Emancipatory Inquiry: Listening, Learning, and Acting for Social Change

EDU S515 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Throughout history, individuals, scholars, social justice movements, and social justice organizations have leveraged disciplined inquiry or research to highlight untold stories, illuminate goodness, expose systems of power and colonialism, and offer pathways to greater justice and freedom. Yet, we often do not provide educators or doctoral students with research methodology training oriented to these aims, even though research frameworks that prioritize justice-based action are particularly critical in our current global context. Nor do we offer educators in the field or doctoral students research-methodology training beyond the approaches traditionally accepted in the Western Canon.

Grounded in Critical Theory, with an emphasis on feminist theory, queer theory, disability theory, Black Crit, and decolonial theory, this critical qualitative survey course aims to introduce all educators (teaching artists, teachers, school leaders, counselors, and educators working in non-profit organizations) and doctoral students to a strand of qualitative research approaches that fall under the broad umbrella of emancipatory research. These collective ways of asking questions and gathering knowledge explicitly address power, inequality, and injustice, and they prioritize human relationships and interactions within research. Emancipatory research approaches ask, among other things: How do we engage in research in ways that center relationships, elevate agency, and attend to power dynamics? How are we attentive to who and what is included or excluded in research? How do we expand what is considered knowledge and who is recognized as a knowledge producer? Finally, emancipatory research approaches insist that any knowledge generated be used to advance a more just society. Using a practice-based and exploratory model, this course will survey several methodologies, including arts-based inquiry, narrative inquiry/storytelling, embodied and walking methodologies, and critical community-based/participatory action research. Ultimately, the course provides an overview of both the theoretical foundations and the practical steps involved in emancipatory approaches to knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. For the final project, students will either (a) complete an original inquiry project investigating a justice-oriented question using the philosophies or methods explored in the course, or (b) develop a detailed proposal for an inquiry project they plan to undertake in the future.
Permission of the instructor and application required. Enrollment is limited to 19. The enrollment procedure will be posted on the course website. This course fulfills the Equity & Opportunity (E&O) Foundations for those students who have chosen E&O as one of their Foundations experiences in 2025-26.