In this article, we conceptualize rest as radical qualitative pedagogy drawing on the work of bell hooks (2003, 2010, 2014) and Tricia Hersey (2022). We offer rest as a critical pedagogy that provides entry points for deconstructing the curricular logics of white supremacy and colonialism while emphasizing vulnerability, self-reflection, and care (hooks, 2014). This paper contends that to teach critical qualitative research (and develop critical qualitative researchers), we also need to critically confront how what we teach (and learn) are grounded in and informed by logics of white supremacy and colonialism. These logics include perfectionism, urgency, defensiveness, worship of the written word, paternalism, either/or thinking, and individualism (Okun & Jones, 2001). We offer rest as a critical philosophy to grapple with these logics as both instructors and learners of qualitative inquiry. In this article, we move between the pedagogical and methodological moves of nine qualitative scholars (eight students and their instructor) to examine the challenges and constraints of teaching with rest as critical pedagogy. We ask: How does a radical pedagogy of rest produce an ethic of hope and possibility in qualitative methods/pedagogy? How can embracing a radical pedagogy of rest rupture/disrupt/challenge/crack open the patriarchal, and neo-colonial impulses and discourses endemic to qualitative pedagogy?
Presented at Southeast Philosophy of Education Society Annual Meeting 2025 (Greenville, South Carolina)
Under review: Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (DCQR). Special Issue: Pedagogies for animating critical qualitative inquiry.
