Critical Theory, Methods, and Design in Educational Research

Two of the foremost educational researchers chronicle their 30-year collaboration across tumultuous shifts in educational studies, bearing witness to cumulative inequities in schools and urban communities.

Weis and Fine examine critical research designs with young people from elite, working class, and impoverished class fractions, as well as across racial and ethnic groups, including those experiencing structural dispossession and those enjoying privilege.
Curated to be useful to today’s students and future generations of scholars, the volume chronicles the sustained impacts of unjust state systems and dives into vibrant fissures in which the imagination flourishes and possibilities grow.
Chapters explore rich linkages of theory and methods; knotty questions of collaboration, partnership, and ethics; and designs that trace social relations over time and space. A newly developed introduction and conclusion bookend six previously published chapters, many coauthored with a range of colleagues, animating research studies with a broad range of young people and young adults navigating the uneven landscapes of education in urban America.
Book Features:

• Details linked to research methodologies, including multi-site longitudinal ethnography and longitudinal ethnographic interviews, as well as participatory action research that the authors, among others, have advanced in critical educational studies.
• Provides examples of educational research that interrogate inequities and document radical possibilities by race, class, gender, immigration status, and sexuality.
• Examines projects that have been designed alongside and by vibrant research teams from across schools, prisons, youth movements, and public and private educational P–16 plus settings.
• Interrogates how the authors evolved innovative research methods and ethics attentive to “studying up,” mapping, national youth-led surveys, participatory inquiry behind bars, and with middle school students.
• Offers educational designs that address inequities in STEM education and outcomes and the impact of state violence on young people; as well as methods for understanding structural arrangements, youth identities, and on-the-ground research for justice.

Lois Weis is State University of New York Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Michelle Fine is Distinguished Professor of Critical Psychology and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and founding faculty member of The Public Science Project. They are coauthors of Silenced Voices and Extraordinary Conversations: Re-Imagining Schools; Speed Bumps: A Student Friendly Guide to Qualitative Research, and Construction Sites: Excavating Race, Class and Gender Among Urban Youth, all published by Teachers College Press, among other publications.

“Once again, Drs. Fine and Weis have compiled writing by an impressive array of scholars whose commitment to using their research to advance justice and equity is profound and unflinching. The chapters in this volume contribute important perspectives to the field of education that students and scholars will find invaluable and extremely informative. Given that diversity, equity and inclusion are under attack like never before, this timely book will soon become an indispensable resource and guide to scholars everywhere who remain dedicated to using education as a resource to transform society.”
—Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, USC Rossier School of Education

“This book embodies a powerful intellectual reunion of two critical education scholars who fully appreciate the importance of conducting deep inquiry of, and with those most harshly impacted by, capitalist and racialized hierarchies. And most importantly, Fine and Weiss understand the ability of the integration of theoretical and empirical research to reveal the linkages between micro-level lived experiences and the larger macro-level political and economic global contexts in which they are embedded, enabling us all to fully appreciate the possibility of resistance and transformation—a lesson needed now more than ever.”
—Amy Stuart Wells, Chief Research Officer at Bank Street College of Education and professor emeritus at Teacher College, Columbia University

“For more than 3 decades, Lois Weis and Michelle Fine have studied the interplay of macro social, economic, and political inequalities and individuals’ private lives. They expand our epistemological tool kit, offering deep theoretical and empirical accounts of the experiences and identities of marginalized youth, and illuminating the possibilities of resistance. The need for their insights has never felt so urgent.”
—Aaron M. Pallas, Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

"An essential text for those seeking to incorporate a critical theory perspective into courses in educational research."
—Gary J. Natriello, Ruth L. Gottesman Professor in Educational Research, Teachers College, Columbia University

Contents

Series Foreword  ix

Acknowledgments  xv

Introduction  1
To Begin Again (James Baldwin)  2
Theorizing, Documenting, and Contesting the Structural Gears of Educational Inequity  7
A Road Map Through Critical Designs  10
References  12

1.  Critical Bifocality and Circuits of Privilege: Expanding Critical Ethnographic Theory and Design  17
Lois Weis and Michelle Fine
Studying Privilege Inside New Global Realities: Working Inside the Press of the Global Knowledge Economy  22
Dispossession Stories: How Public Space Becomes a Private Commodity  32
Critical Bifocality and Circuits of Privilege: Concluding Thoughts  41
References  43

PART I: DOCUMENTING THE RELENTLESS MECHANISMS OF INEQUALITY

2.  Gender, Masculinity, and the New Economy  51
Lois Weis
Introduction  51
Changing Economies, Changing Gender  52
Conclusion  66
Author’s Note  67
References  67

3.  Class Work: Producing Privilege and Social Mobility in Elite U.S. Secondary Schools  71
Lois Weis and Kristin Cipollone
Note for Edited Volume  71
Introduction  72
Course Selection  79
Conclusion  88
Acknowledgments  90
References  90

4.  In the Guise of STEM Education Reform: Opportunity Structures and Outcomes in Inclusive STEM-Focused High Schools  93
Lois Weis, Margaret Eisenhart, Kristin Cipollone, Amy E. Stich, Andrea B. Nikischer, Jarrod Hanson, Sarah Ohle Leibrandt, Carrie D. Allen, and Rachel Dominguez
STEM Education Reform  95
High School Opportunity Structure  96
Sites, Data Collection, and Analysis  99
The Effort to Expand STEM Opportunities in Denver  107
Conclusion  120
Notes  124
References  124

PART II: DOCUMENTING AND REIMAGINING EDUCATIONAL INEQUITIES THROUGH CRITICAL PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH

5.  Participation, Power, and Solidarities Behind Bars: A 25-Year Reflection on Critical Participatory Action Research on College in Prison  131
Michelle Fine, María Elena Torre, Kathy Boudin, and Cheryl Wilkins
A Short Biography of Community-Based Research  132
Critical Participatory Action Research: Epistemic Roots  134
Changing Minds: A Study of the Impact of College in Prison  136
A Collaborative Approach to Design and Methods  141
Organizing and Presenting the Findings  141
Reflections on the Changing Minds Study and Research Justice  146
Conclusions  146
References  147

6.  “People Are Demanding Justice”: Pandemics, Protests, and Remote Learning Through the Eyes of Immigrant Youth of Color  149
Michelle Fine, Samuel Finesurrey, Arnaldo Rodriguez, Joel Almonte, Alondra Contreras, Aidan Lam, and the S2 Alumni Research Collective
CPAR as Anti-Racist Public Science  150
Theoretical Frameworks: Learning to Read the World and Produce Knowledge Through a Critical Race Lens  152
Participatory Design and Analysis  155
Why Participation Matters as an Enactment of Anti-Racist Science  157
Results  162
Building Critical Racial Consciousness Through Pedagogy and Participatory Inquiry  174
Refusing a Return to Normality: Contributing Toward an Anti-Racist Developmental Science  175
The S2 Alumni Research Collective Members  176
Declaration of Conflicting Interests  176
References  177

7.  Theorizing Hyphenated Selves: Researching Youth Development In and Across Contentious Political Contexts  179
Michelle Fine and Selcuk R. Sirin
September 11 and the War on Terror Through the Eyes of Muslim Youth in the United States  180
Literatures at the Hyphen  185
Methods for Studying Hyphenated Selves  187
Confessions at the Methodological Hyphen  197
Documenting a History of the Present for Youth Growing Up in Contentious Political Contexts  198
References  199

8.  Queer Solidarities: New Activisms Erupting at the Intersection of Structural Precarity and Radical Misrecognition  203
Michelle Fine, María Elena Torre, David M. Frost, and Allison L. Cabana
Precarity and Misrecognition: A Politics Rooted in Redistribution and Recognition  205
Epistemological and Methodological Muddles  211
Cumulative Misrecognition Incites Dispossession  214
Disproportionality Along Key Vectors of Structural Precarity: Housing Insecurity, Bullying/Harassment, and Police Aggression  216
From Discrimination to Activism  218
But What About Health? The Curious Relationship of Discrimination, Activism, and Health Outcomes  221
Intimate Activisms  223
Reflections  227
Funding  228
Acknowledgments  228
References  229

Reflections  233

Endnotes  237

Index  243

Permissions  253
About the Authors  255