For Kincheloe and McLaren (2000) a criticalist goal of any critical ethnography, in its various forms, is the attempt'to free the object ofanalysis from the tyranny offixed, unassailable categories and to rethink subjectivity itselfas a permanently unclosed, always partial, narrative engagement with text and context' (p 301). In starting from the position that education is
intrinsically political critical ethnography provides for an advocacy for the oppressed. This
advocacy may be obtained through various intersecting activities such as: documenting the nature of the oppression; documenting the possible process of empowerment as a journey away from the documented oppression; conscientizing (the catalytic validation) or accelerating the conscientization of the oppressed and the oppressors; a reflective awareness of the rights and obligations of humans without which there is no way to conceptualise empowerment, equity and any struggle towards liberation; sensitising the research community to the implications of research for a quality life through linking intellectual work to real-life conditions; and reaching that level of understanding of the historical, political, social, and economic contexts that support the abuse of power and
oppression, the neglect and disregard for human rights and ways of learning about and internalising rights and obligations that work towards social justice. Through such efforts a relationship between the intellectual activity of research and the praxis of the daily life of the researcher may be forged as happened in my biology classroom (Trueba, 1999).
outside the biology classroom. My task then became one of establishing whether or not racism did exist in my classroom and then illuminating how it occurred and was managed if it did exist.
This study demanded that I also look at my role - that I also interrogate myself. This would be a daunting and intimidating task because a self-study would reveal that which I would prefer not to acknowledge and know about myself. Itwould be these fears that would guide my selected truths that I would be willing to share with you as the reader and audience. Engaging with the students ensured that I had to deal with the 'Who' I presented in my classroom - while still a selected 'public persona' the selections could not exclude the 'Who' I was in the biology classroom. At the same time any study that focuses on oppression and begins by locating race at its centre is also difficult to research from just on the 'outside' - it would require also my, the researcher's, involvement.
Having been socialised within a range of oppressions and privileges as a Black South African middle class woman of Indian origin I was located in a position that made it possible for me to study privilege, power and oppression through a critical self-ethnography. My goal was towards contributing to the beginning of social justice in the lives of the students who passed through my classroom. Nai've or tangible, I believed that this could be worked towards using classroom practice to influence not only that which went on in the classroom but also influence the lives of the students in both the school and the wider community.
Being caught between a rock and a hard place - the ethnographer's dilemma of shaping the research encounter and representing the students that I saw, heard and experienced on their terms while doing this through my own personal, epistemological, ontological and cultural frameworks and from my position of power as both the researcher and the biology teacher. What then shaped my research interests if I was to see myself in the research? Part of me was the outcome of a growing in and through apartheid - first as Black and then as woman. As an Indian I was disadvantaged
through the oppressions and subordinations of my life in an apartheid South Africa where I was marginalized through my race by a White-centred society. I was 'advantaged', relative to being Black, within my own group context as an Indian - economically, politically, educationally and culturally. The capital accrued from this 'advantaged' vantage point made visible and stark the disadvantages of my 'advantage' and became my subconscious dilemma. Itis this dilemma that has and continues to fuel my interests in discrimination and social justice. Itis through this dilemma through which I heard and made sense of students in my class. I did begin with a nai've
understanding of racism as that grounded in the Black-White binary of race discriminations. Itwas both student experiences together with encounters of the epistemology and ontology of racism as a
lens through which I was 'forced' to view discriminations that shattered that naivety. J became sensitive through the research process to a variety of integrated discriminations ofrace, gender, class, language, religion and power - all playing themselves out in different ways through space and time.
In my work I attempted, like Ladson-Bil1ings (2000, p268), to tell a story about my work, my students and myself. This is located in how I understand myself as a researcher - who I am, whatJ believe and my experiences - because all these affect and influence the what, the how and the why of my research. My decision to research my classroom was political in an effort to demystify and deconstruct what went on in my classroom of persons that was made up of persons that lived in that continuum of being both the oppressor and the oppressed together with a content that consolidated the existing continuum. Telling my story required that as a teacher-researcher I engaged in
systematic self-critical inquiry based on my practice to build theory and in this way to contribute to educational research and also to re-address, what for me were, pedagogical conflicts and challenges.
The theory developed could then be used as a guide towards understanding and further developing (and improving) my own practice in teaching towards social justice.
My research in the form of a systematic study of professional action within my biology classroom provided the opportunity for both the students and myself to engage in critical reflection and also created opportunities that allowed a challenging of conventional wisdom of biology teaching and learning. I wanted to expose what went on in my classroom about persons who were both the oppressor and the oppressed and how challenging through biology education could rupture these positions.
Through this the production of knowledge about the teaching and learning within the biology classroom would become possible. Together with students I explored the links between knowledge and action and the contexts shaping knowledge and action both in and outside my classroom. This opportunity to see familiar traditional biology education in new and different ways made it possible to both change and develop biology knowledge and practice in my classroom. Making the familiar of my biology classroom strange and problematic demanded self-awareness on my part of what it was that I was engaging with in the teaching-learning games played in biology in my grade 11 classroom. This self-awareness needed to extend to an acknowledgement of my role in the generation and analysis of my data so that my bias in the research process became evident to all - especially me. This then demanded that I took cognisance of the socio-historical processes that gave
rise to the school and classroom practices that I engaged with - and through this the ideology that governed the process. Only then could I begin to deconstruct my own practice (Triclogus, 200 I).
This declared self-awareness provides for my reflexivity as a researcher and is essential to the rigour employed in both the gathering and the analysis of my data.
My research allowed me to assume an insider/outsider position as a researcher. My insider position that allowed for trust came from me having worked with the subjects i.e. the students for at least two years previously as their general science and then as their biology teacher. They also knew of me as a teacher in the school, the research site, from the time they came into the school - at least three years previously. Mutual knowledge and trust between the students and myself contributed to the choice of this class for the project. The presence of three race groups in this class, Indian, Black and Coloured also played a role. Other classes had in them only Indian and Black students. The students in this class also demonstrated a range of abilities in biology as a subject and this also influenced the choice I made. As students of the school where I taught they knew how I enacted my beliefs about my position and role as teacher and also how I expressed myself on the variety of issues that were part of the ever-unfolding sagas in our daily existence at the school and it was this that contributed to the trust in our interaction during the research process. I interpreted from those students that shared what shaped their lives with me, both in and outside of the classroom, that trust existed between the students and myself. I was also cognisant of those students who at different times chose to 'close' themselves to what was going on in the classroom - this was true of different students at different times. I also needed to ask whether my insider position played a role in
'colonizing' and 'oppressing' the students in the course of the research. I was explicit on various occasions about my position of privilege - so students were aware of this and thus privilege, I believe, minimised itself. I was also in a position of authority - a position that I was open about and a position I used, at times, to decide how the interactionls would proceed between students
themselves and the students and me.
Reciprocity in my research was arrived at through the lessons where there was full but sensitive disclosure on my part of where I was located on issues around gender, class, race etc. - through the curriculum of biology and as a teacher in the classroom and at the school. This was then enhanced through interviews with individuals and a focused group interview around the research issues that were grounded in notions of gender, race, class, religion, language and power. Both the classroom interactions and the individual and focused group interview allowed for discussions on existing 'false' consciousness around issues of discrimination, which then allowed for the questioning of
taken-for-granted beliefs and authority within the existing culture (Lather, 1986, p266). Itwas this reciprocity in my research that implied both a give-and-take and a mutual negotiation of meaning and power. In this way reciprocity as a matter of both intent and degree was met within my research design.