An Intersectionality-Based Research Framework and Methodology That Emphasizes Systemic Inequities in Public Schooling, Including Racism, Sexism, and Classism

Abstract

While there is broad support among education scholars for the assertion that inequities of race, gender, and class within education are systemic and intersectional, many education researchers continue to publish research, especially in highly influential journals, like those of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), that either ignore systemic intersectional inequities or treat the inequities as mere variables. In contrast, we provide a proposed intersectionality-based research framework and a methodology that emphasizes systemic inequities in public schooling, including racism, sexism/patriarchy, and classism. We discuss this framework, describe our methodology (drawn mainly from Matias), and illustrate how it could be applied to research on three White teachers. For each of these teachers, we discuss some possibly new insights or “suppositions” that were yielded by the application of our framework and methodology. We then call on other researchers to strongly center systemic intersectional inequities in research and in research methodologies.