Epistemologies of Family: Intentionally Centering Relationality, Mutuality and Care in Educational Research

ABSTRACT

This article resulted from an American Education Research Association (AERA) conference presentation that consisted of a dialogue between three scholar-siblings of color who use methodological pathways that intentionally center relationality, mutuality, and care in educational research. The authors do this work understanding that familial ways of knowing and being are resources that contribute to the survival and thriving of BIPOC communities in the face of white supremacist structures. The authors’ conversation discusses how they disrupt the white western gaze by relying on the critical mass of Black, Indigenous, and other scholars of color who refuse exploitive methods and, instead, charted new methodological pathways that (re)center cultural, familial, and tribal ways of knowing. Given the authors’ positionalities, the communities and families that collectively raised them, and the extended scholarly family who have nurtured and supported them in their efforts to push against extractive research practices, the authors attend to the ways knowledge is shaped at the intersections of race and gender. This dialogue contends that there are sophisticated knowledges, ways of knowing, and ways of being rooted in the experience of marginalized families caring for one another and fighting for each other’s rights.

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our deep appreciation to Valerie Kinloch who after listening deeply to our contributions, gifted us a found poem, which allowed us to see the beauty in ourselves and our work. Relatedly, we offer our heartfelt thanks to the National Council of Teachers of Education, specifically the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color program that helped us to discover chosen family.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Patel (2014, pp. 357–358) defines “pausing” as the productive interruption that allows for deep learning and self-reflection.

2. Tachine and Nicolazzo (2022, p. 2) define “weaving an otherwise” as the interconnections that exist when shaping and sharing story in ways that honor relationships and align our hopes for a more equitable and loving future.

3. paperson (2017, p. xiv) defined “scyborg” as “the structural agency of persons who have picked up colonial technologies and reassembled them to decolonizing purposes.”

4. Bettina Love (2019, p. 2) defined “abolitionist teaching” as “the practice of working in solidarity with communities of color while drawing on the imagination, creativity, refusal, (re)membering, visionary thinking, healing, rebellious spirit, boldness, determination, and subversiveness of abolitionists to eradicate injustice in and outside of school.”

5. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz defines “Archaeology of self” as “the deep excavation and exploration of beliefs, biases and ideas that shape how we engage in the work” (https://www.yolandasealeyruiz.com/archaeology-of-self).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hui-Ling S. Malone

Hui-Ling S. Malone is an assistant professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research examines the ways schools and communities sustain each other to advance equity. In doing so, her work serves to uplift pedagogies rooted in abolitionist teaching and designs for schooling that fuel students’ communal resilience for the purpose of liberation. Her latest project, rooted in community based research, is in partnership with the NAACP around Black student experiences post COVID-19.

Grace D. Player

Grace D. Player is an assistant professor of Literacy at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education. Her work builds on her experiences as a mixed race Japanese Brazilian woman and explores how Girls of Color mobilize their multiple knowledges and ways of knowing toward coalitional justice. Her current project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, explores how Girls of Color develop a radical curatorial praxis to build liberatory artspaces.

Timothy San Pedro

Timothy San Pedro is an associate professor of Critical Studies in Race, Justice, and Equity at Ohio State University. He is Filipino-American and grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana. His latest work focuses on the ways Indigenous families teach tribal knowledges, sovereignty rights, and everyday resurgence efforts. He is an inaugural Gates Millennium Scholar, Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color Fellow, Ford Fellow, CAE Presidential Fellow, and Spencer Fellow.