Papers by Willow Samara Allen
Sage Research Methods: Diversifying & Decolonizing Research , 2024
This how-to guide offers new and seasoned researchers alike an introduction to cultivating anti-o... more This how-to guide offers new and seasoned researchers alike an introduction to cultivating anti-oppressive educational and social science research skills through a focused engagement with language and its use in our own and others’ research. By illustrating the impact of how we use language in all aspects of the research process—from research questions to reporting—we build critical awareness of how language is implicated in the reproduction of power, identities, and differences in and through research. We define the concepts of oppression and anti-oppression and draw on applied examples and reflective prompting questions to practice analyzing language use through an anti-oppressive frame. More specifically, this guide provides three anti-oppressive literacy strategies of deconstructing, shifting, and reframing language and encourages more intentional use of anti-oppressive language as part of committing to broader equitable change in and through research.
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Action Research, 2023
Appreciative inquiry is an action research methodology focused on revealing an organization's pos... more Appreciative inquiry is an action research methodology focused on revealing an organization's positive core. As a cross-racial team of antiracist researchers, we were drawn to appreciative inquiry due to its congruences with community-based research perspectives on power-sharing and co-constructing knowledge. Our collaborative reflexivity brought us to question whether Appreciative inquiry's hyper-focus on positivity would fit our antiracist research paradigm. We articulate reflections of how antiracism theory informed our approach to Appreciative inquiry in a study on the experiences of predominantly racialized settlement workers in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain how we negotiated tensions between Appreciative inquiry's focus on positivity and our antiracist framing, in a Canadian settler colonial context where institutional expectations to ignore racism and collapse diversity, loom large. Without a theoretical framework that attends to racism and power, Appreciative inquiry may not fulsomely address participants' transnational knowledges, nor experiences outside of a positive/ negative binary. In our elucidation of how critical reflexivity on racism allowed us to integrate antiracism into Appreciative inquiry, we demonstrate the value of first-person action research for expanding the social justice aims of research.
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International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2023
What does it mean to intervene in antiracist interviews with public sector workers? What do inter... more What does it mean to intervene in antiracist interviews with public sector workers? What do interventions look like in research seeking to name complicity in settler colonial violence and imagine otherwise relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people? How might we methodologically define interventions and their pedagogical purpose(s)? In this paper, we share our experience of adopting a dual-pedagogical antiracist interventive research methodology in our qualitative research with public sector workers on settler colonial socialization. Building on antiracist interventive interviewing method, we map out our conceptualization of interventions as multidirectional and multiscalar. We narrate how we see interventions as dual pedagogical moments of disruption and possibility occurring at three scales, where we intervene to support our participants' learning and they intervene to support ours. Our approach is illuminated through illustrations from our transcribed data of virtual interviews with 32 public sector workers in BC (n = 23) and Alberta (n = 9), and through our reflections on our research process. Our analysis demonstrates that interventions have three key effects. First, they are generatively disruptive in that they offer better access to understanding processes of settler colonial socialization. Second, interventions create junctures for antiracist and anticolonial learning. Third, interventions with participants open up opportunities to imagine otherwise beyond the strictures of settler colonialism, and orient towards anticolonial praxis rooted in recognition of Indigenous sovereignties. We conclude with a vocabulary of interventions meant to offer other qualitative researchers possibilities for how to intervene to better access and disrupt sites of deep colonizing.
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This special issue of Education Matters was inspired by the Wâhkôhtowin Conference held at the Un... more This special issue of Education Matters was inspired by the Wâhkôhtowin Conference held at the University of Saskatchewan in September 2014. The theme of the conference was indigenizing practice in post secondary education, which continues to be an important challenge across Canada. The conference brought together a diversity of scholars, which advanced many interesting discussions. Our hope for this issue is to continue this dialogue by sharing some of the amazing research that was presented at the Wâhkôhtowin Conference. Much of the writing in this issue is themed around the difficulty in conducting indigenous research. This was a shared struggle for indigenous and non-indigenous scholars alike. Communication issues abound as researchers tried to negotiate cultural understandings between the research team and institutional policy, and even among the research team themselves. However, the process of negotiating and seeking shared understanding ultimately enriched both the quality o...
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Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, 2021
For newcomer students, inequities exacerbated by COVID-19, including racism, unfold within their ... more For newcomer students, inequities exacerbated by COVID-19, including racism, unfold within their educational landscapes. School settlement workers perform a critical role in newcomer students' educational trajectories. COVID-19 has intensified the importance of school settlement work, yet school settlement workers remain an under-researched and under-recognized group of professionals. Anchored in an anti-racist, multidisciplinary framework, our article traces how COVID-19 measures in schools have magnified inequities for school settlement workers and newcomer students. Our data, drawn from a community-based project, consist of virtual focus groups held with school settlement workers located in a Canadian prairie province during the height of the pandemic, and the findings emerge through a critical approach to the methodology of appreciative inquiry. We illuminate systemic realities to contradict discourses that the pandemic does not discriminate and demonstrate how COVID-19 protocols are used to justify and obfuscate schooling exclusions along racial lines. We analyze themes of (in)visibility of settlement work, whiteness and racism, and resistance through Sara Ahmed's (2012, 2017) metaphor of the brick wall to animate the tensions of settlement work in schools during COVID-19. We conclude with school settlement workers' recommendations to increase recognition of their critical role and to support their work during and beyond the pandemic. We call on institutional wall makers to respond to settlement workers' recommendations and actualize institutional commitments to newcomer students and families.
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White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions, 2022
In this piece, I trace the historicity of white women's evocation of learned patterns of white se... more In this piece, I trace the historicity of white women's evocation of learned patterns of white settler womanhood. Drawing on an encounter of harm in which I was complicit, as well as research, I contend that in a white settler society rushing to reconcile and foreclose a past that's ongoing, white women, including myself, must bring to bear acts of complicity in ongoing colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. I invite readers to consider how white women have been integral to the survival of an ongoing settler-colonial project through the performance of benevolent white femininity that preserves white women's status under the guise of protection, helping and saving. I conclude with reflections and questions on challenging the protection and benevolence patterns of white settler womanhood.
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Studies in Social Justice, 2022
In this piece, we ask, what are the risks of a pedagogy and politics that begins and ends with pr... more In this piece, we ask, what are the risks of a pedagogy and politics that begins and ends with privilege? What does it mean to declare privilege when embedded in institutions of the settler colonial state? These questions are raised through an ongoing project where we interview provincial public sector workers on Treaty 6, 7 and 8 (Alberta, Canada) and Coast Salish Territories (British Columbia, Canada) about their implications in settler colonialism through public sector work. In the project, we articulate the interdisciplinary framework of settler colonial socialization to consider the space between individuals and structures – the meso- space where settlers are made by learning how to take up the work of settler colonialism. For these reasons, in our research we ask, “what do the pedagogical processes of settler colonial socialization tell us about how systemic colonial violence is sustained, and how it might be disrupted or refused in public sector work?” In this paper, we narrow our focus to the declarations of privilege that many of our interview participants are making. We reflect on these declarations and consider whether focusing on settler complicity and Indigenous refusals can better support a decolonial politics for settlers working in the public sector. We argue that declarations of privilege risk reproducing settler-centric logics that maintain settler colonialism, settler jurisdiction, and settler certainty, and we reflect on how to orient participants (and ourselves) towards the material realization of relational accountability and towards imagining otherwise.
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Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work, Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, 2021
For newcomer students, inequities exacerbated by COVID-19, including racism, unfold within their ... more For newcomer students, inequities exacerbated by COVID-19, including racism, unfold within their educational landscapes. School settlement workers perform a critical role in newcomer students' educational trajectories. COVID-19 has intensified the importance of school settlement work, yet school settlement workers remain an under-researched and under-recognized group of professionals. Anchored in an anti-racist, multidisciplinary framework, our article traces how COVID-19 measures in schools have magnified inequities for school settlement workers and newcomer students. Our data, drawn from a community-based project, consist of virtual focus groups held with school settlement workers located in a Canadian prairie province during the height of the pandemic, and the findings emerge through a critical approach to the methodology of appreciative inquiry. We illuminate systemic realities to contradict discourses that the pandemic does not discriminate and demonstrate how COVID-19 protocols are used to justify and obfuscate schooling exclusions along racial lines. We analyze themes of (in)visibility of settlement work, whiteness and racism, and resistance through Sara Ahmed's (2012, 2017) metaphor of the brick wall to animate the tensions of settlement work in schools during COVID-19. We conclude with school settlement workers' recommendations to increase recognition of their critical role and to support their work during and beyond the pandemic. We call on institutional wall makers to respond to settlement workers' recommendations and actualize institutional commitments to newcomer students and families.
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Settlement workers in schools (SWIS) provide a range of services that contribute to positive educ... more Settlement workers in schools (SWIS) provide a range of services that contribute to positive educational outcomes for newcomer students, yet they are an under-researched group of professionals. The need for settlement worker support increased as newcomer students navigated the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This research report presents findings and recommendations from a qualitative study that investigated how settlement workers in Saskatchewan, Canada responded to educational inequities for newcomer youth exacerbated by COVID-19.
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Settler Colonial Studies, 2020
This piece particularizes the subjectivities and experiences of white Euro-Canadian women to unde... more This piece particularizes the subjectivities and experiences of white Euro-Canadian women to understand how they become implicated in relationships and systems of power that sustain the settler colonial state. This examination is driven by assertions from settler colonial scholars to explore the ‘everydayness’ of settler colonialism, efforts by critical whiteness scholars to spatially locate whiteness, and by long-time calls from critical race feminists for white women to interrogate their responsibilities in challenging white supremacy. To respond, I argue we must start at the beginning to assess how white women learn to become racialized, gendered national subjects. Drawing on findings from my qualitative study of white women in transracial/cultural families, I investigate formative spaces and discourses through which the women are socialized into settler whiteness. My analysis demonstrates the participants’ learning occurs in the home and community, and within relationships defined by intimacy and distance. I argue by examining the white settler socialization of white women who permanently transgress ‘colourlines’, greater insight can be gained into how white settler subjectivities are formed and possibly interrupted. I contend white settler socialization processes are necessary to challenge in broader efforts towards decolonization, imperative to which is imagining what different white femininities can exist.
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Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 2019
White women have occupied a distinct position in histories of White supremacy. With the rise of W... more White women have occupied a distinct position in histories of White supremacy. With the rise of White supremacist discourses in this current epoch, I posit now is a critical time to examine how White women can bear witness to their Whiteness and to ask what role they want to play in creating a more equitable future. I take up these considerations by drawing on interview data from a qualitative study of ten White women in transracial/cultural families with Black African partners to analyze how the participants conceptualize their Whiteness and make connections between their subjectivities and histories of White domination. The women's articulations reveal that through new relational and spatial experiences across multiple forms of difference, White women can develop a changing relationship to Whiteness and what it represents in neocolonial spaces on the African continent, the Canadian settler colonial context, and within their own familial lineages and relationships. Findings suggest that for White women to witness the historical weight of their Whiteness, forming linkages between their lives and broader political, economic, and social conditions of inequity is necessary. I argue White women need to cultivate spaces of critical engagement, such as the spaces created in the study, where they can begin to imagine themselves as different racialized subjects.
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Fostering a Relational Pedagogy: Self-Study as Transformative Praxis, 2018
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There is growing concern by First Nations
communities, educators and researchers that First
Nat... more There is growing concern by First Nations
communities, educators and researchers that First
Nations children are being misdiagnosed with
speech-language delays and impairments. This
may be attributed in part to misunderstandings
about First Nations English language dialects. Numerous scholars advocate for the examination and documentation of Aboriginal English dialects in Canada and elsewhere, to inform the development of
culturally appropriate assessment tools and practices, and to help Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) provide appropriate assessment services for First Nations children.
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Standard language assessment tools are frequently employed to assess speech and language developm... more Standard language assessment tools are frequently employed to assess speech and language development in early childhood. However, there is growing concern
amongst parents, practitioners, and researchers alike that standard language assessments do not accurately reflect the language development of Indigenous children, and in fact can have detrimental effects on their development. While literature in the area of Indigenous children’s language development is limited, research continues to emerge on the urgent necessity to
employ “culturally safe” and “culturally relevant” assessment practices for Indigenous children, which bear in mind situated historical, socioeconomic, geographic, and political conditions.
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This paper engages the question of kindred practice as contemplated by three members of a researc... more This paper engages the question of kindred practice as contemplated by three members of a research group working toward decolonization and Indigenization. The focus on kindred practice is informed by the title and description of the wâhkôhtowin: Indigenizing practice, linking kindred spirits conference held in September 2014, at the University of Saskatchewan. Being each positioned uniquely in relation to social power hierarchies, for the authors, the notion of what it means to be kindred in advocacy carries nuanced dynamics and inflections. As the piece unfolds, the authors elaborate key attributes of practice believed to both underlie our kindred relationship, and to align with our commitment to work towards decolonization and Indigenization.
ôta kâ-masinahikâtek ôma masinahikan ôta e-kî-nistokamâtocik e-nanitonâhkik tânisi cîhkâhtaw peyakwan e-kî-isi-wâpahtamihk ôma kâkwe-kweskipimâtisihk ekwa ka-kîwe-totamihk iyiniwewin. e-kî-mâmiskohtamihk esa wâhkôhtowin: iyiniwewin, kâkî-mâmawi-api nôcihtowipîsim 2014, kihci-kiskinwamâtohwikamikohk U of S. ôma mîna kîtapicik ekwa ka-isi-atoskâtahkik, wâpahtamok mitoni cîhkâhtaw peykwan e-isi-nayâhtakik ôma kâkwe-kweskipitâhkik kihci-kiskinwamâtohwikamikohk ekwa ka-mâmawi-kamâtocik. n this paper, three uniquely positioned researchers combine voices to share a vision of kindred practice developed by collaborating as a research group. Our aim was to work towards decolonizing and Indigenizing our practices as educators and researchers. Our discussion in the paper grows from a conscious practice of identifying individual subject positions, and naming the unequal power relations that govern them. We envision kindred practice as a collective process of becoming that is grounded in reciprocity, relationality, and a shared commitment to praxis (Cajete, 2000).
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Although more white women live, love, and mother in multiracial contexts, there remains limited s... more Although more white women live, love, and mother in multiracial contexts, there remains limited scholarship on them, particularly what role they can play in anti-racism efforts. In this article, I consider what antiracist mothering means to white women in multiracial families, and how they practice antiracist mothering in their lives. I draw on data from two participant workshop discussions on antiracism and mothering, held as part of a larger qualitative study of ten white women in multiracial families in Canada. The participant dialogues reveal four key themes: facing fear, developing critical skills, finding "comfort in discomfort," and engaging in self-reflective learning. The research findings demonstrate how white women in multiracial families can be proactive in their negotiation and resistance to dominant discourses of race and racism, especially if they are willing to participate in ongoing learning. The research study suggests using an antiracism framework to explore the perspectives and practices of white mothers in multiracial families is informative to reconceptualizing their mothering roles, and how they can cultivate their own and their children's critical skills. Participant workshops are recommended as a method to engage issues of race and difference with white women in multiracial families.
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Books by Willow Samara Allen
Academic project designs and methods: From professional development to critical and creative prac... more Academic project designs and methods: From professional development to critical and creative practice is the first textbook of its kind to address an important element or shift in fields such as education, arts, social sciences, and humanities. For many years, university professional and non-professional programmes have been moving away from an exclusive focus on traditional academic manuscript-based graduate theses towards practical, creative, and/or critically self-reflective, academic non-traditional non-thesis projects. Using the term project throughout this book is important as it recognizes and legitimizes the difference yet equal value of these alternative academic practices. The benefits of academic projects to students are many. They can be useful for students’ existing or future careers (e.g., workshop design, website creation, student leadership training curriculum); allow greater flexibility for highly imaginative and arts-based skill sets or work (e.g., zines, community mapping, visual learning materials, exhibitions or installations); or provide textual and visual analysis which is responsive to contemporary or working contexts (e.g., social media analysis, museum content explorations, policy analysis). While academic projects employ different structures to traditional or normative theses —and therefore offer different uses and values to graduate students—they are equally legitimate and important forms of scholarship.
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DIO Press, 2021
We live in a period of uncertainty characterized by climate change, the rise of populism, mass mi... more We live in a period of uncertainty characterized by climate change, the rise of populism, mass migration across borders, and severe economic, political and social inequities. To understand how these realities impact ourselves and each other, and what we can do about them, this book creates a third space for scholars, activists and practitioners across disciplines and sectors to engage in dialogues across differences using duoethnography. Through dialogical storytelling, each chapter shares experiences as a site of critical inquiry into the various ‘isms’ that frame inequities (racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Whiteness, ableism, religion oppression and more). This book is an opening and an invitation to engage in dialogue with/among each other as a means to mobilize in order to dismantle the systems and processes of power and privilege that sustain uncertainty.
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Papers by Willow Samara Allen
communities, educators and researchers that First
Nations children are being misdiagnosed with
speech-language delays and impairments. This
may be attributed in part to misunderstandings
about First Nations English language dialects. Numerous scholars advocate for the examination and documentation of Aboriginal English dialects in Canada and elsewhere, to inform the development of
culturally appropriate assessment tools and practices, and to help Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) provide appropriate assessment services for First Nations children.
amongst parents, practitioners, and researchers alike that standard language assessments do not accurately reflect the language development of Indigenous children, and in fact can have detrimental effects on their development. While literature in the area of Indigenous children’s language development is limited, research continues to emerge on the urgent necessity to
employ “culturally safe” and “culturally relevant” assessment practices for Indigenous children, which bear in mind situated historical, socioeconomic, geographic, and political conditions.
ôta kâ-masinahikâtek ôma masinahikan ôta e-kî-nistokamâtocik e-nanitonâhkik tânisi cîhkâhtaw peyakwan e-kî-isi-wâpahtamihk ôma kâkwe-kweskipimâtisihk ekwa ka-kîwe-totamihk iyiniwewin. e-kî-mâmiskohtamihk esa wâhkôhtowin: iyiniwewin, kâkî-mâmawi-api nôcihtowipîsim 2014, kihci-kiskinwamâtohwikamikohk U of S. ôma mîna kîtapicik ekwa ka-isi-atoskâtahkik, wâpahtamok mitoni cîhkâhtaw peykwan e-isi-nayâhtakik ôma kâkwe-kweskipitâhkik kihci-kiskinwamâtohwikamikohk ekwa ka-mâmawi-kamâtocik. n this paper, three uniquely positioned researchers combine voices to share a vision of kindred practice developed by collaborating as a research group. Our aim was to work towards decolonizing and Indigenizing our practices as educators and researchers. Our discussion in the paper grows from a conscious practice of identifying individual subject positions, and naming the unequal power relations that govern them. We envision kindred practice as a collective process of becoming that is grounded in reciprocity, relationality, and a shared commitment to praxis (Cajete, 2000).
Books by Willow Samara Allen
communities, educators and researchers that First
Nations children are being misdiagnosed with
speech-language delays and impairments. This
may be attributed in part to misunderstandings
about First Nations English language dialects. Numerous scholars advocate for the examination and documentation of Aboriginal English dialects in Canada and elsewhere, to inform the development of
culturally appropriate assessment tools and practices, and to help Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) provide appropriate assessment services for First Nations children.
amongst parents, practitioners, and researchers alike that standard language assessments do not accurately reflect the language development of Indigenous children, and in fact can have detrimental effects on their development. While literature in the area of Indigenous children’s language development is limited, research continues to emerge on the urgent necessity to
employ “culturally safe” and “culturally relevant” assessment practices for Indigenous children, which bear in mind situated historical, socioeconomic, geographic, and political conditions.
ôta kâ-masinahikâtek ôma masinahikan ôta e-kî-nistokamâtocik e-nanitonâhkik tânisi cîhkâhtaw peyakwan e-kî-isi-wâpahtamihk ôma kâkwe-kweskipimâtisihk ekwa ka-kîwe-totamihk iyiniwewin. e-kî-mâmiskohtamihk esa wâhkôhtowin: iyiniwewin, kâkî-mâmawi-api nôcihtowipîsim 2014, kihci-kiskinwamâtohwikamikohk U of S. ôma mîna kîtapicik ekwa ka-isi-atoskâtahkik, wâpahtamok mitoni cîhkâhtaw peykwan e-isi-nayâhtakik ôma kâkwe-kweskipitâhkik kihci-kiskinwamâtohwikamikohk ekwa ka-mâmawi-kamâtocik. n this paper, three uniquely positioned researchers combine voices to share a vision of kindred practice developed by collaborating as a research group. Our aim was to work towards decolonizing and Indigenizing our practices as educators and researchers. Our discussion in the paper grows from a conscious practice of identifying individual subject positions, and naming the unequal power relations that govern them. We envision kindred practice as a collective process of becoming that is grounded in reciprocity, relationality, and a shared commitment to praxis (Cajete, 2000).