Stepping Out of the Shadows: Reflections on Shadowing as a Qualitative Research Technique

• In Event: 26.080 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 26.080-9 - Innovative Techniques and Methods for Qualitative Research

Abstract

This paper presentation explores shadowing as a qualitative research technique by reviewing the literature on shadowing and the reflections on my experience collecting data using shadowing. Using my researcher journal as a data source, I reflect on five lessons I learned as a qualitative shadowing researcher in Education: shadowing is not easy, shadowing can be threatening, control is traded between the researcher and the participants, the researcher needs to manage shadowing relationships, and the ethics of shadowing can be gray. The aim of this presentation is to share shadowing with educational researchers so that shadowing becomes accepted as distinct method of qualitative data collection and that shadowing researchers in Education can be confident and well informed of their methodology.

Author

• Kristen Anne Ferguson, Nipissing University