Oral History and Qualitative Methodologies

Educational Research for Social Justice

Thalia M. Mulvihill, Raji Swaminathan, Thalia M. Mulvihill, Raji Swaminathan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000541915
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Oral History and Qualitative Methodologies: Educational Research for Social Justice examines oral history methodological processes involved in the doing of oral history as well as the theoretical, historical, and knowledge implications of using oral history for social justice projects.

Oral history in qualitative research is an umbrella term that integrates history, life history, and testimony accounts. Oral history draws from various social science disciplines, including educational studies, history, indigenous studies, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, women's studies, and youth studies. The book argues for the further development of a pedagogical culture related to oral history for educational research as part of the effort to diversify the range of human experiences educators, community members, and policy makers incorporate into knowledge-making and knowledge-using processes.

Early career researchers, novice researchers, as well as experienced researchers are invited to join social science educational researchers in developing their own oral history projects using all of the tools, dispositions, and epistemologies affiliated with qualitative inquiry.

The book will be of use in courses on qualitative research methods, history, anthropology, women's studies, and education disciplines as well as by community organizations who want to use oral history to preserve the history of communities and advance social justice projects.

SECTION 1 Introduction to the theories and methods of oral history for qualitative researchers

1 INTRODUCTION TO THE ART AND SCIENCE OF INTERDISCIPLINARY ORAL HISTORY

Thalia M. Mulvihill and Raji Swaminathan

DOI: 10.4324/9781003127192-2

Oral History according to Linda Shopes

is a maddeningly imprecise term: it is used to refer to formal, rehearsed accounts of the past presented by culturally sanctioned tradition-bearers; to informal conversations about “the old days” among family members, neighbors, or coworkers; to printed compilations of stories told about past times and present experiences; and to recorded interviews with individuals deemed to have an important story to tell.

(Shopes, n.d., p. 1)

The Oral History Association operationally defines oral history as

both the interview process and the products that result from a recorded spoken interview. … Despite the flexibility inherent in such an interview method, nevertheless it is the result of “thoughtful planning and careful follow-through of the agreed-upon process.”

(The OHA Principles and Best Practices, 2019, p. 4)

The OHA includes all types of recordings and documentation including audio, video, note taking. Oral history interviews depend on memory of those being interviewed as well as the ongoing collaborative relationship between the researcher and the narrator, making the product one that is co-crafted. Although the process is usually led by the researcher through the asking of interview questions, it is equally within the purview of the narrator who may choose to lead the interview in a particular direction through relating experiences that are of relevance and meaning to the narrator.

We have designed this book for novice researchers, early career researchers, as well as experienced researchers who may be new to oral history, and community educators interested in learning to design and carry out oral history projects. The book is meant to be used primarily in higher education classrooms in a variety of disciplines that use oral history (e.g., qualitative research methods course, history, anthropology, women and gender studies, education), by interdisciplinary social science researchers, as well as by community organizations who want to use oral history to preserve the history of communities and advance social justice projects.

Oral history methods, when not identified solely within the domain of “history,” are often subsumed under broad categories in qualitative research methods books, and therefore few resources exist that delve into the topic enough to assist novice qualitative researchers increase their confidence as they undertake an oral history project. Oral history methods are increasingly significant for qualitative researchers as they seek to delve deeper into human experiences in diverse contexts. In this book, we offer qualitative researchers the span of possibilities available when considering using oral history methods for their research. We will showcase how various researchers explore differences between qualitative research interviewing and the use of oral history for interviews and how categories invented for themes of interviewing can be reimagined. Oral history projects designed and carried out by qualitative researchers are bringing forward important new knowledge and deeper more nuanced understandings by employing a series of interdisciplinary methodological moves that are woven through the arc of a research project including new collaborations related to data collection, interpretation, representation, and dissemination. Novice qualitative researchers will benefit from learning the range of methods involved in oral history (traditional and more contemporary forms) that can help them co-create and document stories and experiences, understand experiences of marginalized populations, connect individual experiences with systemic barriers, and engage in collaborative projects for initiating or enacting social change.

Oral history is increasingly used in qualitative research and encompasses a variety of methods. It is an umbrella term that integrates history, life history methods, and testimony accounts. It refers to the process of data gathering as well as to the product of such research. Oral history draws from a variety of social science disciplines, including educational studies, history, indigenous studies, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, women’s studies, and youth studies. Any book that examines oral history today necessarily needs to discuss both the methodological processes involved in the doing of oral history and the theoretical, historical, and knowledge implications of the product. Oral history processes have been notably impacted by digital and technological innovations with regard to documentation, data storage, and data sharing. The very language used to describe these processes changes with each advancement in technology. For example, the use of terms like QR codes, digital narratives, online repositories, or most recently Zoom interviews (providing audio and/or video recordings accompanied by artificial intelligence (ai) simultaneous transcriptions, etc., all demonstrate the way the field of oral history is evolving and how researchers practicing oral history have adapted. The rich possibilities for oral history to be more widely and continuously shared via new media and digital storytelling mediums will also be addressed in the book.

Qualitative researchers focused on education (formal and informal), who have been working within a social justice praxis arena, have been documenting the challenges faced by K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, their students, and community members. These educational spaces forge dynamic discourses combining individual and group narratives of great interest to educational researchers who have found the spectrum of oral history methods expanding the ways they bring focus to understanding the complexity of peoples’ experiences.

For example, issues concerning undocumented students, the fight for safe spaces in schools against bullying, free speech and freedom to assemble peacefully, creating institutional policies to combat racism are all stories, documenting and preserving history and herstory, etc., all represent areas of concern to qualitative researchers focused on social justice. More exposure to, and a deeper understanding of, oral history methods and the range of ways in which oral history projects can be approached, interpreted, represented, and disseminated will allow the bridge between oral history and qualitative research methods to be strengthened. We recognize that oral history has been used by disciplines in different ways and it is our intent to draw on the variety in order to meaningfully differentiate between the various uses of the term.

Technologies in use today allow for a greater breadth and depth of oral history exploration alongside new ethical issues to consider. For example, we discuss talking circles, storytelling, using visual data to augment oral history narratives, the use of video in oral history, as well as the ethics and politics of gathering oral histories. In addition, we discuss oral history theory. Some of the chapters are focused on oral history methodological concerns or opportunities, others on exemplars of oral history to animate social justice narratives. Other sub-themes will include educational oral history or oral history of educators, immigration narratives, oral histories of critical events, and oral histories of marginalized communities and peoples.

Oral history is an expanding field of research that encompasses various social science fields, such as history, narrative, sociology, and education. Different fields have utilized oral history to record aspects of history that are unwritten. Oral history interview methods ought to be centered on an interaction between the researcher and the participant. The series of interactive encounters or dialogues makes up the storytelling aspect of oral history research. Central to this endeavor is relationship building. Reciprocity is an important dimension of oral history encounters and as a relationship concept needs to be deeply contemplated by researchers. In the interactions between researchers and participants, where dialogue, debate, and disagreement as much as agreement and listening and sharing of stories may occur on both sides, the goal is to create a glimpse of a time and place that is alive and resonates with the narrator or participant, one that is complex rather than simple, multilayered, at times respectfully contradictory producing a collage of experiences narrated not always in a linear fashion. This is not to say that chronology is not often an important dimension of oral history and at times a compelling structure from which to narrate, but chronology does not always need to act as a strict organizer of a narrative. For example, oral history in many respects may evolve as performance art in the narration. Audience, or perception of audience, may influence what is shared and the manner of the telling. Further, the forms of reciprocity at work in such exchanges between the participant and the researcher does not mean that both parties are giving and receiving equally at all moments but rather, as Foucault asserts, within such narrative constructions, power circulates, moving from one to the other making it crucial for the researchers to be hyper-aware of their own positionality and power dynamics, and ultimately the part it plays in the process of creating oral histories. One concrete example of where power is negotiated has to do with questions and terms of authorship and/or agreements to share the results of the oral history with others. These negotiations include confronting the power dynamic realities inherent in knowledge production and in questions of whose interpretation is valued.

Oral history methodologies can help uncover the roles played by individuals in particular historical events or trace the history of objects. This chapter gives a brief introduction of the ways in which oral history has been used over time, from testimonials and eye-witness narratives, storytelling, and historical memory accounts to the uses of oral history as a political device such as in the case of Truth and Reconciliation initiatives. Various terms are outlined by which oral history has been referred to within different disciplines, such as biography, autoethnography, interviews, storytelling, memory collections, and life history, as well as how oral history relates to qualitative research along with differentiating between terms and explaining disciplinary origins of various approaches. The scope of the book is explained in this chapter and it sets the stage by clarifying how central terms are operationalized. As qualitative researchers who conduct oral history projects, we place ourselves in the same stream of thinking developed by Janesick, Leavy, and Shopes and then create a new tributary serving educational researchers employing interdisciplinary oral history methodologies.

Janesick (2007), for example, believes that when people are experiencing a signifi-cant life transition it is an optimal time to conduct an oral history interview. Janesick, a student of Eisner’s, is noted for many advanced contributions to conceptualizing qualitative inquiry for educators, including constructing a methodology of oral history for qualitative researchers. And, importantly she conceives of oral history as a social justice project. Janesick operationally defines oral history as “the collection of stories and reminiscences of a person or persons who have firsthand knowledge of any number of experiences” (p. 2). She unapologetically asserts that oral history projects are taken up by many disciplines in addition to history and are comprised of many approaches and types. Janesick offered 11 points of intersection between oral history and qualitative research (see Janesick, 2007, pp. 6–7) paraphrased below:

1. The “basic techniques” and evidence used by oral historians and qualitative researchers are the same, such as interviews, observations, documents, photographs, videos, drawings.
2. The researcher is the research instrument through which the data is filtered and interpreted.
3. Oral historians and qualitative researchers help evoke peoples’ stories through remembering key events and focusing on their lived experience.
4. Ordinary language is used to convey the story.
5. Multiple reasonable interpretations of the data can exist simultaneously.
6. Oral historians and qualitative researchers engage in “describing and explaining” recollections of experiences.
7. Oral historians and qualitative researchers “fashion a narrative to represent the lived experience” of the participants.
8. Oral historians and qualitative researchers are often focused on people “generally excluded from research.”
9. Oral history and qualitative research “validate a public pedagogy” whereby others can learn, question, and explore the experiences of other ordinary people.
10. Oral history, like many forms of qualitative research, “cannot be resold as some marketable product.”
11. Oral history and qualitative research projects may serve to “raise uncomfortable and troublesome social questions that may ultimately affect social policy.”

Leavy’s definitional work is complementary to Janesick’s work. She distinguishes between oral traditions that are stories handed down from generation to generation and oral history that is a “method of collecting narratives from individuals for the purpose of research” (Leavy, 2011, p. 4). Leavy points out that oral history has at times been mistakenly assumed to be a feminist method because feminists have tended to use oral history as a way to include disenfranchised and marginalized groups in a qualitative research process as well as talk back to positivist research. Leavy explains that feminist researchers have contributed to broadening the scope and ways of doing oral history by seeking out marginalized groups to include in the research process, by creating a collaborative researcher–participant relationship and by incorporating an activist component to the research project. In this sense, they have contributed to an understanding of oral history as scholarship and as a tool for social change. Leavy suggests that feminist researchers have developed certain tools for oral history interviews that are widely used by researchers today regardless of their standpoint as...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Acknowledgments Page
• Section 1 Introduction to the theories and methods of oral history for qualitative researchers
• Section 2 Educational biography and life history
• Section 3 Archival and secondary data analysis
• Section 4 Arts-based educational research
• Section 5 Digital storytelling, podcasts, vlogs, and social media
• Section 6 Concluding chapter/epilogue
• Index