Interrogating Classroom Relationships and Events: Using Portraiture and Critical Race Theory in Education Research

Source: Educational Researcher, Volume 36, Number 3, April 2007.

This article explores the use of the methodology of portraiture and the analytic framework of critical race theory (CRT) to evaluate success and failure in urban classrooms. Portraiture and CRT share a number of features that make the two a viable pair for conducting research in urban schools.

In combination, portraiture and CRT allow researchers to evoke the personal, the professional, and the political to illuminate issues of race, class, and gender in education research and to create possibilities for urban school reform as social action.