.’ College wasn’t even brought up with me. With my sister,
yeah, my sister went straight to college, they were on her about, ‘Oh, you need to get your
applications in.’ But, nobody asked me about college.”
King
King is an African-American male from San Francisco, California. He is about to
turn 21. He feels that his residency in San Francisco has shaped his life the most. When
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he was a very small child, he lived with his mother and her grandfather. In his early years,
King was sent to schools where he was often the only African-American student in class,
surrounded by predominantly Asian students and a few Whites. King states, “I didn’t
really understand my place as a Black student being around Black culture. The culture I
had at home it followed me to school. That was my impression of what it meant to be a
Black student.” Yet, King distinctly remembers the first time someone else pointed out
his skin color. He states “this one time there being a little Asian boy on the bus telling me
that he knew my color. I was in first grade at the time. It meant something to me. I didn’t
know exactly what but I took offense as if he was warned about my color or something
like that. After that I moved to some pretty tough and gritty projects with my family. I
went to a predominantly African American elementary school. It was the first time I've
ever being around so many Black students. It was a culture shock.”
Cina
“I’ve always moved around the Bay Area. I’ve moved around so much, I always
had to be a step ahead of everybody else just because.” Cina recalls how her move from
Oakland to a predominantly white neighborhood ushered in a new school environment:
different curriculum, newer and more sophisticated equipment. Cina lagged far behind
her peers, and would often stay after school to catch up. She is the first in her family to
graduate from high school and to enter college. Her mother did not finish middle school
and her grandparents did not finish elementary school.
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Matais
Matais is a 19-year old Latino male who was born and raised in the Bay Area.
Elementary school went well for him, and his classmates were primarily Latino, like him.
But starting in the seventh grade, his family began to move around a lot. New city, new
school, over and over. At this point, Matais started to hate school. He found it hard to
make friends. He did not jibe with the Latino students in these new schools. Matais
recalls, “the ones that I did see, they were more like gangster and not my crowd. From
seventh grade until high is when I didn’t really like school. Then when I got to high
school it was kind of the same thing. I didn’t really know people and I was just more
rebellious, rather than trying to actually do good in my classes, because inside and outside
of the classroom I just felt uncomfortable. I couldn't really focus in a classroom”. Matais
received little assistance or advice about succeeding in school or attending college. He
maintains,
“I felt like going into the classrooms for the most part, everyone seemed to know
stuff that I didn’t know. Like I don’t know, maybe my parents just didn’t teach me
like other parents taught their kids, but I always felt like I didn’t have all the
resources or I didn’t have maybe the background schooling, like oh this is how you
write a certain essay. This is how you do this and that. I think once I made that
transition to the new school district, is when I was just thrown all the way off.
Nothing from my home life or even hanging out with friends, really helped me in
the classroom and it was kind of an ugly feeling. Especially not having stuff like a
computer to type on or just whatever. There was always something in every class
where I didn’t have what was needed to pass the class with a good grade. It was
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like I was always trying get at least a C just to pass. I think that’s a big reason why
I was not motivated in high school, because I didn’t have all the right resources, so
it was like I was already put in a tough spot and it was easier to just not try, rather
than to go to the public library and do all this stuff. Once I got there I still didn’t
know what I was doing.”
Humble
Humble is 23. Her family immigrated from Mexico when she was five.
She believes that this move and attending U.S. public schools played a big role in
school for her. Her parents told her that they came to the U.S. so that their kids
could attend school there. She recalls,
“They always told me, they always told all of us, that getting an education is why
we came to the U.S. When I was young and I first started learning English, the
community I lived in, which, is a huge Hispanic community but there’s also a big
black community. Not really a lot of white folks and stuff but huge, yeah, a lot of
blacks and a lot of Hispanics. I didn’t really notice a big difference between me
and everybody else because it was, it was a minority population, so I didn’t notice
but when I went up to Northern California, the population was mainly white and it
was rural. Country style. I did notice a difference then. It’s sometimes really easy
to forget the opportunity that you do have with school because especially to people
every day, it's like it seems so available. But that’s not the case for everybody and
it's easy to forget that. That played a big role in the school for me because my
oldest brother he was the first one to graduate from college. That was a huge deal
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for my family and it kind of made me see how proud it really made my parents to
see him graduate. But also along with everything that comes with the pride and
happiness of education, I also had a lot of trouble with school especially during
high school, as I got older. A lot of times I felt like school and my personal life
were really separate from each other and I had a hard time either combining them
together so that they would be able to flow or just being able to balance them. I
felt like I couldn't really focus on school, because I’d be thinking too much about
my own life. I had a lot of problems with that, in the later part of high school.”
Ida B
Ida B is a 20-year-old African American female. Due to her mother’s disdain for
the public school system and, more specifically, its treatment of African Americans, Ida B
and her twin sister were homeschooled from 6th-12th grade. She conveyed the difficulty
of her elementary school experience. Ida B confides
“I actually got I guess they say kicked out, they first use the term expel then
kicked out of I guess. For the most part school was okay until that last little part. I
actually, I guess you would call got assaulted by a teacher. Because I was upset
and the teacher grabbed my arms. Actually bruised one of my wrists. And they
basically made it out to be my fault. And when my mom and my dad they went
and they talked to the school officials and everything--that's what led to me getting
expelled. They went to the school board and everything. I was out of school for I
want to say almost six months before I transferred to the other school. They
actually sent my paperwork to the next school before they even told my parents
that I was expelled from their school. Over something that was just very childish
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and I had to transfer to another school. I was there for about a year before my
mom was just like we don't like it. We're going to put you guys in a private school.
We were in private school for about a year. But we found out that that school
wasn't up to par. Like their credentials and everything wasn't real. So our mother
was just like well, we'll just homeschool you guys. And that's where we were since
until the end of our general schooling or 12th grade.
I know the public-school system isn't great, but it's better than your kid being taken out of
like that social environment. Because I know for me and my sister we just feel like we
missed out on a whole lot. As far as communication with other kids. Because around that
time like just before we started being home-schooled our parents divorced, so our mom
would be at work. Dad was living where he was living. So we were pretty much at home
learning from a software system. And, on a day to day basis you're at home learning from
a software system and once you're done in that couple hours or few hours it takes to do
your lesson you're pretty much just hanging out home until the rest of the neighborhood
kids get out of school.”
Ida B and her parents’ experience with the U.S. public education system is common for
many marginalized populations. A defining factor for her is that she and her sister were
able to be homeschooled which is very uncommon within African American families and
marginalized populations within the U.S.
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Brit
Brit is a 19-year-old African American who migrated to the Bay Area with her
twin sister and mother from the east coast. There are several generations of college
graduates in her family. Brit recalls,
“My mom always taught in special ed and she always wanted to be a teacher. I
think she instilled the importance of education in us. She pulled us out of the
public high school at sixteen because of stuff that was happening, and we didn’t
want go to school. She tried to get us into the schools where she worked at in San
Jose and that didn’t work out. She tried to put us in an adult’s school. That way we
could still maintain schooling--it was always instilled in us at a young age that you
must get an education. My uncle, they are catholic school kids coming from the
East Coast, they wanted to make sure that we had that education. I think one thing
instilled in us when we were young is that you always need an education and that
you must maintain it. My mom went back when she was older. She always
reminded is of it. She wanted to keep us in line with trying to get educated. And
make sure that we knew the importance of school to make sure that we are going
to school even if it means going back at an old age, that either way you are getting
something done. I think at a young age they instilled the educational tools about
being black and to make sure that you know that you are African-American, that
you are in class, that you are sure to learn because those things weren’t offered to
them when they were younger. Brit is referring to culturally relevant information
for Blacks in education. Many of my family members were fortunate to have
education. My grandma she was fortunate too, she was a fourth grader and they
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skipped her two grades. She was kind of smart and then at a young age and then
she continued to do well. She also had vocational skills. She had certificates.
Though Brit’s grandma had Brits mother at 19, Brit is proud to say she still was
able to get educated and made sure to instill this in her mother and her mother
instilled this ethic into her and her sister.”
Phoenix
Phoenix is a first generation Mexican American. She is the youngest of nine
children in a female-headed household. Her father left when she was about six years old.
Her mother found a second job to provide for her and her siblings and wanted nothing
more than for all of her children to graduate from high school. Phoenix believes that she
and her siblings were “tracked” throughout school, with the expectation that their
education would not continue beyond high school. Phoenix’s high school had a lot of
gang activity, so she kept to herself to try to stay out of trouble. Without college
aspirations, she married immediately after high school and divorced seven years later with
four children to provide for. At this point, she decided to try college, but she had no idea
where to go or how to seek assistance. When Phoenix matriculated at Chabot, she sought
to take charge of her education with the broader purpose of redirecting her life. She
wanted to model that level of initiative and determination for her children.
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Trace
Trace is a 40-year-old African American married woman with children in school
during the current study. She recalls,
“I would say I grew up in a single family home with three kids, but when I was
younger, my little sister got killed. After her death I had to transition to my
grandparent's house. I don't really remember elementary because I was with my
sister when she got killed. My memory is gone due to my sister getting killed, and
my mom getting on drugs. I barely made it through high school. I ended up going
to adult school. I just couldn't stay focused. I managed to graduate from the adult
school though. My mom ended up passing away when I was 20. I raised my 14-
year old sister, so school wasn’t even existing at this point. I had to survive. In
my survival, I self-destroyed, getting drunk for many years. Which caused my
sister to have to go stay with my auntie and uncle. At 25 I started a family. I was
content just being married and raising my children. Then one day, a question was
asked. What are you going to do when your kids grow up? When that question
was asked, I was like ‘Oh, my God.’ I knew in my heart that something was about
to change. I didn’t think that change would be going back to school. College
terrified me. I didn’t think I could survive in college. Talk about needing survival
skills from surviving on the streets to surviving in education. Yeah. See? I had to
do that. I had to be able to transition, it wasn't easy. I knew it was a commitment.
Plus, when you’re on the streets, you’re committed to something. You’re
committed to ‘I got to feed these kids. I’m committed to taking care of these kids.’
Now that voice goes ‘I’m committed to school. I can’t drop out. I have made this
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commitment.’ My kids see me doing it. They can do it. I’m very humble in
school. I know I’m here for a reason. I’m here to get mileage. It’s about knowing
how the world operates. When I’m at home, I’m harder. I guess because now I
know two worlds. At home, I’m more ... It’s so funny, because when you start
going to school, your family, they haven't been to school and they don't
understand, so they think that you’re trying to be better than them. They be like
‘Oh, now you think this way. You know where you come from.’ And ‘Oh, now
you're trying to be like this?’ And ‘Oh, I remember when I first met you.’ Even
with the kids, I have to stand my ground. Like ‘No, you know ... If you don’t get
your education, poverty is going to always exist in your family down the line,
when I’m gone. I have to stay firm like that. Connecting the education to my
family home. That’s who I am now. I’m not who I used to be. I’ve changed. I’ve
changed. I’m a whole different person”.
5.5 Our counter-stories from Our Conversations “Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.” (Tupac 1994) Many of us found a second home in the transformative and emancipatory
classroom space we created. In this supportive and safe environment, students reflected
critically on their experiences with the educational system to date. Several lines of
continuity emerged from students’ narratives: the importance of informal information
networks to college students of color and first generation college attendees; the power of
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using student cultural wealth/assets in academic classrooms; and substantive discussion of
the impact of racial identity on the lives of students and its role in American society. To
represent these themes, I have included excerpts of various transcribed conversations,
student autoethnographic journals, shots of whiteboard class discussions, and student
presentations. I focused on the stories and their significance, rather than adopting the
typical approach to “data analysis.” Our words supersede quantification. I incorporated
Carspecken’s stages 4 and 5 as I considered the data’s relation to social norms regarding
first generation and students of color in the educational environment. My use of student
assets to set the agenda in this study and in our classroom positions me as a co-learner
rather than an authority (Mezirow, J. 1997, p.11).
5.6 Informal information networks and survival skills Many students highlighted the importance of peer support networks to guide and
fulfill their college aspirations once they entered college. They relied on their peers to
learn how to submit applications, secure financial aid, and register for classes. These
informal networks were essential to students who often had no one to turn to for this type
of guidance. Learning to manage and navigate this new environment required building
peer support networks to sustain students throughout their college careers. My students’
words emphasize this process and achievement.
JAZZ: Nobody asked me about college. If it wasn’t for the girl that sat next to me in my Econ class, she, I don't even ... it's so hard, you don't know what classes to take, from the simplest things to, "Where do I pay for my classes?" to, "Okay, if I don't pay for my classes, what happens?" to, "Where do I get my books? How do I even know what I need?" It's hard for somebody with no support. If it wasn't me asking around, asking random people in my classes, "Hey, how do I figure this out?"
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Jazz knows that she needs to locate more information sources to achieve success in the
college environment. Though several initiatives at Chabot offer guidance and support,
students like Jazz often have to rely on their own survival skills to endure, let alone thrive.
I believe that this stems partially from students’ mistrust of authority, both generally and
within academic environments. Students conceded that they sought out information from
other students first, or students and faculty of color, than to visit the established support
centers. This process felt safer and more aligned with the familiar ways of networking in
their communities.
Brit: For the first semester that we got here, financial aid wasn’t easy. We didn’t know what we were doing. It was like a fish out of water. We didn’t really have the experience from a counselor or anybody because we are coming from an adult school. Brit reiterates many of Jazz’s sentiments regarding the lack of an “academic toolbox” with
which to make informed decisions about financial aid, course selection, and other
important aspects of the educational experience. Having not had the benefit of
professional support, e.g. a counselor, at the start of her college education, Brit felt at a
disadvantage. As a result, she used her informed assets to seek out students to find the
answers she needed to succeed. Many students echoed her experience. Below, Trace
describes how she used her survival skills to navigate an unfamiliar academic
environment.
Trace: We can't do it the way they want us to ... We try, but we need ... We need those survival skills that we have out of our struggles, to be able to make it, and if they allow us to do that, to connect it, then it makes our educational experience a lot better. Because that is the life jacket. That's the savior, is that I can express who I am and feel comfortable. You build your self-esteem. Your confidence. Because when we come, we
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come beat down like "Oh, my God. I don't know." You got some that comes in like "Yeah. I know who I am in an educational world." But for me and a lot of other students, for the most part, their struggle is so real.
Trace indicates that by using her survival skills, she finds a degree of ease in the
school environment that in turn boosts her self-esteem, persistence, and success. The
skills Trace refers to have emerged from the experience of surviving as a Black woman in
a predominantly White-controlled environment. Trace cultivated a double consciousness
that reflects a dual lens: an awareness of dominant perceptions of students of color and a
strategy for engaging with these misalignments and constraints.
Trace: Because you're opening up doors. New doors. People don't want those doors open. They want ... They want us to be shackled. They want us to be stuck. We're not going to be stuck. You're opening up new doors, in that field, is what you're doing. They don't want to see that door open, but you just got to fight and you did. You stayed in the ring. I think the class- Getting help. It helped me to get the help that I need to survive in college.
Here, Trace refers to the utility of asset-based pedagogy and the importance of our
co-created classroom environment. The “new doors” Trace speaks of represent my use of
a decolonized curriculum to counter the dominant narrative and introduce historical
context, perspectives, and indigenous knowledge. This is a practice and conversation that
Trace and her peers had not experienced in former classes and academic environments.
She also labels misinformation and inadequate information as akin to shackles that limit
students’ achievement. Even when students like Trace advance to college, the broader
academic agenda, defined by White norms and conceptions, reinforces the status quo.
Trace identified with me as a survivor, as an example of someone who had also learned to
navigate an environment defined by inequity. More importantly, in my classroom, she
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realized that together we can create an academic community that makes a concrete
difference in the lives of students.
Matais: I felt like going into the classroom for the most part, everyone seemed to know stuff that I didn't know. Like I don't know, maybe my parents just didn't teach me like other parents taught their kids, but I always felt like I didn't have all the resources or I didn't have maybe the background schooling, like oh this is how you write a certain essay. This is how you do this and that.
Matais illuminates the disadvantages experienced by students who feel that they lack
the pre-knowledge that leads to success in higher education. In this vein, students
identified faculty and staff inaccessibility and prior negative experiences with educational
authority figures as deterrents to background knowledge. Thus, rather than seeing faculty
and staff as helpful, these students saw them as obstacles to academic success. They often
navigated this environment by remaining below the radar screen. My IL class opened the
academic door for them and provided them with the courage to seek out more help as they
moved forward.
5.7 Engagement of student assets in academic classrooms
Students expressed the need for validation of their lived experience, not only in the
classroom but in the broader social framework of which we are all a part. Because of my
authentic engagement with students and commitment to making course material relevant
to their lives, students from a variety of racial and socioeconomic backgrounds found an
academic home consistent with their knowledge and lived experience. Furthermore,
students articulated how the creation of community within an academic environment
invited them to be in control of the learning process and its outcomes.
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Jazz: The way that we learned in that class was completely different from how you would learn in a regular classroom setting. It was student driven, student focused. It makes much more of a difference than whereas the typical teaching scenario where we come to class, you take roll, then listen to the instructor lecture the entire class time.
Brit: I remember going home after our library skills class, my sister and I would be like, “What did we just learn in class? Oh my God, do you believe what we just learned and discussed? That was awesome!” Then we’d go, try to find more information on the things we had learned … and show my brother.
Brit’s enthusiasm for this type of academic engagement and its level of success is
evidenced by her subsequent search for more information about relevant classroom topics.
This also demonstrates a reflective process during informed learning (Bruce & Hughes
2010): Brit and her sister “explicitly turn their attention towards their learning about those
practices, and so become able to transfer their learning to new contexts” (p. 4). In this
instance, learning extends beyond the classroom and into the community, enhancing
collective wealth.
Jazz: If you just put out a library skills class, it's kind of just fake, what are you supposed to focus on? When you narrowed it down, but you didn't narrow it down too much, you could still go a whole different way. You did it in a way where there's multiple topic choices...You can still have room to freely do it, but at the same time, it's not boring and you're building on your research skills yet learning much more than that. I remember we would get in some really deep discussions in our classes, the class was, it felt like a home environment almost, a non-judgmental zone. Yeah, definitely felt like I could bring my whole self and talk about real life. Phoenix: I've learned so much. The class was a really good experience you know to be with different kinds of people from different cultures. We had different races but we all came together you know. We had an environment where we felt safe and real comfortable. At the beginning I was a little uncomfortable but you prepared us for it. You showed us all that when we got to talking, we had a little bit of knowledge so we could bring a little bit more to the plate where at first we thought we didn’t. Back in the day and I would have been very shocked, very reserved and not know what to say, but I even interacted a little bit in the conversation where otherwise I wouldn't at all.
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Brit, Phoenix, and Jazz assert that the interdisciplinary, asset-based curriculum
improved their research and IL skills, both broadly and specifically. In the process,
students interacted with various discourses and became aware of how academic
disciplines articulate findings differently. They express excitement and unprecedented
engagement with the course material and a desire to extend that learning to their
communities.
Trace: My educational experience has been hard because the educational language is different than street language. It's just different, and when teachers ask you questions, I'm like what are they really asking me? Can't they just break it down plain? No. I think that when I do have the opportunity to bring my life to the table, that it works.
Trace advocates a culturally relevant curriculum, though without using those exact
terms. She asks that teachers meet students where they are and design pedagogical goals
from that point of departure. In this class setting, Trace used her double consciousness to
translate street knowledge into academic knowledge and vice versa. She could see where
they converged and diverged. As both an insider and outsider in an academic arena, I was
able to help Trace meet the hidden educational expectations of academic environments
that elude many first generation students and students of color.
Trace: What we didn’t know at the time is—that's how we were being saved. By connecting. Like if you let us do what we know to do, and apply it to education, that's our life jacket. You're ... The way you teach the class it’s a life jacket...it's up to us to put it on...That library class it's just much more...way more than learning to research... it's also the knowledge that you gain about how the world functions. We was doing life in that library class...with the different films...readings...it connected our lives to it. Our street knowledge does connect to...book knowledge in your class. We learned to use our survival skills from surviving on the streets to surviving in education.
Trace likens her exposure to a culturally relevant curriculum as a lifesaver,
describing both the thrill and practical utility of using assets as part of her academic
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engagement. She also articulates the direction I believe IL must take—especially in
capturing the attention of the diverse student body that populates our community college
campuses.
King: This class was an opportunity...a space that acknowledged...people come into learning environments with experiences that could be useful...are useful...valuable...this class turned...experiences that are...dramatic...traumatic into...academic to us learning why certain things happen in our neighborhood...experience certain things. It puts...things into context...I think for me one of those moments of clarity just outside this classroom is one time when I was asking why was Black neighborhoods are so impoverished and why was it so broken. This was before I ever learnt about the crack epidemic. It didn't make any sense to me why it was so dangerous...why it wasn't considered a good environment...It started to also make sense...It just put...things into context for me.
Students’ statements confirmed that the use of what they already knew—their
assets—to engage with the curriculum conferred relevance. Moreover, this proved
transferable and aided their intellectual and personal growth. King discusses the
convergence of his prior knowledge with contextual information gleaned from course
material and his own research initiatives. He sought accounts of his neighborhood’s crack
epidemic from those who had witnessed its onset and impact: the elders. As he listened to
their counter-stories, King gained clarity, new insight, and a far deeper understanding of
the complexity and evolution of this epidemic.
5.8 Substantive conversations about race in the classroom Any discussion of race must take place in a safe environment: one in which
participants are willing and eager to go deep and to address complex and contentious
issues beyond the superficial level. It isn’t often that students can engage in a serious
conversation about race in their classrooms. It is even more unusual to talk about race
with a diverse student population in one class. Students valued the opportunity to address
significant topics like race in a safe and supportive environment. For many, it was the
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first time that they were able to do so outside of their community and with students from
different ethnic and racial backgrounds.
Jazz: Some of my classes that I'm taking at a different school now. I spoke up and I addressed an issue that was going on. Everybody went silent, nobody wanted to talk about it. It was just one of those classes where you just don't, you don't say anything, you just listen. You just listen, you get fed all this information, but you don't engage in conversation. Do you get what I'm saying?
It is important to Jazz that she is able to speak about what is happening in her
community and apply that in the classroom when relevant. Facilitating these dialogues
and linkages is an essential element of my pedagogical commitment. Denying students’
lived experience prohibits them from sharing in the conversation
According to Mezirow, pedagogical spaces must be:
free from coercion; have equal opportunity to assume the various roles of
discourse (to advance beliefs, challenge, defend, explain, assess evidence, and
judge arguments); become critically reflective of assumptions; are empathic and
open to other perspectives; are willing to listen and to search for common ground
or a synthesis of different points of view; and can make a tentative best judgment
to guide action. (1997, p. 10)
In our classroom Jazz learned that there is always more than one story to be told. She also
discovered that what is presented as “true” might not resonate with those who are the
bearers of experience.
Phoenix: I would say that just the ability to be able to express yourself in an environment of other students where they can understand and comprehend you, and that you can take a minute and listen to what they're saying also and take that message with you--you know I may not change the world but that's going to change my way of acting. Certain things that I say and the way that I teach my kids maybe that way I'll change the world.
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Ida B: It didn't really to me ever get into like a hostile mode in class. Like everybody was pretty much you know calm when we discussed topics. Even if they were you know topics that normally get people heated. It stayed pretty calm. People were respectful of their comments and everything. And I just felt comfortable. Matais: I felt safe in our class, it's important because when you're around people different than you, you get exposed to different ideas. So, especially when you're talking about hard things like race and education, you're not coming here to leave thinking the same. So, when I walk into a class that's different ... To me, it's good because that's what school is supposed to be, it's supposed to always challenge you. Phoenix: Class discussions were really interesting to me because we got a lot of opinions from people that are deeply involved in the music industry and in their community. Through interviews we saw on videos we saw their response and then we heard our responses which is us as students and as people looking at them and seeing what they're doing and how we react to that. So, one of the reasons I really liked that class is because there were so many different types of people. It was different races, different ages, different backgrounds. So, it was really interesting to me to see you present this one information, that information is the same information that is presented to all of us but through all our different backgrounds, we all come up with different responses to that information. That was what was really cool about that class to me. I was seeing how everybody contributed their own piece of their mind, their experience to the class.
The above students express what it means for them to be able to access, articulate
and share ones’ experience when given opportunity in a safe classroom space; with
classmates from different walks of life than their own. The ability to share and access
multiple perspectives and experiences emerged from students’ commitment to openness
and reciprocity. I strive to hear and honor students’ lived experiences and to use them to
guide my pedagogy as students explore their experiences in a new context. From the
outset, I established the classroom as a space for safe engagement and learning where we
could talk explicitly about complex topics like race. Elucidating these discussion
parameters established a baseline of trust and a level of commitment to engage with
contentious issues.
Brit: Safe, … to be who you are. I remember the people just saying like certain things like having experiences and sharing those experiences. You are like, “I wouldn’t have probably felt as comfortable to say that in a big setting.” Then, once you get in that big
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setting, you do feel comfortable because you notice that it was through that little setting in your library class. The way that we learned in that class was completely different from how you would learn in a regular classroom setting. It was student driven, student focused. A lot of the learning wasn't ... it would be the students teaching the class. I learned that when you give a student that much freedom, or even if you just ... When you just rub a little bit on that line, rub it off, where it's not that boundary. You're not learning just about the things that you should be learning in in class, you're learning about yourself as well.
Brit’s last sentence is particularly pertinent: learning about self as well as the subject at
hand is a powerful educational tool and process. She cites the importance of letting
students and their interactions guide curriculum development. By building on topics that
emerge from student interests and discussion, the curriculum acquires greater relevance.
Students’ autoethnographies create the pedagogical framework and delivery of course
content.
Trace: Throughout the class, and the articles that we read. Which wasn't necessarily library research skills, it was about everyday life. Experiences. About how rappers rap and what they rap about...life. We were learning about real life and researching it….what the rappers were talking about. I think it comes to real life. It is painful. It was painful. I think ... I think it just opens up doors to how we really feel. That people don't know the struggle, even though it's ridiculed. It's reality. Then when we see it on film, read it in an article, it's real. It becomes real. It's our world, and we can't get away from it. Being in the class, it was really educational. Just being in a class, it really made me look on the real side. It is a struggle, and it's never going to go away. It gave me another perspective that this is who we are. This is our ... Our history. This is the anger that lives inside of us from our experience, from our history. That library class it really opened up ... Opened up my understanding to this is who are.
Trace highlights the relevance of a student-centered curriculum in multiple
disciplines. This curriculum must be one that is decolonized to address the frustration and
anger Trace describes. According to Mezirow (1997),
A defining condition of being human is that we have to understand the meaning of
our experience. For some, any uncritically assimilated explanation by an authority
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figure will suffice. But in contemporary societies we must learn to make our own
interpretations rather than act on the purposes, beliefs, judgments, and feelings of
others. Facilitating such understanding is the cardinal goal of adult education.
Like Trace, many students identify our class as a turning point in the perception of their
educational experience. The class also provided them with an opportunity to learn how to
link their lived experience to a broader historical perspective to gain deeper
understandings of their world and their own place within it.
Trace: Because you're more engaged. It's more interesting when ... Like in your class, we were more open. We were ... There was more freedom. It's not shackled. If I brought that, if I had that type of freedom, It would be more interesting. It would be more like "Ooh, this is good. This is good." Make you want more and more and more. Because it's shackled a little bit, you do just what you need to get out. You're just like "Let me get through and get out of here."
Trace is referring to the critical process of critically thinking and engagement with the
course curriculum, using the theme of Tupac as the vehicle to build upon her research
skills. And, that by doing this she is able for the first time using her lived experience and
community’s history within education environment to build upon her knowledge. How
this type of engagement provided her with the freedom to learn in an environment that
wasn’t constructed without her input, nor irrelevant to her culture.
Brit: It tied in basically, what we were learning and experiencing at that time. We had the topic of coming from the Bay Area, there was the hyphy movement. I remember coming to class, you introduced us to a video of how hip hop was started and how it was started in different cultural areas and how it became a norm. I didn’t really know all those things--like how breakdancing tied into like our cultural norms that we live and experience now. Growing up in high school we had the hyphy movement. Then you showed us a
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documentary video of how these things had started, who these people were and people who are doing this thing called ghost ride the whip.
Above Brit expresses how what we were engaging within the classroom reflected what she had experienced in her community. How what she experienced as the Hyphy movement is now defined and explained by the members in her community that started it. She also articulates an epiphany of adding knowledge on her lived experience within her community and culture with community produced knowledge. Humble: The type of hip hop that we talk about in that class is important because it's still going to be relevant. You know if you teach this class in five years that that information is still going to be relevant. This type of Hip-Hop in this class will always be relevant just because of the topics. Like I said, it speaks to people, not to the time, not to what's currently distracting them. Matais: Yeah, class was just interesting. It all pieced together. Everybody's presentation, I was pretty amazed by the research that was done and what people had to say. It definitely proves that Tupac was very instrumental and impactful in people's lives and still. Yeah, you know, and what's important about Tupac too is that he'll always be relevant because he always spoke from the heart. Even if situations might change, details in situations might change, like the innate humanity of things still remains and I think that's what he always talked about.
Humble: I actually just did a speech in my communications class and I included a quote from our Tupac lyric discussion from class in it, when he was talking about school. He's like, "You know what they do is teach you reading, writing and arithmetic. Then they make it harder the next time. Then the next time making it harder, just to keep you busy." He's like, "I think that's where they messed up. There should be a class on religion." You know, he's like, "There should be a class on race, a class on police brutality." So, to me, when I go to school and there's a class that's different, like the library skills class on Tupac, then, kind of like, not the typical academic setting that I'm used to, I like it because to me, it's a challenge and it's something different. Which to me, that's how school should be.
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Figure 2: Photo of whiteboard after class research topic brainstorming
This photo is a representation of what Humble said above about the research
themes for the students’ final projects.
King: I had never considered many of the topics we discussed, papers and films we used would be under that umbrella of what library skills was. I thought it was just tight to realize that there is more to Hip-Hop, and library research than I thought there was….I knew Hip-Hop is poetry, but I didn’t know it is a way of passing down history and passing on knowledge. Brit: I think you also showed another video of like the Watts riots, what was behind the Watts riots. I didn’t really understand when I was younger what was behind those things like people targeted, African-American people being demonized, those things are still happening today, so it's relevant to class, it's relevant to hip hop. Hip-hop is, it’s a way of teaching people. It's kind of like the news for the people and places who are kind of impoverished who don’t really see the news, who don’t watch the news. It gives you that information that you don’t see. The history not taught.
Students articulated how culturally relevant pedagogy that accounts for and
documents lived experience can both clarify and fill in the gaps within their prior
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knowledge. Without mentioning a decolonized framework explicitly, students express its
necessity and the process of its unfolding
These counter-stories argue for relevant, sustaining, racial acknowledgement and
meaningful engagement of the colonial narrative and the cultural wealth of students’
communities. They reveal the necessity to move education toward greater equity and
epistemic justice in curricula, classrooms, and society as whole. Students situate their
information literacy research and instruction at the intersection of these ideas and practices
and within the pedagogical and theoretical frameworks used in this study.
In this chapter I presented findings from this study. Student profiles and counter-
narratives from student participants was used to elucidate the common themes. I also
presented information three common themes arousing from being in conversation with
students. These themes were:
1. College knowledge and informal information networks,
2. Lived experience of using student cultural wealth/assets in academic
classrooms, and
3. Public conversations about race.
In the following chapter I discuss informed asset-based pedagogy and how it
related to my research questions
CHAPTER 6: STORYING FINDINGS “What we must know as peoples of color—we must know to survive, to understand who (and where) we are, to imagine freer and more joyful futurities—demands curricula that honor the knowledge production of our ancestors; engage the yearnings of our children, families, and communities; and interrogate the enduring tradition of White supremacist subjugation and misrepresentation” (Dumas pg. 151, 2016).
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The study participants’ stories intersected in unanticipated ways. My research
questions probed students’ use of cultural assets, their encounters with additive pedagogy,
and their experiences with CRT and cultural situatedness in an IL classroom. Student
responses evidenced the interconnections of race, class, culture, and gender in the
constitution of their identities and experiences and highlighted the value of my inclusive
pedagogical approach.
The phenomenon of intersectionality and its effect on perception and interpretation
demands representation in the presentation of the study’s findings. As Ida B recalled,
So, one of the reasons I really liked that class is because there were so many different types of people. It was different races, different ages, different backgrounds. So, it was really interesting to me to see you present this one information, that this information is the same information that is presented to all of us but through all our different backgrounds, we all come up with different responses to that information. That was what was really cool about that class to me. I was seeing how everybody contributed their own piece of their mind to the class.
Classroom discussion and assignments fostered a multi-dimensional approach to
information gathering and acquisition that evidenced the diversity of backgrounds and
dispositions of my students. Together, we created a nonjudgmental community that
facilitated open discussion of cultural assets and racial context to examine how these
frameworks and experiences shape IL praxis. The students provided suggestions to guide
IL instruction toward greater relevance.
Jazz stated
In our education system there's this hierarchy where, "You're the student. I'm the teacher. You listen to what I say. You're going to do what I say." When you just rub a little bit on that line, rub it off, where it's not that boundary where I should be scared of you, kind of thing, "You're in charge of my grade, let me just do my work and leave.
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The data suggest that explicit engagement of student assets does not occur in other classes
and that the academic hierarchy enforces student apathy and silence. However, multiple
students asserted that my curriculum’s explicit racial context provided new opportunities
to name, uncover, and recover their cultural assets. Ida B and Phoenix describe this
achievement:
Ida B: First, I loved the class. It gave me a chance to connect to things that I was learning in my history class with the research class. And it also, I guess connected me with I guess our culture. Like the African American culture because I could relate to what was being said. Like putting the information together I guess with what I already knew then learning more on top of that. Things I wouldn’t have known to look for or at, you know?
Phoenix: I didn't read other cultures didn't read of black authors going to school I didn't read anybody other than you know our history books. You taught social studies, you opened my eyes to the history to Malcolm X, to know Huey Newton. I was not aware of all these people and now it's sparked an interest in me where I want to go and find out about this I want to go find out what happened, you know in that time, in that era.
Students drew upon challenging and radical course material and their own cultural assets
to develop counter-stories. They labeled these stories “lifelines,” necessary to their
college survival (Delpit, 2012). For example, Trace declared:
what we didn't know is that's how we were being saved. By connecting. Like if you let us do what we know to do, and apply it to education, that's our life jacket”. We can't do it the way they want us ... We try, but we need ... We need that survival skills that we have out, our struggles, to be able to make it, and if they allow us to do that, to connect it, then it makes our educational experience a lot better. Because that is the life jacket. That's the savior, is that I can express who I am and feel comfortable and it feels like you said, you're a character. You build your self-esteem. Your confidence. Because when we come, we come beat down like "Oh, my God. I don't know." This was like 90% of African-Americans. You got some that comes in like "Yeah. I know who I am in an educational world." For the most part, their struggle is so real is it not even funny.
In excavating and recovering the multigenerational racial context in which they are
immersed, students experienced dramatic revelations—epiphanies about their families,
communities, educational experiences, and current events. Ida B reflects,
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For me everything just kind of spoke like that even though it's not necessarily taught in via textbooks like from kindergarten through high school or whatever. African Americans are deeply rooted in I guess you'd say the backbone of the country, our country. It seems like almost everything was based off of something that African Americans created themselves. We don't get taught a whole lot that our people made. King comments, this class was an opportunity...a space that acknowledged...people come into learning environments with experiences that could be useful...are useful...valuable...this class turned...experiences that are...dramatic...traumatic into...academic to us-- learning why certain things happen in our neighborhood, experience certain things. This was before I ever learnt about the crack epidemic. It didn't make any sense to me why it was so dangerous...why it wasn't considered a good environment...It started to make sense. This class, what we read, our discussions, research-- just put things into context for me. …I think in this class it was a lot of moments were people had epiphanies including myself where I began to realize the importance of free expression, of freedom really. To understand that the music that we make in our culture is a way of transferring messages, important messages and sometimes they are gateways to pretty much start a movement in the community. To keep movements strong. It just reminds me of how difficult it is to ... I guess it's difficult to try to do anything without first having knowledge or even a plan of what you want to do. I think no matter what my aspirations are I have to be knowledgeable of the world around me and of the world in general.
Above, King expresses the essence of informed assets, information literacy and
their critical impact on the educational, social, political and economic lives of first
generation and students of color.
6.1 Building a Bridge to Culturally Relevant Information Literacy Instruction
Students also reflected upon the new linkages they discovered between learning
and research. Brit stated:
I think having a hands on class that gives you weeks on end to study something that you want to, you are building … You know what I mean? You are building your research, that helps you build research because you are finding things that you want to look for. Everything is not always education and everybody thinks that you got to learn everything through the “regular” education. Some tools are learnt outside in the streets and I think that hip hop was street smart to education, because we use that nowadays going to school,
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like going to library’s class, like going to your class where we do the lyrics. After we did the lyrics, I think other people got different songs and then through that we got different topics. Then from that topic we research that topic and then once we research that topic we came up with a project in that topic. I came up with single moms, kind of tied into like what my background was. I got like first what I felt like a bunch of pictures of like single moms. I got it from the Tupac song, I believe it was, Dear Mama.
Phoenix: I feel that the library skills gave us the tools and we took those tools and went and worked on them so I feel that it's a very different class structure, but it's a very easy way to learn I feel because it made it very easy, interesting and I wanted to come to class to learn more. I wanted to discuss things we talked about even when the class was over. I wanted to go ahead and find out more information. I didn't want the class to stop. I went home to my partner and I was like do you know today I found out about this, and did you know that this was going on,…. I think that it was a really good way of capturing us, in getting us together because we all connected to Tupac in different ways.
These quotations evidence how student motivation was driven by the course material’s
connection to prior knowledge and passions. Students gained confidence, momentum, and
concrete skills that shaped their final research projects. Trace described the excitement of
this process: “Because you're more engaged. It's more interesting when ... Like in your
class, we were more open. We were ... It was more freedom. It's not shackled. If I brought
that, if I had that type of freedom in the 4-year college, yeah, I would ... It would be more
interesting. It would be more like "Ooh, this is good. This is good." Make you want more
and more and more.”
As they became more comfortable, students voiced their stories about previous and
current educational experiences. As distinct from their other classes, students maintained
that attending, participating, and performing research in this class was politically, socially,
and culturally relevant. We explored themes and topics of direct relevance to them
personally and to their communities, like police brutality, poverty and homelessness. Jazz
commented,
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For example, you know how when we did our little project thing, we got to pick a
topic that actually interested us and we actually wanted to do, rather than, "Oh,
here. Here's your topic." The fact that it actually interested me, it grabbed my
attention, it made me want to research it, but it didn't make me want to research it
to, "Oh, these are the questions that you need to answer." It made me want to
research it to beyond those questions, like, "Okay, well, this is like this. Well,
why?” At the same time we were learning how to annotate, do our MLA format.
Above, Jazz is very passionate about the self agency experienced with the informed asset-
based information literacy curricula of class.
Trace, King, and Brit discussed the singularity of honest and open engagement
with their peers about racial and cultural topics. Ida B stated “it didn't really to me ever
get into like a hostile mode. Like everybody was pretty much you know calm when we
discussed topics. Even if they were you know topics that normally get people heated. It
stayed pretty calm. People were respectful of their comments and everything. And I just
felt comfortable.” Although conversations got heated, the diverse group of students
remained engaged with and respectful of one another. Trace commented, “We was all on
the court, we was able to talk about our struggles. We could agree to disagree. It gets
heated. It wasn't an all black class. We had different nationalities in there. I feel we were
comfortable. I don't think everybody took anything personal. It was really ... It was good.”
Findings revealed students’ excitement as they were given an opportunity to discuss race
explicitly and to share their own stories to build greater collective understandings.
In our classroom, students’ voiced racial and cultural situatedness was not ignored,
displaced, or marginalized. As a result, they realized their readiness and excitement to
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engage in a similar manner in other classes. Brit stated, “I think that class gave us that
reinforcement, it wasn’t ever like you are doing it wrong, you are not finding what I want
you to find. You are finding what you want to find and you are exploring. I think that’s all
education is, its exploring and experiencing. The word I’m looking for is experimentation.
You know what I mean?” Students gained confidence and autonomy to move their
educational journey forward in new directions.
6.2 Students engage with additive pedagogy Students’ active participation in this course was enhanced by the use of
autoethnography and relevant materials and resources presented in class discussion. My
research instruction is political, social, contextual, and cultural and focuses on student
assets and lived experiences. The themes I explore are rooted in African American history
and popular culture. I draw upon these to open an intellectual avenue for students to
engage their own assets in addressing bias in an attempt to decolonize my curricula and
their classroom environment.
King: I think this class was an opportunity for me to ... It was a space that acknowledged that people come into learning environments with experiences that could be useful or they are useful and they are valuable. To me this class turned some experiences that are sometimes dramatic and traumatic into something that could be academic to us learning why certain things happen in our neighborhood and why we experience certain things. It puts a lot of things into context for people who are not necessarily aware or knowledgeable about why your neighborhood is the way it is.
Above, King articulates being in a classroom environment we created in this study, as one
where he can imagine and advance his own agency. Imagining and ones’ agency came
from hip hop topics that are relevant in the lives of the students in this study. Humble and
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Matais below express the importance and relevance of the curriculum and her attentive
engagement in learning.
This study’s theoretical framework is informed and asset-based. It includes tenets
of cultural wealth/assets, critical race theory, and decolonizing theories and
methodologies. This is an additive framework, one that assumes students have assets
which help rather than hinder the process of knowledge acquisition and academic
achievement. I developed a culturally relevant curriculum focusing on Rap and Hip-Hop
based on student-voiced assets, i.e. what they bring to the IL classroom. This material
fostered student engagement with topics of direct relevance to their communities, both
current and historical.
6.2 Student cultural assets and explicit racial cultural situatedness In the following section I distill students’ observations without employing quotation
marks. I present the research questions and the themes articulated by students. The table’s
left-hand column displays themes emergent from student interviews. In the right hand
column I provide further detail to correlate those themes with the use of informed assets in
the library classroom.
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Table 6.1: Distillation of findings for research questions w/o quotes
How do community college students use their cultural assets in an I.L. class?
How do community college students experience explicit racial and cultural situatedness in an I.L. classroom?
Intersectionality
Race, class, gender experience and cultural wealth make up students live experience. Informs their assets
Lived experience in this class is not reflected in other classes
*student inspired/lead curriculum * sense of community * no hierarchical relationship w/ instructor
Classroom Pedagogy
* explicit racial context * provided opportunities to name, uncover, and recover cultural assets * cultural assets used in this environment created lifelines from what they know by connecting what they know to what they wanted to know and learn. Once learning commenced build upon this creating more literacy w/ informed assets…more literacy from literacy
Student Epiphanies
epiphanies about themselves, their communities, brought on about from historical context and connecting this to current context through Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, and their community knowledge
Traumatic and Dramatic lived experiences
* the creation of a safe space, can help them acknowledge, talk through, dramatic and traumatic cultural, racial etc. situatedness, current context and historical cultural phenomena, and context.
Importance of free expression
* this is articulated in a safe space, and is inclusive of Traditional, Indigenous, CRT. * students viewed Traditional, Indigenous, CRT knowledge as free expression
What we make in our culture
* transfers knowledge and produces gateways to organize community based movements * Creation of cultural wealth
New awareness * connecting learning to research * whose story is told, whose is left out, whose story has prominence and why? * how this has impacted them, their communities, in every aspect of their lives—compounding, creates insights into a decolonized frame
Research it to beyond required questions
* lifelong learning, going beyond what is needed for assignment
Racial and cultural situatedness was not ignored, displaced, or marginalized
* ready to engage this way in other classes
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Students engage with informed additive pedagogy
In this section I explore how community college students participate in additive
pedagogical practices in an IL classroom.
Table 6.2. Students engage with informed assets pedagogy
1. Classroom Informed Asset-based Pedagogy
informed asset based includes tenets of cultural wealth/assets, critical race theory, decolonizing theories and methodologies, informed learning, explicit racialized situatedness
2. Informed asset-based learning materials
*culturally relevant *gives them clarification and fills the gap in what they already know * Assets of culture, race, historical and current day context * Film, Articles, Music: African American historical and popular culture
3. Classroom discussions * seminar based * students articulate the need and process for decolonized pedagogy and curricula
4. Autoethnography: reflections journal * Brought about understanding of how their own stories, about their lives intersect with their academic endeavors * students examine and build upon what they already know from their informed assets and lived experiences
5. Research Project * students examine and build on what they already know from their informed assets and lived experiences * student driven research and final presentation of findings
In this table, the left column represents items used within the informed assets-based IL
classroom. For item number 1, the instructor must have a grasp on asset-based pedagogy and
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informed asset-based pedagogy. Which are listed as the first item in the right column.
Instructors should know how to implement informed asset-based pedagogy within the classroom
when engaging student assets. This requires the use of informed asset-based learning materials
such as documentaries, articles, indigenous knowledge, giving a historical and current context,
and the cultural wealth from students to spawn topics. Next is number three classroom
discussions, are an important part of a seminar based classroom. With classroom discussion
provides the space for students to share their assets, critically think about them, and discuss and
research them in the context of the dominant narrative alongside the decolonized knowledge
about them. For item 4 students educational autoethnography and journal reflections on
classroom discussions, and curricula used, helps them think about the assets they bring to class,
how they came about these assets and their connection to their culture, both in a current context
and historical context. From their reflection journals and autoethnographies students choose an
asset for their research project number 5 and last in the left-hand column to build upon their
information literacy skills and cultural knowledge.
In the right-hand column in the above table for item 1, I provide the tenets of informed
asset-based pedagogy. Next for item 2, I provide examples of informed asset-based materials
one might use. They must be culturally relevant to the student population. In this case, it was
media from and about Tupac, and African Americans as a base. Item 3 in the right column I give
an example that classrooms that are seminar based tend to be safe for students and lead to critical
thinking and more fruitful engagement. Lastly, in items 4 and five I present how the use of
autoethnography, reflective journaling, and a research project related to the assets students bring
with them; allows students to intersect the cultural assets with their academics while building
upon what they already know.
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6.4 Summary of Storying Findings “Indeed, within the histories and lives of people of color, there are numerous unheard counter-stories. Storytelling and counter-storytelling these experiences can help strengthen traditions of social, political, and cultural survival and resistance” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32).
This study’s research findings indicate that when student assets are engaged
substantively and meaningfully, IL instruction is enhanced. Students are looking for ways
to make their own research and class instruction culturally relevant, sustaining,
revitalizing, and racially situated. As more faculty draws upon and builds student assets
and the cultural wealth of their communities, IL praxis can approach the intersection of
educational equity and epistemic justice. The participants in this study have offered
passionate directives for IL’s potential impact on students’ lives.
CHAPTER 7: Discussion Trace: The class was open to everyone. It really, you really got an insight on how everybody felt about the subject. It wasn't just African-Americans, because it wasn't just African- Americans in that class. We was all on the court, we was able to talk about our struggles. We could agree to disagree. It got heated. It wasn't an all black class. We had different nationalities in there. I feel we were comfortable though. I don't think everybody took anything personal. It was really ... It was good.
I am passionate about the work I do. I am a librarian with many layers. I do not
use the phrase “information literacy” when I describe my classroom and the research I
assign students because my students do not relate nor know the meaning of this term. In
my practice, “education is conceived not as a process of replacing accumulated
community knowledge with school knowledge, but rather as leveraging both in ways that
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support collective intellectual, cultural, and spiritual well-being” (Valenzuela, 2016, p.
111).
Students come to my library classroom to engage their assets and connect them by
learning more about Rap and Hip-Hop. Music “…has been used over time as a way to
correct societal and cultural failure” (Budds, 2016, p.1). I extend this notion to my
students and my own lived experience of being in a classroom using informed asset-based
Rap/Hip-Hop pedagogy.
In this dissertation I situate myself as a first-generation, older, returning college
student who had to navigate uncharted territory and learn by trial, failure, and moments of
success. To succeed in the academic environment, I needed to acquire financial and
academic literacy. Many of my students articulate similar experiences. Year after year,
despite campus outreach programs, I hear the same stories from first-generation and
students of color and older returning students. They all express frustration and a fear of
reaching out for help, usually as a result of prior negative academic experiences.
Humble wrote, “If you’re part of a community, you’re a part of the politics
that run it, whether you know it or not.” In our class, students’ commitment to authentic
discussion and openness to difference created a safe and supportive environment.
According to Magdola (2000), a safe academic space is an “inclusive and effective
learning environment in which opportunities for complex cognitive, intrapersonal, and
interpersonal development exists for all students” (p. 94). Together, we acknowledged
and affirmed the assets we brought to the academic environment. We researched and
contemplated indigenous knowledge resources to identify the context and content of
shared assets and to foster a culturally-relevant, decolonized educational process. Based
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upon the literature review and my students’ counter-stories, I have formulated an informed
additive approach. This approach must be inclusive of student assets, their explicit racial
and cultural context, and indigenous knowledge frameworks and address their
intersectionality. Sadly, other prominent Information Literacy schemes, such as the
ACRL Framework, provide no theoretical or practical opportunities for students to benefit
from their personal and community assets in their educational journey.
7.1 Revisiting the Study’s Literature Review and Its Impact In the graphic presented in Figure 3 lower in the page, the center revolves around students
and the assets they bring with them into the academic environment. The next ring
represents theoretical understandings of the cultural contexts of communities of color,
including the work of scholars like Du Bois and Woodson. The subsequent ring presents
methods of engaging communities of color, including multiculturalism, funds of
knowledge, and culturally relevant pedagogies. Next, I highlight the context in which I
work: an academic environment defined by racial and cultural situatedness, informed
learning, critical information literacy, culturally relevant, sustaining, and revitalizing
pedagogy, critical Hip-Hop pedagogy, decolonized knowledge, and decolonized
narratives. Finally, the outer circle represents the theoretical and methodological
approaches that frame my research, including informed assets, analytic autoethnography,
critical race theory, counter-stories, and indigenous theory and methodology. The theories
and pedagogies documented in this study’s literature review demonstrate a continuous
commitment to excise biased educational practices and frameworks and extend research
that investigates and documents the experiences of people of color. They also take into
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account the various experiences of marginalized populations and how they intersect, and
must be accounted for.
Figure 3: Theoretical frame in practice
7.2 Intersectionality: Its Impact on the Study, Class Pedagogy, and Epistemology
The legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw (1997) introduced the concept of
intersectionality to define the ways in which multiple power structures affect the lives of
marginalized peoples. Intersectionality “addresses the question of how multiple forms of
inequality and identity inter-relate in different contexts and over time” (Gillborn, 2015, p.
277). These forms of inequality and discrimination take aim at gender, class, race,
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disability, sexual orientation, and other constitutive markers of identity. Intersectionality
possesses a “strong political impetus to analyze systems of power, including
discrimination and inequalities” (Gross, Gottburgsen, & Phoenix, 2016, p. 52), and
provides a lens to explore these issues within multiple disciplinary fields. Gross,
Gottburgsen, and Phoenix (2016) provide literature that looks at qualitative and qualitative
research that investigates the impact of migration, gender, and class on inequality
outcomes in education, as well as their many intersections. Gillborn (2015) examines the
role disability plays in the educational process and its intersections with race, class, and
gender. In another study, Lewis and Grzanka (2016) apply intersectionality theory to
research on perceived racism, drawing from the fields of women’s and gender studies,
critical race studies, sociology, and legal studies. In my study, participants’
autoethnographies and class discussion evidenced the different forms and effects of
intersectionality on their lives.
In the classroom, students examined the intersecting realities of race, class,
gender, language, and culture to expand research skills and to ask broader questions about
IL’s dimensions. As part of this process, my students engaged more substantively with
how their narratives and lived experiences, which encompass both familial and cultural
contexts, constitute important elements of who am I within education. They came to
realize how those elements can combat dominant narratives that have distorted their self-
perceptions and compromised their academic success. Many mainstream narratives
defining the scope and purpose of higher education, such as the belief that undergraduate
education is about “finding oneself,” do not resonate with first-generation students and
students of color. For these students, the purpose of education is to better themselves and
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the lives of their children. It is both internally-driven and externally-focused at the same
time.
7.3 Student Engagement with Informed Additive Pedagogy Building from student assets and valuing the complexity of intersectionality
empowers students to gain greater autonomy in their educational process. It paves the
way for self-definition and self-articulation. It also illuminates a deeper context to the
course of their lives and educational trajectories, as in King’s discussion of his altered
comprehension of his neighborhood’s crack epidemic. Prior to his exposure to the course
material, class discussion, and his subsequent research, King was confused by mixed
messaging. The media imposed an interpretive framework on the epidemic that did not
necessarily conform to his lived experience. During our class, King gained insights that
enabled him to place his experience within a longer tradition and counter-narrative that
demanded further exploration. It fostered greater cultural and self awareness and a deeper
link between his lived and educational experiences. It also encouraged critical thinking,
the practice of lifelong learning, and the ability to form broader and more meaningful
connections between information sources and phenomena: core tenets of information
literacy instruction. This is also the essence of teaching and learning regularly overlooked
and undervalued by schools of education and most realms within higher education.
When your history gets written in a liar’s scroll, when you understand that
educational curricula often misrepresents your community and your lived experience, the
opportunity to use your intellectual and academic skills to correct those falsehoods and
counter them with your truths is incredibly powerful. Participants in this study believe in
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the power of education, and of their education more specifically, to make a difference.
For students who have never been able to examine and foreground their intersectionality,
this is especially potent. At the same time, dismantling the dominant narrative in order to
supplant it with one that is more relevant, authentic, and true forms a crucial part of the
educational autoethnographic process. Humble articulates her experience:
If you’re part of a community, you’re a part of the politics that run it, whether you know it or not. It’s like we do give up so much coming to college. And staying true really is really important to me, it’s major. So, I’m just trying to find something ... Especially when you’re connected to your community and social issues. Yeah, so I’m trying to find something that really feels like I’m supposed to be there, I guess. I don’t know. In that library class, I really did. Just because... I don’t know, man. Tupac is such an important person in my life and just...All the topics that stem from his music. Because like I said, he speaks on life. So, that class is on life too. So, I’m always down to learn and speak with people regarding their experiences and how they feel about different things. So, yeah, I really liked that class. I really liked that class because at the same time that is was academic, it was like free, like you just think freely, be freely. It was academic but it wasn’t like, “Make sure you write on the dotted line correctly academic.” You know what I’m saying? Humble cites the importance of engaging with information that approximates one’s lived
experience. In this class, many students were exposed for the first time to writing by first-
generation students, people of color, and people from their immediate cultural contexts
that examined relevant issues in authentic ways. These texts form a bridge between
students and across generations. They provide an entry point for students to recognize the
value of narratives that emerge from their own communities and to claim those narratives
as their own. New energy and a revitalized sense of purpose can then infuse students’
intellectual projects and academic pursuits.
7.4 Informed cultural assets: honoring and revitalizing student assets
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King: I think if anything this class empowered me to realize that there are people out there that are also interested in the work that's going on in our community. It makes you realize that you're not alone in this struggle. There truly are people who are trying to document another narrative, create another narrative. It also makes me realize that it's much, much, more of a struggle to get that out here because it's definitely not the mainstream narrative. I definitely have to go digging for that sort of information. I think that people aren't as willing to think as critically about ... When I say people I mean people outside of people of color, aren't willing to convert these stereotypes and stigmas against people of color. It's really just tight. I teach in specific ways because I want students to use and benefit from their assets. I
want them to understand the value of what they know and its application to the academic
environment. This is analogous to code-switching and translation. In the academic setting,
code-switching allows students to adapt in various social environments, especially when it comes
to interacting with the dominant culture (Whitman, 2014, p. 104). I help them perform this
translation by showing them the “rules” that govern the academic environment. Smith (2013)
contends that these rules represent hidden curriculum that reflect “the unwritten norms, values,
and expectations that unofficially govern the interactions among students, faculty, professional
staff, and administrators” (p. xiv). By building an asset-based pedagogical framework and using
students’ stories to guide curriculum, I help students learn how to construct knowledge in an
academic environment.
My study contributes to the fields of information literacy and education by interweaving
multiple, asset-centered, theoretical frames with applied autoethnography as a mode of teaching
and as a method of research. This practice draws on diverse bodies of knowledge from
education, linguistics, sociology, and library information science.
Trace: It was really humbling to expose your fears in class. In the streets, you don't expose them. You don't have to expose them. In school, you've got to expose everything. Survival skills from surviving on the streets to surviving in education. In that class I could be, bring my whole self. We talked about how people function, and how communities get along. What happens in communities. I was able to bring who I am and where I came from into the classroom. Connect the two, the education and street knowledge. Plus, in a humble way. Now I can explain my experience. Explain my experience when the teacher asks.
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King: I also have to have that knowledge to rely on when there are failures that happen in my life. I have dreams but then I also need things to fall back on. I need to have safety nets. Safety nets while doing things that I genuinely love I can use my experiences to catapult a position that I feel is empowering to me. To realize that every part of me is useful. I think that was the most enriching and enlightening part of the class.
Students’ informed assets encompass historical and cultural knowledge that is relevant to
their communities. The informed asset-based classroom fosters a decolonized narrative that
embraces epistemic justice and imparts equity. In the following sections, I present examples of
the theory and methodology of informed asset-based pedagogy, including analytic
autoethnographic reflections shared by students, tables, and photographs documenting class
discussions.
In the three tables below I define the elements of an informed asset-based classroom:
asset-based-minded instructors, informed asset-based curricula, and informed asset-based
strategies and practices.
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Table: 7.1 Elements of an Informed Asset-based classroom Asset-based minded instructors Classroom examples
· Are aware of and incorporate the basic tenets of CRT · Contribute as a Co-participant · Have the responsibility of providing a decolonized framework · Provide a safe space for transformational engagement · Present information that is TK, IK, culturally relevant
1. counter-storytelling/ed autoethnography 2. Instructor situates oneself in relation to students 3. Decolonized media alongside dominant narrative 4. Deep Listening and Loving Speech by Thich Nhat Han agreement 5. Media from community based research
Table: 7.2 Table: 7.3
Elements of Informed Asset-Based curricula
Teaching Strategies and Practices
· Informed-assets decolonized ed tree
for student transformation/determination
· Incorporate the basic tenets of CRT
· Understand colonial cultural context for marginalized students serve as the foundation for transformation
· Course content should enable students to do: Critical reflection, collaborative learning/dialogue, Journaling, research notebook, presentation, classroom discussion board concept mapping
· Use assets—empower, authentic engagement/connection, translate assets into academic wealth
· Deconstruct · Decolonize mainstream narrative · Cultural /Historical/ current context/collateral issues (colonial narrative) · Culturally Relevant sustaining · Provide Indigenous Knowledge, Traditional knowledge (example of names that are not overused (Tuck, Calderon, Dubois etc. · Critical reflection · Collaborative learning · Journaling, autoethnography, research notebook, presentation, classroom discussion board concept mapping · Seminar based · Circular style seating—especially when having discussions · Experiential learning · Collaborative learning
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In table 7.1 In the right-hand column I present attributes of an asset-based minded instructor and
gives examples of what they do and use within their classrooms. Next in the table 7.2 Elements
of an Informed asset-based curricula I list needed foundational components such as the informed
asset-based decolonized ed tree (presented later in chapter 8), basic tents of (CRT), and what the
course content should enable students to do. Table 7.3 provides teaching strategies and
practices, reiterates and provides examples of how to implement Informed asset-based pedagogy.
7.5 Classroom Informed Assets Pedagogy To frame my Hip-Hop themed instructional model, I develop educational content
designed for self-transformation and determination. In the photograph figure repeated below, I
document classroom discussion whiteboards and include learning materials interspersed with
researcher and student reflections about this type of academic engagement. I hope that this
evidence lends urgency to the necessity of reframing the IL classroom and curricula.
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Figure 4: photo of whiteboard after class
research topic brainstorming
In the above repeated photo, potential research topics the class brainstormed on day are shown:
Tupac resurrection in his own lyrics, misogyny and hip hop, Tupac’s Thug Life movement,
Objectification of women, police profiling of rappers, police profiling of people of color, single
mothers, The Black Panthers, Tupac’s mother (Afeni Shakur), political messages from political
prisoners, social justice issue topics within communities of color. These topics sprang from the
expressed knowledge held by students and their desire to know more information about them.
7.6 Informed Asset-Based Learning Materials The photo below displays a selection of documentaries students used for their research
projects on the impact of the Black Panthers on Tupac. All of these were available at the Chabot
College library. These documentaries are the product of community-based research on the
tumultuous civil rights era. They represent the cultural wealth, assets, and indigenous knowledge
that made my students’ research process more meaningful and inclusive.
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Figure 4: Documentary films about the Black Panthers used in research projects and curriculum
1. FBI’s war on Black America Ellis. D (Director). (1990). FBI’s war on Black America. United States: Create Space
2. What we want, What we believe: The Black Panther Party Library Payne, R. (Director). (2006). What We Want, What We Believe: The Black Panther Party Library. USA: AK Press. (2006)
3. The Black Power Mixtape Olsson, G. (Director). (2011). The Black Power Mixtape. Sweden: MPI Home Video. (2011).
4. All Power to the people The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the revolution Nelson, S. (Director). (2015). All Power to the people The Black Panthers:
Vanguard of the revolution. United States: Firelight Films. (2015) 5. Assata aka Joanne Chesimard
Teaching informed asset-based research using historical and popular African American cultural
themes positions students as scholars and producers of knowledge about their experiences,
cultural assets, and history. King reflects this achievement:
“I think this class was an opportunity for me to... It was a space that acknowledged that
people come into learning environments with experiences that could be useful or they are
useful and they are valuable. To me this class turned some experiences that are
sometimes dramatic and traumatic into something that could be academic to us learning
why certain things happen in our neighborhood and why we experience certain things. It
puts a lot of things into context for people who are not necessarily aware or
knowledgeable about why your neighborhood is the way it is”.
King’s reflection above, describes his experience of having his prior knowledge validated inside
an academic classroom. His reflection is about asset-based pedagogy through his reflective
translation in his own words. This experience saw his assets as being of value and something he
and his classmates felt they were given the opportunity to build upon.
Humble: The type of Hip-Hop that we talk about in that class is important because it’s still going to be relevant. You know if you teach this class in five years that that information is still going to be relevant. This type of Hip-Hop in this class will always be relevant just because of the topics. Like I said, it speaks to people, not to the time, not to what’s currently distracting them.
Above, Humble speaks on the relevancy of the hip hop curriculum used in class. The
type of hip hop used in this class and that Humble refers to is a type of alternative political hip
hop that acknowledges the social and political difficulties marginalized communities must
maneuver. It is the type of hip hop that demands a call for action with historical context,
connected to current day experiences of those marginalized in society. These rappers in fact are
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exhibiting a form of informed assets by connecting history to their communities’ cultural
experiences. With students’ classroom discussions and research they also are able to connect
their assets with new information gained from the research they conduct for their research
projects. The experiences of slavery, racism, police profiling, genocide, sexism, homophobia
etc., though horrific are of one’s culture but can be seen as assets because knowledge was and
can be gained from the experiences. The additional knowledge gained, giving students cultural
context are from voices of those that come from the same community these students come from.
Humble now sees that they knowledge coming from community is valid, valued, and relevant in
her academic learning environment. Below, Humble gives another example of the relevancy of
the curriculum, but also how a relevant curriculum keeps her engaged in her studies.
Humble: I actually just did a speech in my communications class and I included a quote from our Tupac lyric discussion from class in it, when he was talking about school. He's like, "You know what they do is teach you reading, writing and arithmetic. Then they make it harder the next time. Then the next time making it harder, just to keep you busy." He's like, "I think that's where they messed up. There should be a class on religion." You know, he's like, "There should be a class on race, a class on police brutality." So, to me, when I go to school and there's a class that's different, like the library skills class on Tupac, then, kind of like, not the typical academic setting that I'm used to, I like it because to me, it's a challenge and it's something different. Which to me, that's how school should be. Matais: Yeah, class was just interesting. It all pieced together. Everybody’s presentation, I was pretty amazed by the research that was done and what people had to say. It definitely proves that Tupac was very instrumental and impactful in people’s lives and still. Yeah, you know, and what’s important about Tupac too is that he’ll always be relevant because he always spoke from the heart. Even if situations might change, details in situations might change, like the innate humanity of things still remains and I think that’s what he always talked about. Again, above Matais also speaks about the relevancy of the curriculum to students experiences
and how it inspired engaged research. That having a topic that was relevant and meaningful
makes a lasting impact.
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Figure 6: photo of whiteboard after class brainstorming topics This photo represents Matais’s assessment of the range of students’ final project themes.
King: I had never considered many of the topics we discussed, papers and films we used would be under that umbrella of what library skills was. I thought it was just tight to realize that there is more to Hip-Hop, and library research than I thought there was….I knew Hip-Hop is poetry, but I didn’t know it is a way of passing down history and passing on knowledge. Brit: I think you also showed another video of like the Watts riots, what was behind the Watts riots. I didn’t really understand when I was younger what was behind those things like people targeted, African-American people being demonized, those things are still happening today, so it’s relevant to class, it’s relevant to hip hop. Hip-hop is, it’s a way of teaching people. It’s kind of like the news for the people and places who are kind of impoverished who don’t really see the news, who don’t watch the news. It gives you that information that you don’t see. Above are more examples of student reflections on the learning materials used in class. That
knowledge from their communities used in class could connect to the knowledge they were
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gaining from their research. Through the use of documentaries and the incorporation of socially,
politically, and historically conscious rappers, students reframed their own experience and
history as part of a broader set of cultural traditions and representations.
7.7 The Value of Seminar-Based Classroom Discussions It is vital to consider class size and structure to cultivate an atmosphere where students
feel safe in engaging challenging topics like racism, sexism, homophobia, and social inequity.
In the next section I provide a snapshot of student and researcher reflections on the experience of
participating in a seminar-based classroom. I have limited these reflections to discussions where
race is engaged explicitly.
Humble: When I go to school and there’s a class that’s different, like the library skills class on Tupac, then, kind of like, not the typical academic setting that I’m used to, I like it because to me, it’s a challenge and it’s something different. Which to me, that’s how school should be. Matais: I felt safe in our class, it’s important because when you’re around people different than you, you get exposed to different ideas. So, especially when you’re talking about hard things like race and education, you’re not coming here to leave thinking the same. So, when I walk into a class that's different ... To me, it’s good because that’s what school is supposed to be, it’s supposed to always challenge you. Phoenix: So, one of the reasons I really liked that class is because there were so many different types of people. It was different races, different ages, different backgrounds. So, it was really interesting to me to see you present this one information, that information is the same information that is presented to all of us but through all our different backgrounds, we all come up with different responses to that information. That was what was really cool about that class to me. I was seeing how everybody contributed their own piece of their mind, their experience to the class. Students mined their experiences more deeply when they were granted permission and the
security to share them with a group. Though I foreground my autoethnography to establish my
trustworthiness and personal investment, it is the students themselves that erect the solid
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foundation upon which we grow as a community of individuals accountable to our words and to
one another.
7.8 Education for self-transformation and determination “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves”. (Harriet Tubman) “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them”. (Maya Angelou) For my students, the informed asset-based classroom was affirming, empowering, and
transformational. In it, they parsed and reframed their experiences and used that revised
knowledge set to navigate the educational environment. In the following section I present
student voices and my own reflection about participating in a transformative and empowering
experience.
Trace: This class, It really opened me up ... Opened up my understanding to this is who we are. Traces’ statement above is about her ability to close some of the gaps in her knowledge held and
experience as an African American woman. I think that one of the interesting things that
happens to my students is the ability to examine their own narratives and lived experience. They
experience their own cultural narratives, their own familial narratives as a part of who they are
within education. So when Trace talks about how she survived and what really opened her eyes
to who she is, it was the incredible power of understanding that those external narratives are just
that, external narratives. That that is actually not a part of your being, it is a part of the
autoethnography of your educational experience, but it's not actually who you are.
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Much like what Trace just stated, Ida B expresses below, that participation in the class and her
ability to not only do research about her cultural context, having the opportunity to experience
members from the African American community articulate their experience in an academic
environment and be able to connect with it, was a new experience for her. One that brought a lot
of the pieces she holds together—giving her clarity about her own experience now.
Ida B: First, I loved the class. It gave me a chance to connect to things that I was learning in my history class with the research class. And it also, I guess connected me with I guess our culture. Like the African American culture because I could relate to what—what being said. Like putting the information together I guess with what I already knew of the artists, and topics that were being discussed and also learned some new things. For me everything just kind of spoke like that even though it’s not necessarily taught in via textbooks like from kindergarten through high school or whatever. African Americans are deeply rooted in I guess you’d say the backbone of the country, our country. King: I think if anything this class empowered me to realize that once I make connection that there are people out there that are also interested in the work that's going on in the community. It makes you realize that you’re not alone in this struggle. There truly are people who are trying to document another narrative. It also makes me realize that it’s much, much, more of a struggle to get that out here because it’s definitely not the mainstream narrative. I definitely had to go digging for that sort of information. I think that people aren’t as willing to think as critically about...When I say people I mean people outside of my own ethnic group aren’t willing to convert these stereotypes and stigmas against people of color. It’s really just tight.
King: I think for me one of those moments of clarity just outside this classroom is one time when I was asking why was Black neighborhoods are so impoverished and why was it so broken. This was before I ever learnt about the crack epidemic in our class. It didn’t make any sense to me why it was so dangerous and why it wasn’t considered a good environment until I learnt about that in this class. It started to also make sense why a lot of people in Black community were cynical about trusting in their relationships with white people and the government and even voting. It just put a lot of things into context for me. I think in this class it was a lot of moments were people had epiphanies including myself where I began to realize the importance of free expression, of freedom really. To understand that music that we make in our culture is a way of transferring messages, important messages and sometimes they are gateways to pretty much stifle a movement in the community. To keep movements stagnant. It just reminds me of how difficult it is to...I guess it’s difficult to try to do anything without first having knowledge or even a plan of what you want to do. I think no matter what my aspirations are I have to be knowledgeable of the world around me and of the world in general.
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Above, King’s articulation of the crack epidemic in his neighborhood is a good example
of contextualizing his experience. He said that he didn't really get the why of the crack
epidemic, how the epidemic came about, he didn't have this information. But after seeing some
documentaries, classroom discussions and reading scholarly articles, now he gets it. He had an
external message about the lived experience of people dealing with the epidemic that came from
somewhere else. He had the lived experience, but did not have a context in which to place it.
The power of a non-normative or non-dominant narrative education, an informed asset-based
narrative is that students lived experience becomes pertinent to the information being studied.
So, for King, the power of understanding was that his lived experience is situated within
something else, something that he can learn more about. That that’s a part of his educational
experience and that-- that connection between his lived experience and the topical matter of my
course, and his educational autoethnography is what helps him understand that he has never
really been able to bring his lived experience in contact with his educational experience and how
powerful that understanding is. This is a great example of intersectionality in his lived
experience. It became clear to me that it is in fact the convergence of their lived experience, i.e.
their educational autoethnography, with academic and outside understandings of whatever their
lived experience is, is so powerful. This is an intersectionality that other students have that
students of color often don't have. Or first-generation students often don't have.
For my students this informed asset based classroom and our engagement in it was affirming and
empowering.
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7.9 Reflecting on the house we built: Informed Asset Pedagogy “Without an image of tomorrow, one is trapped by blind history, economics, and politics beyond our control. One is tied up in a web, in a net, with no way to struggle free. Only by having clear and vital images of the many alternatives, good and bad, of where one can go, will we have any control over the way we may actually get there in a reality tomorrow will bring all too quickly”. (Samuel R. Delany)
Bruce and Hughes (2010) define informed learners as “those who are aware of the role
that information is playing in their learning experiences and are able to use that knowledge” (p.
2). My students and I understand the role misinformation has played in our education.
Education is not a neutral institution, nor are the processes of information seeking and
dissemination that define it. Students need to be made aware of the power dynamics,
misrepresentations, and omissions that shape the transfer of information and parameters of
educational curricula. The IL classroom provides a powerful arena to expose these structures
and to discover and explore new truths and insights.
Table 7.4 illustrates how students experience an informed asset-based curricula. The left
column identifies Bruce’s seven faces of informed learning (2008). The right column represents
the application of students’ informed assets to their experience of informed learning and
anticipated outcomes.
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Experiences of informed learning Experiences with engaging Informed Asset Pedagogy
Information Awareness Racial situatedness Colonial narrative manifestation in our lives—historical, cultural and current day Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge
Sources Traditional Knowledge, Community-Based Knowledge, Lived experience and cultural assets
Process Seminar-based class, auto/critical ethnography, and critical reflexivity
Control Safe classroom space for authentic dialogue Culturally-relevant, decolonizing, current, historical context with CRT, Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, creation of new knowledge from building on Informed Assets
Knowledge Construction Uncovering, recovering displaced knowledge by colonial narrative, transformational research
Knowledge Extension Counter-stories in relation to building/compounding on assets by way of Informed Asset-Based pedagogy, critical reflection, research, and collaborative dialogue
Wisdom Determining the topic/meaning of informing, the information in informed assets
Table 7.4 Adaptation of Bruce, Hughes, Somerville (2012) Table 3: Experiences of Informed
Scholars
For students of color, informed assets includes an understanding of how miseducation,
the dominant narrative, and indigenous knowledge intersect in their lives. In my practice of
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informed learning, I engage both the student’s individual circumstances and the broader set of
shared cultural experiences that inform that context. Each individual processes their own racial
trauma, family history, and educational experience. The process of an informed asset-based
pedagogy allows them to tap into their individual histories, voice their lived experience and put it
in context. Class discussions about cultural situatedness open a channel for individuals to
identify and access their personal traumas.
I’m talking about the importance of simultaneous attention to information use and
learning. That’s all I’m doing. That’s it. Students bring the information. I say, “Look, you all
know how to learn. You know all these things. You’re building on it.” In effect, I let them
know both information use and learning are contextualized as being “about something,” and,
yeah, it’s about something, it’s about living in the white man’s world, it’s about tearing down the
dominant paradigm. This almost assumes that learning is neutral and abstract, but there is
nothing more personal for folks of color than education. The struggle for the marginalized is for
literacy, for access to education, for education that is meaningful and not traumatic. It’s a very
different conceptualization of access. For many indigenous students, education is not their
friend. They have never been in a place where they thought, “Oh, we should go to school.” No,
they were forced to go to school. They were separated from their cultures. All of the complicated
dynamics about what education means have to be part of it. You have to deal with that.
An asset-based-minded teacher and researcher must understand and value what students
bring on their own terms and want to learn from those contributions. In this manner, and in this
study, my students perform a powerful intervention in the definition and practice of IL
instruction. The students’ voices offer a fitting conclusion to this chapter:
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Jazz: Yeah. If you just get rid of some boundaries. Teachers, I understand there has to be boundaries, of course, but if you get rid of that teacher, student hierarchy, students are going to want to come back, students are going to want to learn, they're not going to just sit there and be like, "Oh my God, I'm in this class." In this library class--because of the stuff I was learning. It was relevant, I wanted to, how do I put it in words? I wanted to learn. It was something that, I can't even put it in words. I took the library class a second time. I needed to, I was craving to learn more, because I wanted to feel like I did in that first class.
CHAPTER 8: Conclusion, Contributions, and Implications “I believe that Black people, even and especially those who have not received academic training, are not only likely to come up with profound theories about their own lives, but to do so in ways that are frequently more effective than theorizing from those whom white institutions have sanctioned to think about those experiences” (Hari Ziyad, 2017).
8.1 My Peculiar Sensation of Informed Asset-Based Research Instruction “I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.” (Harriet Tubman)
It is one thing to be regarded as a scholar and knowledge producer within the
academic arena and your community. It is another to see yourself in that role. As an
educator, I engage students based on my personal journey toward “literacy.” I define
literacy as more than just a state of awareness. Becoming literate mandates action: the
realization of broader goals and ideals. For me, this takes the form of teaching in a
decolonizing and asset-based framework.
For marginalized populations, literacy encompasses knowing how to translate their
experiences—how to code switch in multiple environments. This knowing is fueled by
double consciousness: “…a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of
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always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others. One ever feels his twoness, an
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring
ideals in one dark body” (Du Bois, 1903/1989, p. 3). People must harness their cultural
knowledge to cross the borders created to keep them out (Valenzuela, 1999). They must
cultivate the ability to move back and forth fluidly between worlds while maintaining the
integrity of their identities. I am not trying to make my students White. I do not view
students of color as deficient in the assets and privileges of Whiteness. Many educators
have charted the relatively safer path of token multiculturalism, but, like Griffin (2012), I
“am optimistic in believing if I step into the space that resistant cries have created, maybe,
just maybe, something about my resistant voice in this moment will be heard, taken in,
and taken seriously” (p. 139).
I have entered an academic sphere that challenges the conversation of Blackness as
an intellectual landscape. It has influenced the feedback I have and have not received
from my professors and colleagues over the years. I have been reprimanded and put on a
form of academic probation because of foregrounding the experience of Blackness in
scholarly discussion. I have had to argue that my research interest is valid (Denzin &
Lincoln, 2000). I have been told that my topic of study was neither legitimate nor worthy
of a PhD-level research. In other words, I have been forced to defend what I have been
doing for years.
I use autoethnography within this study and my classroom as a pedagogical tool
because it allows for the authentic performance and validation of one’s lived experience
(Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Bochner, 2000). So I ask: When you’re living in the master’s house,
when you’re trying to get over, what are all of those lived experiences? They are assets.
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These questions animate the core of the African American intellectual tradition. Black
scholars have long asked “How do we live in a world rife with obstacles,
misrepresentations, and danger?” The Afrofuturistic side asks: what is the world that we
are trying to create? How do we construct a freer world for ourselves and our children?
Autoethnographic counter-stories provides the platform.
These questions return us to that “peculiar sensation” of double consciousness.
The issues that I have encountered during the course of my intellectual awakening and
scholarly journey are identical to those of my students. People make demands of us based
on the world that exists rather than the liberatory world we aspire to create: the one we
imagine and construct for ourselves. I no longer wish to contest the structures that have
been created to keep me out or put me down. I do not wish to dismantle the system that
has been so painstakingly constructed and maintained on the broken backs of colored
peoples. I will create anew. I am going to build the world that I want to live in with my
family and my community. I want to be free. And I want my students to be free too.
Much like Griffin (2012), I “am optimistic in believing if I step into the space that
resistant cries have created, maybe, just maybe, something about my resistant voice in this
moment will be heard, taken in, and taken seriously” (p. 139). Maybe just maybe I can
stay steadfast in the African American tradition of reaching back and pulling up—an
extended hand. I have seldom experienced an extended hand in an academic environment.
When I have, it meant everything to have that mentor.
My Australian supervisors came to my rescue. They understood the pedagogical
and curricular impact of my work: on the lives of my students, the IL field, and the entire
educational process. They came to my aid as outsiders to the racial dynamics that
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structure American society and culture, especially those that define the relations between
White and Black female academics in the United States. White Privilege present and
persistent on our campuses and within our classrooms; engaging students and faculty of
color. Also, those dynamics that define the relations between the one who holds a PhD
and those that do not. It is painful to hold my early education experience, then later
doctoral experience and how I was being engaged was that of a deficit model.
As a Black woman, academic, and doctoral student, I have often felt alone, beaten
up and broken down. I encounter constant racial microaggressions: “cumulative assaults
that take a psychological, and academic toll on people of color” (Huber & Solozano, 2014,
p. 2). A broader vision and the insights of others who have undertaken similar journeys in
these environments have guided me onward. Like Henry (2015), “I speak and write with
the hope of raising questions to new and enduring problems in higher education and to
reflect on issues before they disappear from institutional memory” (p. 591). I speak,
teach, and write from my lived experience to promote culturally relevant, sustaining and
revitalizing classroom environments.
8.2 How I Got Here See, my pedigree most definitely don't tolerate the front Shit I've been through prolly offend you (Kendrick Lamar)
Critical race theory, slave narratives, counter-storytelling, and other radical ideas
and texts were new to me as an older, first-generation college student. Though I was the
ninth of ten children born to Emanuel and Ola, I was the first to attend and graduate from
college.
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I am a product of school busing in the era of desegregation. My early years were
spent in the projects and ghettoes of Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio. In Los Angeles,
we moved around a lot, so my recall of that time is fragmented. My most vivid memory is
of running through the occasional fire hydrant turned on illegally by us “project kids” in
an effort to cool ourselves off in the heat.
I am a product of the Black Panthers. The group established a presence in the
Ohio projects where my family lived. Although I did not know that they were Black
Panthers until later in life, I remember the free lunch they handed out during the summer.
I also remember long walks to the nearest pool, a Black woman who gave free organ
lessons, and being tested for sickle cell anemia, a debilitating disease that affects the
African American community.
I am a product of a Black family who, with very few others, was able to buy a
home in a predominantly white and Jewish neighborhood after my father was hired as a
janitor at the Columbus airport. My mother continued to wash laundry and clean rooms at
two different motels so that our family could live in the house where she still resides.
I am a product of poorly-funded schools where I never read chapter books or
learned about the experiences and histories of indigenous folk. I am one of the students
who was tracked into a vocational school 1 ½ hours by bus from my home. I am one of
the students who fell through the cracks when it came to English and math, but still
managed to graduate high school. Despite all of these circumstances, I completed a two-
year program in firefighting. But, although I excelled at doing my job, I could not pass
the written and math tests required to become a full-time firefighter.
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With limited experience beyond the small radius of my home, I longed to know
and do more. I moved to Alaska for several years then made my way to Seattle. In
Seattle I went to massage school and discovered that I am an experiential learner who
excels in small educational environments. For the first time in my life, I felt empowered
as a student and a learner, which inspired me to apply to a four-year college, where I
found students and faculty who were open and welcoming. Coming from the monoculture
of Ohio, where the idea of diversity is an afterthought, this was the first time I attended an
educational environment where I did not feel I was lacking, or being “included” by
“liberal Whites.” This experience nurtured something in me that I did not know I had—
the desire to attend a four-year college. The topic of college had never been broached in
my family or my high school.
I wanted to attend a college with interdisciplinary curricula that used narrative
evaluations of students and faculty rather than the letter grading system and that
conducted seminars grounded in reading primary texts instead of lectures with textbooks.
I found that place at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies in Bellingham,
Washington. In this innovative educational setting, self-evaluations asked us to write
about how we engaged with assigned coursework, classmates, and our professors. I knew
all my classmates and professors by name and had the opportunity to serve on curriculum
and hiring committees as a student representative. The student body was diverse, and I
felt truly engaged in school for the first time in my academic life.
I chose to major in American Cultural Studies, and I designed an interdisciplinary
concentration focusing on Black Indians. I learned about Asian/Pacific Islander
Americans, African Americans, Latina/os, and Indigenous peoples. I interrogated White
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privilege and White identity with my classmates in a safe, intimate seminar-based
environment. I read about lived experiences that had not been part of my formal
education thus far, and participated in classes that explored chattel slavery, genocide, and
the colonization of Indigenous nations, relations between enslaved and free blacks and
Indigenous nations, capitalism, gender studies, and many other topics exploring and
documenting the experiences of marginalized groups.
8.3 Learning I Had Assets to Guide My Education as a First-Generation College Student
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others”. (Marianne Williamson)
Fairhaven’s librarian Ray McInnis specialized in working with American Cultural
Studies majors. He was a balding “old white dude” who wore a bowtie—at least this was
my first assessment of him. I assumed that we had nothing in common and challenged
him on a variety of topics. In the end, Ray got me hooked on the concept and practice of
information literacy by asking me to research and write about what I already knew—an
asset I brought with me to college, a piece of cultural knowledge.
For the first time in my educational life I felt a thirst for learning and believed that
my lived experience and academic pursuits were intersecting in important ways. This “old
white dude” librarian became my mentor, and he remains the guiding force behind my
decision to enter the LIS profession. He instilled in me the importance of “recognizing the
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need to connect teaching with students’ cultural and experiential lives” (Valenzuela, 2016,
p. 110). His passion, in concert with my own, frames the context of this study and my
ongoing pedagogical efforts.
I was excited to be performing research and learning about people of color and the
context in which they live. I began holding research workshops to help fellow students of
color in the Multicultural Student Center on campus. When Ray learned of my efforts, he
suggested that we co-teach the research class he held for seniors in the American Cultural
Studies major. He was asking me to make his curricular objectives more accessible and
relevant to my fellow students. I did for Ray what he did for me—inspiring excitement
and pride in other students, mostly of color, about using their cultural and personal assets
to shape their educational process and goals.
At Fairhaven College, I was given the opportunity to be a student teacher, to
design an educational experience that drew from my lived experience and its influence on
my pedagogy. Within these parameters, I created the class “Women Talking Across
Colorlines.” This was my introduction to the concept and practice of multiculturalism.
Prior to this, my intellectual life paralleled the silos of segregated lunchrooms. Women
engaging one another across color lines came to fruition from this lived experience, and
the knowledge and assets from such an experience. The assets I already had, compounded
with some newly-acquired historical assets that I gained from the education I was
receiving at Fairhaven College and the American Cultural Studies program, had a huge
impact on my future classroom design, pedagogy, and epistemology.
For my senior project, I designed a course entitled “The Images of Black Women
in Art, Film, Music, and Literature.” I also co-taught a “White Identity” course with my
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professor Connie Faulkner, a prominent faculty member in Fairhaven’s Law and Diversity
program. These classes emerged from the convergence of my lived experience,
decolonized Indigenous knowledge, coursework in the American Cultural Studies
program, library research, and Fairhaven’s interdisciplinary seminar classrooms. My
educational autoethnography unites all the theoretical frameworks I have discussed in this
dissertation and applied in my study. They represent the guiding forces behind my
pedagogy, intellectual scholarship, and curricular design.
8.4 Don’t Wanna Be a Part of the Problem
In my MLIS program, I struggled with the lack of mirrored contexts in course
instruction, assigned texts, and instructors and peers. Since graduating, I have worked to
regain and retain the assets my undergraduate mentor and the American Cultural Studies
program afforded me. I have struggled, am struggling, to voice who I am and where I
come from. These forces drive my efforts to impact students’ academic experience in a
transformative way. A quote of Thurgood Marshall “None of us got where we are solely
by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps”. We got here because somebody—a parent, a
teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns—bent down and helped us pick up our boots.”
The foundational pieces that frame my current work—my informed assets, my racialized
context, the openness and interdisciplinarity of my undergraduate environment—have
brought me to the library classroom at a community college striving toward educational
equity. It is only as I write this dissertation that I realize how these lines of continuity
have converged.
We can’t value all the African American, poor, first generation and Indigenous
student voices shared with me in the field unless we acknowledge that literacy, that what
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knowledge is produced, is a different framework, a different mindset, a cultural
environment that has different values. We must acknowledge “Indigenous peoples,
our/their struggles for the recognition of our/their sovereignty, or the contributions of
Indigenous intellectuals and activists to theories and frameworks of decolonization” (Tuck
& Yang, 2012, p. 3). These decolonizing frameworks initiate the process for those who
have suffered from genocide, colonialism, forced enslavement, and assimilation to regain
what was lost, i.e. cultural knowledge, via informed culturally-relevant (Ladson-Billings,
1995), sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2014) and (Mcarthy & Lee, 2014) revitalizing pedagogy.
8.5 Going Forward
“ just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved” (Coogler, 2018)
Figure 7: Representation of Informed Asset-Based pedagogy
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The image of a tree can bring up various strands of thought for African Americans.
My thoughts flit from the cherry tree whose fruits I grew up eating, whose branches I
grew up climbing and riding like a horse I named “Charlie.” The tree eventually needed
to be taken down. In our amazement, from the sawed-off trunk sprang living and
connected roots that spawned saplings. My thoughts wander to the apple trees we had,
that sometimes bore fruit, and to the enormous oak tree that threatened the roof of our
house during tornado warnings, the bags of leaves it shed in the fall that we played in until
we grudgingly had to rake them all up. Then, snap, in my mind I hear the eerie melodic
Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit,” and remember I did not at first understand the
song’s reference to lynched Black men dangling and rotting in a tree.
Then, the next moment, I remember my love for Alaska, and my 12 years there as
an African American young woman, and the awe I felt flying into Alaska the first time,
and seeing mountains and mountains of trees as far and wide as the horizon before me. I
think about the comments said to me when people learn I am a Black woman who lived in
Alaska, who, a few times in my life, has dared to go camping and hiking in the woods by
myself. Then, my mood swings to sadness in thinking about the Black farmers denied
ownership of their own Black-owned and operated farms, to the few African Americans
who visit the national and state parks of America, to the city sidewalk trees in squares of
cement that manage to spring toward the sun to flower and reseed, and whose roots break
through their concrete confinement.
Eve Tuck (2009) talks about the tree as a way to present theory, what is known in
education circles as the “problem tree” exercise (pg. 116). In it, a problem is first
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identified, “the root.” Next, the leaves, or symptoms of the problem, are identified,
followed by the trunk, which represents the “attitudes and beliefs” that help the symptoms,
or, in this case, leaves. Last, we examine the roots, or “ideologies and structures that
anchor the problem, unseen” (2009, p. 116). Later, Tuck asserts the tree, though a
powerful image and helpful aide, “in excavating otherwise unseen linkages… is decidedly
unhelpful in plotting a course of action for political or social change” (2009, p.117). I’d
like to change Tuck’s meaning and metaphor for some of the very topics addressed in my
literature review, my IL classroom pedagogy, and what I describe above when my mind
thinks about trees.
Thoughts of trees bring me to the peace, love, sadness, and connection to my
history as an African American to the earth, the trees themselves, the awe I have found
being among the trees, thinking about the theories, cultures, and methodologies
represented in the tree drawing, and its influences upon me and my students--how the
makeup of this tree, the roots, and trunk, has fed us, sustained us, revitalized our context
and desire to take what we have experienced and learned “from the roots.” The
characteristics of the tree I present in this study bear fruit—our counter-stories, the
creation of new knowledge from our informed assets, classroom discussions, critical
reflections, and student I.L. research projects that generate knowledge we take back to our
communities, feeding them our cultural wealth/knowledge. This tree is the manifestation
of our continued learning, our growing, and the ever-changing decolonized frames we
reflect upon and articulate in informed ways.
Critical Race Theory, Traditional Knowledge, and the counter-stories we engaged
in and articulated helped us transform our learning environment, ourselves, and our
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community. For us, this tree begins with roots within our cultural wealth, which are the
Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, cultural assets, and Community Cultural
Wealth from and within the communities we come from. These (un)recovered assets feed
and help us grow, with acknowledgement of our ever-present racial context. These assets,
represented by the roots and trunk of the tree, provide the growth, knowledge, and
experience reflected in our counter-stories, which are informed by a culturally-relevant,
sustaining, and revitalizing curriculum and academic environment that, in our I.L.
classroom, help us untangle and (un)recover.
The questions of who can create knowledge, what is knowledge, whose experience
is valued, whose stories are told, and how they are told, yields the fruit—the culturally-
relevant, sustaining, and revitalizing curriculum--and its seeds are the decolonized
narratives answering these questions. These decolonized narratives, or seeds, are rooted
in our Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, cultural assets, and our
Community Cultural Wealth. For us, this tree represents the culturally-relevant history we
never knew existed, the Indigenous Knowledge we have become aware of and feeds the
Indigenous Knowledge we, ourselves, are creating from our experience. The tree helps us
see and reflect upon the impact of colonialism, racism, and unequal access to education,
what has marginalized us in education, our communities, and the U.S. on people of color.
I.L. research and instruction in this class therefore becomes culturally-relevant, sustaining,
and revitalizing. This tree and its represented continuous nature creates the opportunity
for lifelong learning using our informed assets.
In my class and within their autoethnographies, much of what these students share
comes in the form of counter-stories. I agree with critical theorists who define the
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counter-story “as a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not
often told (i.e., those on the margins of society). Counter-stories “expose, analyze, and
challenge stories of racial privilege. “Counter-stories can shatter complacency, challenge
the dominant discourse on race, and further the struggle for racial reform” (Solorzano &
Yosso, 2002, p. 32). These counter-stories/autoethnographies are culturally relevant,
giving students the ability to say what is culturally relevant and why they need it. Student
counter-stories, their lived experiences, are the informed vehicle.
Acknowledging students’ lived experiences, especially those of marginalization
due to race, gender, age, socio-economic status, religion, etc., in their classes and their
academic curricula allows us to help them successfully transition to college. The students
in my class come with valid cultural and experiential knowledge. It is known that “critical
race theorists view this knowledge as a strength and draw explicitly on the lived
experiences of people of color by including such methods as storytelling, family histories,
biographies, scenarios, parables, cuentos, testimonios, chronicles, and narratives” (Bell,
Solórzano & Solórzano, 1995; Valencia & Solórzano, 1997, p. 4).
It is important to acknowledge that the classroom pedagogy in this study--auto
ethnography and Informed Assets--has the potential to connect history to current day
knowledge and experience. Alim’s asset-based pedagogy (2011) is one of the
foundational theories for Informed Assets. With encouragement to utilize
autoethnography as pedagogy, students expressed meaningful engagement with their lived
cultural context, and this created the opportunity to inform these assets via research. This
experience and pedagogy allowed students to access research that was meaningful, and
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also allowed them to access voices of their cultural context from their research, and to
contextualize their lived experience from the cultural and historical information they
collected during their research. So, with the addition of their education autoethnography
to the research process, they built upon their research skills, a necessary method and
pedagogy in the information literacy classroom.
The creation of this space in a library classroom is groundbreaking in terms of
what an information literacy classroom curriculum, and its impact on students, can be.
Using an ethnographic method with students was effective in validating their assets and
reframing what research instruction can look like. Starr (2010) writes "because
autoethnography revolves around the exploration of self in relation to other and the space
created between them, disciplines like education are ripe grounds for autoethnographic
study because a social construction of knowledge, identity and culture is inherent. As a
form of critical pedagogy, autoethnography often places emphasis on a transformative or
emancipatory process for the individual and in the more widely constructed social
relations in which the individual participates” (2010, p. 4). In their autoethnographies,
several students spoke of epiphanies and transformation in how they view themselves in
their academic environment. The use of autoethnography in an information literacy
classroom provided space for social and cultural analysis with interpretation, critique, and
social explanation. Autoethnography allowed us to engage the tensions of being in this
particular academic environment. This is why autoethnography is the method used in this
dissertation, and is the pedagogy of my classroom.
I used autoethnography within this study and within my classroom as a
pedagogical tool because it allows for authentic performance of one's lived experience as
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being valid and worth knowing (Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Bochner, 2000). I used
autoethnography to give voice and recognition to what helped me along in my educational
aspirations, aspirations I was told at an early age I did not have. I did not know I had
educational aspirations until various people in my life told me I have assets and
encouraged me to make a difference, pivotal in communities that have experienced
colonization and genocide.
Sparks (1996) reflects on what it means to do autoethnography. “I … attempt to take you
as the reader into the intimacies of the world my students and I live in. I hoped to do this
in such a way that you are stimulated to reflect upon your own life in relation to mine” (p.
467).
8.6 Deconstructing dominant narratives to Build Deeper Understandings
In the academic community, race is often discussed in a purportedly objective and
neutral way. But this framing denies much of the lived experiences people of color. The
familiar mantra “it is not about race” confuses and frustrates many students, who see it as
all about race. In Flint, Michigan, community members, predominantly people of color,
were told that their water was clean-when in fact, it was highly toxic and contaminated
(Markel, 2016). Educators who choose to examine this event must foreground race as a
phenomena and provide students with the broader historical context of this country’s
legacy of environmental racism. To do otherwise is akin to denial, both of vital
information sources and resources. Students understand the ways in which race is often
omitted from class discussions and their formal educational experiences. A “neutral
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education” does not examine the informal information networks students employ. My
information literacy praxis is based on both formal and informal information networks.
This merger allows students to bring the entirety of their selves to the educational process
and environment, and, in turn, facilitates a more holistic and relevant experience of
information literacy.
8.7 Contributions of informed assets: building upon and revitalizing Information Literacy
8.7.1 Contributions of Study to the Field of Research, Students, and Educators
Applying an additive framework assumes that students possess assets to enhance
knowledge acquisition. The effectiveness of this pedagogical framework is revealed by
my students’ autoethnographies. The most influential literature presented in the literature
review provides approaches over time for creating inclusive curricula for a growing
diverse college student body. The research literature that frames this study was conducted
in disciplines other than library and information science (Akom, 2009); (Alim,, 2011);
(Calderon, 2014, 2016); (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001); (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014);
(Nakata, 2002); (Paris, 2012); (Paris and Alim, 2014); (Smith, 1999, 2012); (Solorzano,
and Yosso, 2001, 2002); (Tuck, 2009); (Tuck and Yang, 2012). It is time to bring that
work into conversation with the aims and projected outcomes of more progressive,
inclusive information literacy notions and practices. Student autoethnographies reflect
how a curriculum that departs from this intersection can foster academic engagement and
success.
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This study also clarifies the need for librarians and information science programs
to demystify the dominant norm of engagement to address systems of White privilege and
the exclusion or distortion of stories, knowledge, and experiences of people of color and
other marginalized populations. Engaging with the conclusions drawn and prescriptions
made by those working in the fields of critical race theory and asset-based pedagogies
focused on cultural relevance and decolonization can guide more potent information
literacy instruction. My study contributes to the fields of information literacy and
education by interweaving multiple, asset-centered, theoretical frames with applied
autoethnography as a mode of teaching and as a method of research. This practice draws
on diverse bodies of knowledge from education, linguistics, sociology, and library
science. This study describes the complex task of decolonizing dominant narratives in the
information literacy classroom. In doing this, I interrogated not only the kinds of
information we draw from and provide to marginalized students, but also how we provide
it. Bruce, Hughes and Somerville (2012) contend that “Informed-learning is about being
aware of the kinds of information we are using, how we are using information, and how
different forms of information come together to inform and transform our work, study, or
personal lives(pg. 8-9)” These insights resonate with my accomplishments in the
classroom. Bruce (2010) adds, “…rather than focusing on separate information skills,
informed learning aims to promote critical and strategic approaches to solving complex
problems in differing contexts” (p. 3). There is no more complex problem than
decolonizing the dominant narrative (“the kinds of information we are using”) and the
dominant way of teaching the marginalized and students of color. With the engagement
of Informed Asset-based pedagogy, the explicit acknowledgement of racism, counter-
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stories alongside the dominant narrative, Information Literacy instruction (“how different
forms of information come together to inform and”) can make education and society
equitable (“transform our work, study, or personal lives”). Critical race theorists
characterize racism as a permanent and endemic aspect of American history, society, and
politics. Engaging students’ lived experiences to reflect and confront this embeddedness
broadens the scope, relevance, and significance of information literacy instruction.
My work counters the assumptions latent within the multicultural trend in education
and the practice of contemporary IL instruction in diverse classrooms. I challenge both
IL’s definitions and its theoretical underpinnings by contributing students’ counter-stories
to the pedagogical table. I expand the meaning and practice of research by applying the
use of autoethnography to this study and to my classroom. I am also making a
contribution to education through using a different method of documentation, a method of
asset-centeredness and student voice, and applying it to a different field in a different way.
When student assets and autoethnographies are engaged in the IL classroom, students are
empowered to drive their own learning. This study seeks to change the educational
agenda and its implementation by focusing on students’ informed assets, voices, and
counter-stories. I do not look at academic literature as something outside of their purview,
or beyond the scope of their vision. I regard it as material that demands students’
assessment—that implores them to ask “Are student voices represented here? Are my
community’s assets included here? Why or why not? How is my community depicted in
this literature?”
This study’s theoretical frame challenges mainstream educational curricula and IL
pedagogy. It represents an attempt to counter students’ perception of teachers as non-
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responsive and dismissive of their needs and insights. This can only be achieved through
meaningful engagement of student assets. Students’ counter-stories are the explicit
antidote to a barrage of distortions and misinformation. They reveal the application of a
double lens: an awareness of how the dominant culture describes, perceives, and
stereotypes people of color and a focus on the truth of their own experiences. These
counter-stories become cultural assets and provide the basis for an additive educational
experience.
The study’s most radical implication concerns students’ ability to evaluate research
relevant to their communities. They can determine research guidelines and procedures.
Following Smith (2013), they might insist that the research findings be submitted to the
community for feedback and potential revision. This form of information literacy defines
authority as both contested and contextual.
8.7.2 Research Contribution Summary
In recapping, what I did in my PhD I set out to develop culturally relevant
curricula from student voiced assets, examine research and instruction informed by
student cultural assets, and identify how tenets of informed assets e.g. cultural assets, (crt),
decolonizing theories & methodologies, and Indigenous Knowledge worked in enhancing
student learning in an Information Literacy Classroom. My contributions to research are
the following:
My contribution to the method of Autoethnography is: 1. Presented findings as counter-stories, a different method of documentation, a
method of asset-centeredness and a method of student voice;
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2. Applying the method of autoethnography to a different field (Il) in a different way;
2. Using autoethnography as both a research tool and a pedagogical tool in the classroom;
3. Connecting autoethnographies to theories of empowerment in education and in information literacy;
4. Using a theoretical frame which acknowledges race as an influential and ever present fact of life in the United States. Further framing the interaction of dominant narrative and counter-story;
5. An autoethnographic study in the field of Information Literacy
My contributions to the field of Information Literacy:
1. A counter position both to the idea that multiculturalism is enough, and to current day practice of IL in diverse library classrooms;
2. Put forward the term and pedagogical praxis of Informed asset-based learning a remix/sampling of informed learning that invokes tenets of Critical Race Theory, Asset-based pedagogy, Autoethnography, Hip Hop pedagogy, Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing methodologies. Informed Assets seeks to make the assets that students bring with them the basis, catalyst and design for the information literacy curriculum and their lived experience within classrooms. I believe this remix of Informed learning explicitly articulates an Information Literacy Praxis that stimulates equity in education;
3. Informed Assets in this study constructs a definition of information literacy that includes the identification of how information intersects with students’ cultural knowledge, i.e. with their racialized cultural context, which then becomes of use to them in many different classes. This is necessary in understanding how the people involved, how their knowledge, become a part of the story and are a part of information literacy praxis;
4. Connecting information literacy to theories of empowerment in education i.e. Asset-based pedagogy and CRT; 5. Using student informed assets, student voices, student counter-stories, centers how students learn to think about academic literature and building upon their information literacy.
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8.7.3 Future Directions: Autoethnography & Participatory Action Research in the Classroom
The results of this study have given rise to new questions and frameworks of
understanding. There is still work to be done. Future studies might consider how students
can apply their intellectual projects to their communities or how their autoethnographies
inform action, research approach, and the ability to perceive identifiable problems. These
types of questions suggest placing more active participant-based research at the center of
an academic course. They also encourage a pedagogical method that enables students to
link their knowledge assets with socially transformative practices. To expand the impact
of their intellectual awakening, students can direct these energies into their communities
in a variety of ways. Students who are parents may participate more actively in their
children’s schools and educational process. Others might choose to pursue graduate study
to deepen their knowledge of a particular subject. First-generation students can serve as
role models to others in a similar position in their communities. The use of
autoethnography and participatory action research as pedagogy can make learning relevant
for students, and encourage engagement and action of community issues and concerns.
The method I propose falls within the realm of social justice work, taking place at
the crossroads of education and anthropology. With the benefit of hindsight, moving
forward with this study, I would make several different decisions. I would engage my
students in participatory action research. I would ask the students to generate their own
questions about their educational experiences because they are the ones most capable of
articulating their experiences and identifying pedagogical methods and approaches that
can enhance their academic success. Together, we can create a more reflective and
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iterative educational process that honors and builds upon student assets and lived
experience.
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EPILOGUE:
This thesis is a reflection upon my life in relation to my students, and the various
educational experiences I have had, and continue to have. It contains my students’
reflections on their experiences with education--what has not worked, what has created
trauma, and what it has meant when their lived experience and cultural assets guide the
curriculum and pedagogy in a library classroom.
Unfortunately for me unlike my students and what they expressed in their stories
about being able to thrive in an academic environment that values their cultural assets and
knowledge held in this class, and during this study; my journey of using the way I engage
students, the pedagogy I used for a PhD study has rendered me depleted, and traumatized.
I am not alone as noted in the following studies:
• Gildersleeve, R. E., Croom, N. N., & Vasquez, P. L. (2011). “Am I going crazy?!”: A critical race analysis of doctoral education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 44(1), 93-114.
• Truong, K. A. (2010). Racism and racial trauma in doctoral study: How students of color experience and negotiate the political complexities of racist encounters.
• Truong, K., & Museus, S. (2012). Responding to racism and racial trauma in doctoral study: An inventory for coping and mediating relationships. Harvard Educational Review, 82(2), 226-254.
• McKenzie, K. B. (2009). Emotional abuse of students of color: The hidden inhumanity in our schools. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(2), 129-143.
• Felder, P. P., & Barker, M. J. (2013). Extending Bell’s concept of interest convergence: A framework for understanding the African American doctoral student experience. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 8(1).
• Ellis, E. M. (2001). The impact of race and gender on graduate school socialization, satisfaction with doctoral study, and commitment to degree completion. Western Journal of Black Studies, 25(1), 30.
• Reid, E. (2017). How Racial Microaggressions Impact the Mental Health of Black Women of Different Occupational Prestige.
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• Ramirez, E. (2017). Unequal socialization: Interrogating the Chicano/Latino (a) doctoral education experience. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 10(1), 25.
This experience for the most part did not place value in the cultural assets I
brought with me, nor the expertise I have. Being seen as being in deficit at multiple times
during my doctoral process, and not having information needed, nor the informal network
my students speak of—gave fruition to me being in deficit. Again, this experience of
being seen as being in deficit was iterated over and over by the students in this study. It’s
interesting though because my students saw just the opposite. They saw cultural wealth in
me, a mentor, a life line. They saw how our stories reflected sameness in some ways. We
were empathetic to one another’s experience which enabled agency in one another. My
students saw the many layers of experiences, how they intersect and how we are best at
humanity when we can acknowledge this in others.
Shrek, seemingly out of nowhere, comes to mind--particularly the scene with
Shrek, the Ogre, and Donkey, his newly-found companion, when Shrek isn’t quite sure
why he continues to allow or tolerate Donkey’s persistent existence in his life. This scene
finds Shrek trying to describe himself in comparison to an onion. Shrek contends he has
many layers, like an onion. Donkey is horrified that Shrek describes his attributes as
onion-like, and insists on helping Shrek find a more accurate description. Why does this
scene come to the forefront of my mind? I have been working on my dissertation for
several years now; at times, it feels like an infinite amount. I believe Shrek’s onion is a
metaphor for how I am feeling within the context of who I am as I write this dissertation.
Along with the many layers comes the many encounters I have had along the way. I have
experienced several emotions because of the interactions and encounters I have had during
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this process. I hope I have described these many layers, while, at the same time, provided
insight about me, and the students I work with.
I am a visibly African American lesbian professor, librarian, and Hip-Hop head. I
am verbal about my politics and epistemology. I believe Black minds matter. I believe
having a diverse students, staff and faculty on our campuses matter. I feel strength in my
convictions—yet at times this strength is stereotyped as the angry Black woman. Then,
there is the not so apparent me, a mother of two biracial children I am raising in Oakland,
California with my white wife. There is the Ph.D student. There is the child with nine
other siblings, born into poverty and who moved up in social class in the 6th grade. I have
many layers. I have assets that have helped me in my own educational endeavors, while at
the same time helped other in theirs. I believe in order for students that present
themselves like the students in this study to have a chance at surviving and succeeding in
their educational pursuits, we as academics, must see them as having something to teach
us. And, that sharing ourselves with them may provide a student with a much needed
boost to their self agency.
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Figure 8: Last Day Reflection in journal
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