Mass incarceration in America is a moral, economic, and societal crisis with serious implications for many men of color and high school non-completers who are incarcerated at proportionally higher rates than Whites or college graduates. For the formerly incarcerated, engagement in adult learning, whether high school equivalency (HSE) or college, decreases the likelihood that they will return to prison, increases opportunities for employment, and serves as a powerful re-integration tool in society. This article describes one community college’s collaborative inquiry and writing project that uses archival, auto-ethnographic, and interview data to explore how formerly incarcerated students might be effectively engaged in adult education and offers this inquiry project as a potential model for this engagement. Through the voice of the faculty/instructor, this article conceptualizes the inquiry writing project process using a two-part framework: Chevalier and Buckles’ five stages of collaborative inquiry and critical race theory (CRT).
AlexanderM. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press.
2.
BellD. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93, 518-534.
3.
BrooksA.WatkinsK. (1994). A new era for action technologies: A look at the issues. In BrooksA.WatkinsK. (Eds.), The emerging power of action inquiry technologies (New Directions for Adult Education and Continuing Education, No. 63) (pp. 5-16). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
4.
CarlsonJ. (2010). Avoiding traps in member checking. The Qualitative Report, 15, 1102-1113.
5.
ChevalierJ.BucklesD. (2013). Handbook for participatory action research, planning and evaluation. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: SAS2 Dialogue.
6.
ClossonR. (2010). Critical race theory and adult education. Adult Education Quarterly, 60, 261-283.
7.
CorbinJ.StraussA. L. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: SAGE.
8.
CreswellJ. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
9.
DavisL.BozickR.SteeleJ.SaundersJ.MilesJ. (2013). Evaluating the effectiveness of correctional education: A Meta-analysis of programs that provide education to incarcerated adults. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance.
10.
DenzinN. K.LincolnY. S. (2008). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
hooksb. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.
13.
HorsmanJ. (2000). Moving forward: Approaches and activities to support women’s learning. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Parkdale Project Read.
14.
KaslE.YorksL. (2010). “Whose inquiry is this anyway?” Money, power, reports and collaborative inquiry. Adult Education Quarterly, 60, 315-338.
15.
KonrathS.O’BrienE.HsingC. (2011) Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 180-188.
16.
Ladson-BillingsG. (2005). The evolving role of critical race theory in educational scholarship. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8, 115-119.
17.
LincolnY. S.GubaE. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
18.
MesirowJ. (1998). On critical reflection. Adult Education Quarterly, 48, 185-198.
19.
MillerB.MondesirJ.StaterT.SchwartzJ. (2014). Returning to school after incarceration: Policy, prisoners and the classroom. In SchwartzJ.Rosser-MimsD.DraytonB.GuyT. (Eds.), Swimming upstream: Black males in adult education (New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education, No. 144) pp. (69-78). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
20.
MilnerH. R. (2007). Race, culture, and researcher positionality: Working through dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen. Educational Researcher, 36, 388-400.
21.
National Research Council. (2014). The growth of incarceration in the United States: Exploring causes and consequences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
22.
PillowW. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. Qualitative Studies in Education, 16, 175-196.
23.
RahmanM. A. (2008). Some trends in the praxis of participatory action research. In ReasonP.BradburyH. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of action research (pp. 49-62). London, England: SAGE.
24.
SchwandtD. (2005). When managers become philosophers: Integrating learning with sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 4, 176-192.
25.
SchwartzJ. (2014). Classrooms of spatial justice: Counter-spaces and young men of color in a GED program. Adult Education Quarterly, 64, 110-127.
26.
SolórzanoD.CejaM.YossoT. (2000). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students. The Journal of Negro Education, 69, 60-73.
27.
SolórzanoD.YossoT. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8, 23-44.
28.
State of New York Department of Correctional Services. (2010). Follow-up study of a sample of offenders who earned high school equivalency diplomas (GEDs) while incarcerated in DOCS. Albany, NY: Harriman Office. Retrieved from http://www.doccs.ny.gov/Research/Reports/2010/GED_evaluation.pdf
29.
SueD. W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
