Introduction: Common Threads: Culturalized Patterns and Conceptual Understandings of Race, Research, and the Politics of Schooling

The purposes of this book are rooted in a move from invisibility to visibility and silence to voice. This work uses autoethnography as an enterprise to break down traditional barriers that support the invisibility of diverse epistemologies (Altheide & Johnson, 2011). The reality of invisibility and silence has plagued marginalized scholars in their attempt to make known the cultural significance found in the planning and execution of autoethnographic research. As a result, this book purposes to support the visibility and voice of scholars who conduct autoethnographic research from a critical theoretical framework. This work further supports the research community as it examines and reexamines culturally indigenous epistemologies as a viable vehicle for rigorous and authentic inquiry (Dillard, 2000).