Positionality in Praxis: Troubled “Insiderness”

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Power, Position, and Reflexivity

Abstract

Many issues are important to consider when conducting qualitative interview research and many of them have been well examined elsewhere. This paper is not to provide a comprehensive literature review, rather, a methodological reflection on my experience in a pilot study of Asian American female school administrators to illustrate the complexity and fluidity of positionality and the ambiguity of an “insider” status created through the positionalities made salient for my participants and myself by the interviewing process. The “insiderness” affords me a degree of social proximity and that paradoxically increases awareness between my participants and me of the social divisions that exist between us. To conclude, implications for future research are discussed.

Authors

• Jia Grace Liang, Kansas State University

• James Sottile, Missouri State University

• Cindy Blair, University of Georgia - Athens