Magic and Hocus Pocus: Teaching for Social Justice in a Qualitative Methods Course

In this manuscript, we work to define and unpack what teaching for social justice means for us as instructors of an introductory qualitative methods course at an ultraconservative institution. We focus on our intentionality in curating readings, designing specific fieldwork assignments, and prompting reflective work for adult graduate students in the course. This intentionality provides various inroads to develop and support student learning around qualitative methods, to reveal meta narratives and dominant ideologies, to critically think and “trouble” those narratives, and opportunities to name lived experiences and observations in systems of oppression and privilege

Teaching for Social Justice in Qualitative Methods: Examples from Class

In this paper, we highlight activities that we have integrated into our qualitative methods coursework that prompt conversations about issues of justice in education, centering equity even as we engage in student-centered pedagogies. For example, we have been intentional about curating and assigning readings—as methodological exemplars—that introduce critical perspectives including feminism, critical race theory, queer theories, critical whiteness studies, post-colonial theory, and disability studies. Having read and discussed this work, we push students to engage in reflective journaling unpacking identity and reconsidering discourse. We also push them to query their own practices of data generation through these lenses, asking: What does it mean to present participants in these terms? Our hope is that the dissonance our students experience in the context of our classes is carried out into their communities and future research endeavors, prompting them to explore how power shapes everyday, lived experiences