SJE3910H
This advanced graduate seminar will examine multiple scholarly approaches to researching race, ethnicity, difference and anti-racism issues in schools and other institutional settings. It begins with a brief examination of race and anti-racism theorizing and the exploration of the history, contexts and politics of domination studies in sociological and educational research. The course then looks at ontological, epistemological, and ethical questions, and critical methodological reflections on race, difference and social research. The course will focus on the ethnographic, survey and historical approaches, highlighting specific qualitative and quantitative concerns that implicate studying across the axes of difference. We will address the issues of school and classroom participant observation,; the pursuit of critical ethnography as personal experience, stories and narratives; the study of race, racism and anti-racism projects through discourse analysis; and the conduct of urban ethnography. Through the use of case studies, we will review race and anti-racism research in cross-cultural comparative settings and pinpoint some of the methodological innovations in social research on race and difference.