Research in the Shadows: A Critique of “On Equality, Visibility, and the Fine Arts Program in a Black Elementary School”

Abstract

I must share immediately that I undertake this critique with considerable trepidation for I have the distinct impression that what I am trying to assess here lives in the shadows.* All will not be as it may appear. To wit, when I indicate my concerns about multiple methodological shortcomings in the piece, I anticipate hearing back that the focus is not on data produced from a methodological straightjacket, but on that which emerges from inference, interpretation, and impression. Alternatively, if I ask, Is this all there is to educational criticism?, I suspect to hear back that, no, this is but one early example and there is much more to come. Still again, when I question the supporting evidence for the conclusions drawn in the article, I may well be told that it is not appropriate to hold educational criticism to the standards of traditional research practice when this new approach relies on intuitive analysis. And, finally, when I question whether those using educational criticism do so in order to garb personal ideological views in the respectable cloak of academic research, I will be assured that such is not the case, regardless of the rhetorical flights of ideological musings in the present article. I have considerable problems with the article. But I also must admit my problems arise because my framework for evaluating this work arises from a perspective on how to view research in general, and qualitative work in particular, that does not include criteria for something like educational criticism which stands so completely away from established qualitative practice. Consequently, if the countercharge is one of traditionalism, research myopia, and an unwillingness to accept this article as an avant-garde example of qualitative research for the 1990s, then there is little or no common ground between the author and myself. If educational criticism