Show notes
In this episode Stephanie Shelton talks with Kiara Summerville, Erica Campbell, Krystal Flantroy, and Ashley Prowell about their experiences collaborating and co-authoring an article on Black Feminist thought in the field of Qualitative Inquiry. The episode raises important questions about representation, experience, and process in the doing and teaching of qualitative research. A transcript of the conversation follows. Stephanie Shelton 00:10Right. Hello everyone and welcome to qualitative conversations Podcast Series hosted by the qualitative research special interest group, the American Educational Research Association. I'm Stephanie Shelton, a guest host for this episode on collaboration and co-authorship. And I'm excited to be joined today by my brilliant co-authors of a wonderful article. Krystal Flantroy, Kiara Summerville, Erica Campbell and Ashley Nicole Prowell. And so Kiara, if we could just introduce yourselves maybe an author order. So Kiara, then Erica, then Krystal, then Ashley, and then we'll get started.Kiara Summerville 00:47Hi, everyone. I'm Kiara Summervile. Dr. Kiara Somerville, a recent graduate of the higher education administration program at the University of Alabama. I currently work in the Division of Student Life at the University of Alabama. And so certainly, a scholar practitioner in every sense of the word, and I am excited to be here with you all. Erica Campbell 01:08Hello, everybody. My name is Erica Campbell, and I am a PhD candidate in the higher education administration program at the University of Alabama. And I'm excited because I will be graduating in May, and I will be defending my dissertation this January. So I'm excited to be on the job market looking for faculty positions. And I here I am a scholar practitioners affairs professional, but I want to take that to the faculty route. So I'm excited to be here with you all today.Krystal Flantroy 01:38My name is Krystal Flantroy and I'm currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that I graduate in July. I too, am a scholar practitioner who has found her way back to a classroom teaching position. And so I'm back to teaching high school science, which is something I love and love to do. But we'll see how it all works out in the end.Ashley Prowell 02:02My name is Ashley Prowell, or Dr. Ashley Prowell. And I am also a recent graduate of the social work department, PhD program. I'm also on the job market hoping to enter the professoriate and continue to do research and teaching. So yeah, I'm glad we didn't have to, like run down our research topic, because I'm so tired of writing about it, talking about it with everybody. So Stephanie Shelton 02:37We're here today to talk about your article that was published in the qualitative research journal. And it is titled, Finding ourselves as Black Women in Euro-centric theory: Collaborative biography on learning qualitative inquiry. And so I wanted to start by asking if you could share how this project got started, what, what initiated the ideas that ultimately led to this article.Krystal Flantroy 02:59And as it turns out, this project got started in, it feels like a group chat, right? We were, we would have class and then we would all leave class and talk in the parking lot before we all went to our cars, that led to a group chat of where we got to talk about things that we didn't understand things that we just didn't relate to things that were confusing in the readings of the theory that we were reading in qual three, and it kind of flourished from there.Kiara Summerville 03:28Right? We, as Krystal mentioned, were, you know, talking about frustrations and confusion that went along with it, this qualitative course that we were taking. And, and we thought about it one day, I think we were actually in the classroom after class one day, and had this thought like, well, maybe we should write about this, right? We all have a lot of thoughts about this. And, um, you know about our experience in that classroom and understanding the material and working together to make the make the material make sense to each other, we leaned on each other heavily for that. So we told ourselves, Well, how about we just write about this? Right. And I know, we'll probably get to this in a little bit, but we thought, you know, Dr. Shelton, would be a wonderful person to talk to about these thoughts, and to see if we can get something going.Stephanie Shelton 04:19So that's a perfect transition. Um, so could you talk through how you started the process of co authoring this paper? What did that process look like? Ashley Prowell 04:27I mean, I want to say, I want to say it was just, you know, just it just happened pretty naturally. I mean, like Krystaltal said, it started out in a group chat. And we all had these same, you know, same thoughts about what was going on in the classroom. So, I mean, I don't know if you're talking about like the ordering of authorship and how that happened. But I think just in terms of us all, you know, being engaged in this topic and wanting to instead of just kind of, I guess, complaining about it or griping about it wanting to be productive and, and turn it into something creative and productive for academia. And I feel like, since we've written this paper, like, if you just scroll through academic Twitter, you'll see like, you know, a lot of people are talking about this similar ideas these days, and kind of this incorporation of black thought, or black, you know, ideas into, you know, our readings in the classroom and, and just being more inclusive overall and responsive to other cultures. So I feel like we were definitely at the forefront. I feel like we were at the forefront, maybe we weren't, but, but it definitely feels good. That, you know, we're seeing more people talk about this issue in doctoral programs, and just overall in higher education,Erica Campbell 06:01Right. And I will also add that one of the things that we did, too, because we knew that we had material to write about or to share our personal narratives, and what that looked like in the classroom, also believe that we went to you, Dr. Shelton, to be honest. And we said, you know, we have this idea, just to kind of really just dive in about what our, you know, black feminist thought is, and then also to really think about how we use that with qualitative research and qualitative, philosophical, philosophical understandings. And so you gave us the idea, in terms of the methodology to really just think about how we could use that as an opportunity to kind of collaborate when it comes to our narrative. And I know we'll get to that in a little bit a little bit later, I'm sure. But that's where kind of the idea got the wheels to kind of keep moving, that you know, what this this is qualitative research, what are narratives are, what our experiences are in that classroom, and you kind of gave us a wheel with the methodology with that.Ashley Prowell 07:07And I guess, you know, earlier on, I think we also had the conversation of, you know, or at least I know, I brought this up and shared it with the group, just this idea of choosing a white professor to to, to being engaged with our scholarship or this manuscript that we were writing. And I know, while Dr. Shelton tends to be very open, and, or is very open, and often probably even can relate to a lot of the issues that we we talked about in our paper, are some of them. I think we chose Dr. Shelton, because because of that, that openness. But I do think, you know, we did think about like, what would the paper: How would things look different if we engage with a, an African American or a black? Professor? And I do think there are implications for that? I think it could, would she have been involved in our group chat? Or, you know, how would that have changed things in terms of our findings, and how we engage with the content throughout the course semester? So I think that is something that, you know, we should, I don't know, if you want to talk, share your own thoughts about that. But I know that's something that we brought up earlier on.Krystal Flantroy 08:27But I also think that we were, we were a bit treading lightly as we began, because we also were still in a class with a professor, whose course we were really critiquing for something that we thought was missing, that was something essential. And so it felt like, Are we really gonna write about this? Because the truly enough mean, we've all been taught by her are sitting in her course. And it's like, how do we know Levy, this, this heavy critique of the course that we've been in without feeling weird about it? So that was another thing. Stephanie Shelton 09:03So you've brought up some of these? The next question is really looking at like some of the challenges. And and so I think that these are definitely some that are really important. And I'm glad that, Ashley, you initiated some of these concerns, because very important, and thinking about like collaboratively writing, and then trying to go through this publication process, because I feel like a lot of times for graduate students publication seems like more of like an abstract concept. That's sort of reality. And so what were some of the challenges of the collaborative writing and the publication process when you're working through this article?Kiara Summerville 09:34I don't know that the when we actually started writing together and in sharing our mirrors with each other, that wasn't necessarily tough for me. I think on the front end, we had to learn the methodology. And that was something that we had to kind of sit with because I think even with the methodology and you know, the philosophers and we were attributing citing in our methodology for themselves, white men, right. And so we talked about how, you know, we were critiquing this use of using white philosophers in these courses. But we are in fact using them for this type of work, we talked about how we are turning it on its head, right? To make it work for us, which is really the the nature of the whole paper, the theme of the whole paper making, making, what we were learning in that class, make it make sense to us. So I think learning the methodology at first was something that we had to had to understand, but the actual writing of the narrative seems to come quite naturally. For me, um, ladies, I'm not sure how you all felt about that. Erica Campbell 10:43And I will say that it actually became natural for me, because we had been in that class and really was in that space of really sitting with our thoughts about those white philosophers. In that course, I really felt like, you know, this was my opportunity to really get that off my chest in a writing format, right. But then also, because we were doing it in a collaborative matter, I think what really helped me to was that, okay, I'm not the only person that's talking about this, right. So, you know, often as a black woman, you know, you we feel good in numbers, we feel good having that sisterhood support. And I think knowing that we were collaborating, and right, but also writing our own narratives, at the same time made me feel empowered to just say what I needed to say, and just express myself, because I knew there were other women who would be doing the same thing. And so that really empowered me, it felt very natural for myself.Ashley Prowell 11:39And I think we brought this up in the paper, too, is just this idea of like, earlier on, like, hold on, are we missing something like just trying to think back through before, you know, before you, you know, you write about something or talk about something you want to make sure you have, I think that naturally, like have the facts. Right. So, so just thinking through the course, and, and I guess, also in a way of not to be offensive towards towards the qualitative program that we were taking these courses in, and just just really thinking about, you know, you know, if we, if if there was something that we didn't grasp, or something that we miss throughout the course. And I think like Erica was saying, like other people are, you know, once we realized, collectively that we have these shared thoughts and that other people are also talking about this, I think that helped us feel better about moving forward with with writing about it.Krystal Flantroy 12:41I just wanted to add, when we went to our first like, we we put up conference paper, like, I can't remember which one it is. And, ICQI, right? And so we go and we do our presentation, and we're sitting in this room of people, and like people were enlightened and move by it, and it was like, wait, y'all, I think we got we got some, and like, we left there. We we knew we felt better, like people came up and talk to us after our presentation. I was like, oh, okay, this is it. Alright. So it that I think that part of it, like putting in conference presentations, I think ICQI and AERA, um, you know, made a world of difference, because what it said was, is that scholars in Rome want to hear what we had to say about this particular topic, which may moving the work forward a little bit easier. You weren't as the trepidation wasn't there anymore. It was like, Okay, this is something we can talk about that we need to talk about. Stephanie Shelton 13:48So Erica,and Krystal kind of alluded to this, but I wanted to ask if you had anything else you wanted to add? What were some of the high points are the advantages of collaboratively writing, collaborative collaboratively writing, and a collaborative publishing process? Ashley Prowell 14:03I think, I guess just piggybacking off of what we just talked about was just this idea of, okay. This is something, you know, kind of new for us and that we're, you know, this is our first time writing about something like this, but being able to kind of figure it out through our collaborative narrative and responding to each other and going back and forth. With that process. I think that was something interesting and just kind of kind of figuring it out as we went, you know, I thought that was cool.Krystal Flantroy 14:39I think here said this earlier, and it there's power in numbers, right? And having people to work with and having people to bounce ideas off of and having people that have maybe more experiences or publishing because we were all in different parts of our journey at that point, and so We are, you know, it was it made the experience a lot easier. But it also made it tougher, right? Because you're working with four different people with four or five, five different people with five different schedules,Stephanie Shelton 15:12I think it might be worth you you talking a little bit going back a little bit to the to some of the challenges. If I recall correctly, some of the ways that you all wrote the paper was you initially, you divvied up sections you did the you did the narratives collaboratively throughout, but then you divvied up other sections, but then there had to be a process where the paper became unified. And so I don't know if you want to talk about that or not. But I think that that was definitely a very interesting part of the process, that it can be used for other people to hear about.Erica Campbell 15:44So that's a good point. Um, one thing that we did, so after, like, Kiara, I mentioned earlier, we had to really learn, and, and really understand this methodology, right. So that's always key and important before you, you know, put yourself out there to try and do it. And of course, you know, you either learn through the process, and of course, you learn after t…
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