What challenges can race and gender present for researchers of color? As Black women, we draw on personal reflections to look back at our graduate training and its influence on how we conducted ourselves in the field as graduate students and now as researchers in the academy. We particularly consider how mainstream pedagogical approaches to teaching qualitative methods might work to marginalize researchers of color throughout the qualitative research process. We lay out these complexities, not necessarily to offer solutions but rather to allow others in similar situations to think about their own journey as we collectively move qualitative research and teaching to new heights. We conclude this article with a short discussion of the direct implications for teaching and doing qualitative research.

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The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect on two graduate international comparative education courses I taught at a mid-sized public university. Using a variety of readings and multimedia focusing on voices of international educators telling their own stories of struggle for a democratic education, these courses represent my effort to raise a 'glocal' consciousness among pre-service and in-service educators. In this paper, I describe how my educational and life experiences, which include living in parts of the 'global south' and 'global north,' influenced the global issues selected for discussion in these classes. Although there is clear evidence that the experiences I describe in these courses helped to develop a more "glocal" and critical consciousness among students, I conclude that there are always more questions to ask, stories to tell, and complexities to explore when comparing different educational approaches.

Through the lens of structural violence, Black feminism and critical family history, this paper explores how societal structures informed by white supremacy shaped the lives of three generations of rural African American women in a family in Florida during the middle to the late twentieth century. Specifically, this study investigates how disparate funding, segregation, desegregation, poverty and post-desegregation policies shaped and limited the achievement trajectories among these women. Further, an oral historical examination of their lives reveals the strategies they employed despite their under-resourced and sometimes alienating schooling. The paper highlights the experiences of the Newman family, descendants of captive Africans in the United States that produced three college-educated daughters and a granddaughter despite structural barriers that threatened their progress. Using oral history interviews, archival resources and first-person accounts, this family’s story reveals a genealogy of educational achievement, barriers and agency despite racial and gendered limitations in a Southern town. The findings imply that their schooling mirrors many of the barriers that other Blacks face. However, this study shows that community investment in African American children, plus teachers that affirm students, and programs such as Upward Bound, help to advance Black students in marginalized communities. Further, these women’s lives suggest that school curriculums need to be anti-racist and public policies that affirm each person regardless of the color of their skin. A simple solution that requires the structural violence of whiteness be eliminated from the schooling spheres.

This study examines political attitudes and experiences of young adults in the United States, with particular focus on voting practices. Since young adults are just beyond K-12 schooling they are the voting segment arguably most affected by their educational experience. Their political habits and attitudes should inform educational policy and practice. The concern under focus is that young adults, including college students, vote at low rates, especially during mid-term elections. Just 22% of citizens ages 18e29 voted in the 2014 mid-term elections, 31% in 2018. Authors surveyed 476 young adults in two states. Followup interviews were conducted with 36 participants in both states, who were asked if and why they voted, and about their familial, social, academic, and political experiences. The study found many obstacles to voting, including logistical and educational barriers.