ABSTRACT
Interviewing remains one of the cornerstones of qualitative research methods. However, critical approaches to interviewing must take into account the ways power dynamics are present in and influence the interviewing setting, particularly for historically minoritized populations. In this chapter, we explore the ways power has been addressed in extant research with highlights from our own research. For example, Courtney’s use of arts-based approaches to interviewing with elementary-aged students serve as tools of reflection that foster space for authentic listening and dialogue to occur. Terah Venzant Chambers has used retrospective interviewing with college students as a way of empowering students in time-constrained research contexts. While our research has explicitly centered minoritized students from both the K–12 setting and higher education, in this chapter we also explore critical research that has focused on other populations and employed different approaches/tools to interviewing. We review dialogic approaches such as dialogue groups and sister circles, praxical approaches that seek to dismantle unequal power relations, as well as interview methodologies like that of racial storytelling and pláticas which privilege the lived experiences and epistemologies of historically marginalized groups. Finally, we will discuss the limits and possibilities of the dominant types of interviewing—structured, unstructured, and semi-structured—and the various ways in which power and context impact each approach.
