Making Trouble: Profiles of Resistance by Minoritized Counselor Educators
Open Access
- Author:
- Casado Pérez, Javier F
- Graduate Program:
- Counselor Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 23, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Richard J. Hazler, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Richard J. Hazler, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
JoLynn V. Carney, Committee Member
Katie Kostohryz, Committee Member
Jacqueline Edmondson, Outside Member - Keywords:
- critical race feminism
counselor education
organizational culture
resistance
oppression
critical qualitative inquiry
critical multiculturalism
faculty diversity
higher education
in-depth phenomenological interviewing
critical phenomenology - Abstract:
- Faculty diversification continues to be an issue across academia. With glacial speed, minoritized faculty join the ranks of tenured professors. The continued homogeneity among faculty at research-intensive predominantly white institutions (PWIs) is preserved by systemic inequalities and structural practices that generate barriers to success for minoritized faculty; most poignantly, institutional forms of social and cultural oppression. Counselor education is not beyond the reach of this reality, with existing literature giving voice to the oppression and marginalization experienced by minoritized counselor educators in counseling departments. While research in both higher education and counselor education describes the coping and survival strategies minoritized faculty utilize to survive the tenure-track, achieve tenure, and succeed in academia, little knowledge exists surrounding the change-making strategies these faculty engage in. More than just survival and coping, minoritized faculty also balance resistance to oppressive organizational cultures and pressures to adhere to a marginalizing status quo. Acts of resistance elucidate and challenge structural and interactional forms of oppression that limit the success of minoritized faculty and situate them at the margins of academia. More and more, resistance emerges as a common experience and practice among minoritized faculty, but understanding the role and function of resistance in the lives of minoritized faculty, including minoritized counselor educators, remains unclear. Critical race feminist theory helps us to understand how and why structural oppression and systemic inequities continue to exist. I provide an introductory critical race feminist analysis of research-intensive PWIs in the United States and review existing research with minoritized faculty working to thrive therein. Through critical in-depth phenomenological interviewing, I investigate the lived experiences and enactment of resistance for minoritized counselor educators. Phenomenological profiles are then co-constructed with pre-tenure minoritized counselor educators (N=6) at research-intensive PWIs institutions through a rigorous three-part interview procedure and reduction strategy. I present these profiles in their entirety and discuss them in a critical race feminist theoretical context. Participant profiles reveal common experiences of oppression and marginalization, and strategies utilized in acts of resistance to endure despite difficult and ostracizing situations. For participants, resistance included both overt and strategically covert disruption and destabilization of inequitable or discriminatory organizational cultures.