Race, Culture, and Researcher Positionality: Working Through Dangers Seen, Unseen, and Unforeseen

Abstract

This author introduces a framework to guide researchers into a process of racial and cultural awareness, consciousness, and positionality as they conduct education research. The premise of the argument is that dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen can emerge for researchers when they do not pay careful attention to their own and others’ racialized and cultural systems of coming to know, knowing, and experiencing the world. Education research is used as an analytic site for discussion throughout this article, but the framework may be transferable to other academic disciplines. After a review of literature on race and culture in education and an outline of central tenets of critical race theory, a nonlinear framework is introduced that focuses on several interrelated qualities: researching the self, researching the self in relation to others, engaged reflection and representation, and shifting from the self to system.