Critical race theory as a bridge in science training: the California State University, Northridge BUILD PODER program

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Unconscious bias and explicit forms of discrimination continue to pervade academic institutions. Multicultural and diversity training activities have not been sufficient in making structural and social changes leading to equity, therefore, a new form of critical consciousness is needed to train diverse scientists with new research questions, methods, and perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to describe Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD); Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research (PODER), which is an undergraduate biomedical research training program based on transformative framework rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT).

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

By employing a CRT-informed curriculum and training in BUILD PODER, students are empowered not only to gain access but also to thrive in graduate programs and beyond. Poder means "power" or "to be able to" in Spanish. Essentially, we are "building power" using students' strengths and empowering them as learners. The new curriculum helps students understand institutional policies and practices that may prevent them from persisting in higher education, learn to become their own advocates, and successfully confront social barriers and instances of inequities and discrimination. To challenge these barriers and sustain campus changes in support of students, BUILD PODER works toward changing campus culture and research mentoring relationships. By joining with ongoing university structures such as the state university Graduation Initiative, we include CRT tenets into the campus dialogue and stimulate campus-wide discussions around institutional change. Strong ties with five community college partners also enrich BUILD PODER's student body and strengthen mentor diversity. Preliminary evaluation data suggest that BUILD PODER's program has enhanced the racial/ethnic consciousness of the campus community, is effective in encouraging more egalitarian and respectful faculty-student relationships, and is a rigorous program of biomedical research training that supports students as they achieve their goals.

IMPLICATIONS

Biomedical research programs may benefit from a reanalysis of the fit between current training programs and student strengths. By incorporating the voices of talented youth, drawing upon their native strengths, we will generate a new science that links biomedical research to community health and social justice, generating progress toward health equity through a promising new generation of scholars.

Shifting Research Dynamics: Addressing Power and Maximising Participation through Participatory Research Techniques in Participatory Research

Power dynamics in the research interaction are inevitable, particularly in research in rural contexts. Hierarchical and heterogeneous research groups, and the disproportionate power of the researcher in relation to the research participants, are some of the problems that create particular challenges for the social science researcher. Power relations within the research context also affect the way in which knowledge is generated. Participatory research (PR) acknowledges and actively addresses many of these power dynamics. Through the use of novel techniques, PR processes focus on maximising participation and facilitating the expression of multiple voices within the research context. The use of visual representations de-emphasises verbal fluency and also creates the potential for change. PR also has a specific focus on accessing the more marginalized and most disempowered sections of a community. Despite the power dynamics, PR methods enable participants to articulate, extend, and analyse their local knowledge. Using photographs of participatory activities, drawn from the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tradition, several ways in which participatory research techniques alter some of these research dynamics are illustrated, e.g. who talks and who acts in the process; whose knowledge dominates in the process; whose language is used as a medium in the process; and how is the knowledge produced. The potential of participatory research engagements to enable participation, access local knowledge, and facilitate critical reflection is discussed. The combination of these factors activates the agency of the research participants, potentially effecting change.