SIG Representatives
- Lead: Penny Pasque
Professor of Qualitative Research, The Ohio State University
pasque.2@osu.edu - Co-Lead: Michelle Salazar Pérez
Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Education and Professor of Early Childhood Studies, University of North Texas
michelle.s.perez@gmail.com
Coalition for Critical Qualitative Inquiry Day Together: Friday, May 28, 2027
EVERYONE IS INVITED, EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT A PRESENTER!
What is the CCQI SIG Session (Friday)?
Friday will be an entire day of the Coalition for Critical Qualitative Inquiry (CCQI) sessions, dialogue, community engagement, and to develop potential collaborations for research and publications. We welcome you to participate in the entire day of SIG sessions. (Yes, you are invited, so please plan your trip accordingly!)
Why should I submit a proposal to present a paper during the CCQI SIG Day?
The CCQI is about building a community of critical qualitative scholars. We represent various perspectives and approaches to critical inquiry. This means we welcome short proposals about theoretical, conceptual, and/or empirical papers. We welcome proposals that will advance conversations about critical scholarship, including but not limited to inter/cross disciplinary approaches.
How do I submit?
Submit through ICQI’s Ex Ordo submission portal. You will be able to select this SIG “track”, another SIG, or select the general session. Please submit your proposal to present an individual paper through the ICQI/IAQI submission website. If you would like to submit an entire panel of 3-5 papers with rich discussion built in, then please indicate this in the text of the proposal submission. Poster sessions will not be scheduled for the CCQI SIG day.
How will manuscripts be selected?
This is to be determined based on what and how many proposals/panels are submitted. Our goal is to be as inclusive as possible with the selection process and papers we put on the same panels.
What is the Context for the CCQI SIG Day?
As critical qualitative scholars, it is our responsibility – our imperative – to co-create change for current and future generations. In fact, the current moment calls for critical qualitative research to transform our future through iterative research <- and -> practice. If we do not learn from our past we will repeat it – and, in some cases, we are deep in the throes of (re)repeating history (Pasque, 2024). Notably, we stand on the shoulders of ancestors who have intervened in the past to make needed change for the future. Importantly, we must interrupt dominant paradigms that cause harm through policies, programs, organizational patterns, laws, financial institutions, and beyond particularly to minoritized and multiple-minoritized communities (Lincoln & Cannella, 2004).
This SIG is a “Coalition for Critical Qualitative Inquiry” designed to bring together scholars with critical and social justice sensibilities. In addition, a goal is to collaborate on a publication in a special issue journal or edited book with participants who are interested.
In our (Penny & Michelle’s) previous ICQI presentation, then publication in Critical Qualitative Inquiry, the two of us (2015) wrote, “Further, informing the inquiry throughout, methodologically, there is a constant critique and critical reflexivity (Pillow, 2003) that allows us to resist the tendency to reify power within our own research constructs, processes, and practices, from conceptualization to representation and dissemination of inquiry. In this way, for us, CQI [critical qualitative inquiry] does not stop at a definition of power, but it includes a constant examination, complication, and problematization of it. There is a constant “pushing back” on the power hierarchies produced within and by the research itself. As such, the topic and the methodological approach are both attentive to issues of power and inequities” (p. 149).
This means we cannot continue to reify academia’s dominant and reductive methodologies – as well as taken for granted methods – to address the issues of the current day because they are not poised to address the issues we face today and have not fostered equity thus far. “Approaches to research often follow similar patterns, admittedly from a place of academic privilege, with violence, systemic policy, and white supremacy infused throughout dominant research practices, programs, and policies” (Pasque et al., 2022, p. 3). As such, critical research provides hope for our future as it informs communities, policies, laws, programs, and practices that address inequities and transform lives.
It is us – critical scholars – who identify and interrogate oppressive hierarchies as they work to apply their knowledge toward emancipatory and empowering ends, contributing to psychological and physical change in the lives of historically oppressed individuals, groups, and communities (Pérez, Saavedra, Jones, & Abril-Gonzalez, 2022; Tierney, 1991). In this way, critical scholars work in collaboration with – or as a member of – communities, and not as savior or protector for communities (Pasque & Ramirez, 2025). In addition, critical scholars reject notions of objectivity as they center this human emancipatory and transformative social change as central to the research inquiry (Pasque & Carducci, 2025; Tierney, 1991); researchers are constantly in relationship with communities.
In the current moment, critical inquiry has become an important paradigmatic approach and logic to build upon from the past – and modify it for our future. A critical approach informs one’s philosophy, theories, methodologies, methods, tools for analysis, and recommendations for change. It is a logic of identification, deconstruction, and liberatory frame for research by and with minoritized communities (Carducci, et al., 2015). As researchers, scholar-practitioners, and policy makers, the topics we take up inequities and offer critical qualitative research as one form of liberatory hope. The use of race as an example is instructive, as Penny, Lori Patton Davis, et al, (2022) argue research is often designed,
from a place of academic privilege, with violence, systemic policy, and white supremacy infused throughout dominant research practices, programs and policies. Racism embedded in research is often cloaked with dominant white perspectives … we/qualitative scholars can and must take action with intentional research designs and their implications as we interrupt and overturn dominant paradigms that persistently inflict epistemic harm on Black [and racial multiply minoritized] lives in the research process. (pp. 3-4)
By way of another example, Patti Lather (2023) narrates the critical methodological approaches of two books on race and schooling in order to address two questions: (1) What light do they shed on shifting imaginaries in the human sciences, and (2) What are their implications for fieldwork? This deep-dive approach furthers critical thinking and the implications of critical qualitative inquiry.
There are so many ways to engage in qualitative inquiry! We could keep listing examples, but hope this helps you/ICQI participants understand the approach to the day. Please submit and/or come engage in the discussions. We welcome all critical qualitative proposal submissions.
CCQI, The Day of (Friday):
We welcome you to attend for the entire day! We will have a session moderator but no “discussant” (as is found in some academic gatherings), so you do not have to prepare your paper for review ahead of time. Each session will include in-depth discussion and engagement with everyone in the room.
The schedule for the paper presentations and dialogue will be:
- Session 1 – Critical Qualitative Inquiry Panel – this panel will describe the latest thinking in critical qualitative inquiry and set the tone for the day.
- Session II – TBA based on submissions.
- Session III – TBA based on submissions.
- Session IV – Discussion and planning for future collaborations & publications.
What is the History of this SIG?
The two of us collaborated with Gaile Cannella when the CCQI SIG was formed in 2013 under the ICQI leadership of Norm Denzin. It has evolved into various iterations over the years, including with co-leaders Mirka Koro, Aaron Kuntz, Don Collins and others. We invite you to participate in the next iteration of the SIG as we gather on Friday, May 28, 2027 at the University of Georgia.
CCQI SIG Graduate Student Researchers
Mianmian Fei, The Ohio State University, fei.132@osu.edu
Xiaoning Gui, University of North Texas, XiaoningGui@my.unt.edu
References
Carducci, R. & Pasque, P. A. (2025). Critical Advocacy Inquiry: The Blending of Critical, Participatory and Transformative Paradigms. In R. McMillian & P. A. Pasque (Eds.), Advancing Qualitative Inquiry Toward Methodological Inclusion, (pp. 26-48). Routledge.
Lather, P. (2023). Culturally responsive post-qualitative research. In P. A. Pasque and e alexander (Eds). Advancing culturally responsive research and researchers: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods (p. 30-47). NY. Routledge.
Lincoln, Y. S. & Cannella, G. S. (2004). Dangerous Discourses: Qualitative research, power, and the radical right. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(2). 175-201.
Pasque, P. A. (2024). Section I Introduction: Why critical research? Why now? In M. D. Young & S. Diem (Eds.) Handbook of Critical Education Research: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Emerging Approaches (pp. 9-20). Routledge. https://DOI.10.4324/9781003141464-2
Pasque, P. A. & Carducci, R. (2025). Critical Advocacy Inquiry. In P. A. Pasque (Ed.), Critical Qualitative Research & Social Justice: Key Concepts (pp. 60-88). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003546047-6.
Pasque, P. A., Patton, L. D., Gayles, J. G., Gooden, M. A., Henfield, M. S., Milner IV, H. R., Peters, A., & Stewart, D-L. (2022). Unapologetic Educational Research: Addressing Anti-Blackness, Racism and White Supremacy. Cultural Studies<->Critical Methodologies. 21(1). 3-17. DOI: 10.1177/15327086211060451.
Pasque, P. A., & Pérez, M. S. (2015). Centering critical inquiry: Methodologies that facilitate critical qualitative research. In G.S. Cannella, M.S. Pérez, & P.A. Pasque (Eds.). Critical qualitative inquiry: Foundations and futures (pp. 139-170). Left Coast Press [Now Routledge].
Pasque, P. A. & Ramirez, J. E. (2025). Critical Advocacy Methodology: Operationalizing A Paradigm for Researchers and Practitioner-Scholars in Higher Education. Innovative Higher Education. doi.org/10.1007/s10755-025-09863-4
Pérez, M. S., Saavedra, C. M., Jones, N. N., & Abril-Gonzalez, P. (2022). Women of color feminisms as a vehicle for racially-just methodologies in educational research. International Journal of Research & Methods in Education, 45(4), 323-329.
Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 175-196.
Tierney, W. G. (Ed.) (1991). Culture and ideology in higher education: Advancing a critical agenda. NY: Praeger.