Looking Inside and Out: Researcher as Self-and-Other

• In Event: 49.064 - Revisiting Longitudinal Language Ethnographies: The Case of Bourdieu and Reflexivity

Abstract

1. Objective/ Purposes
The purpose of the self-study is to critically explore the role of the researcher in shaping the research process and product. I argue that as researcher, my subjectivities, identities (ascribed and achieved), and ideologies and biases, help define how and what data are collected, actions and interactions with participants, and the representations of findings. Preissle and Grant (2004) refer to researcher reflexivity as self-conscious and critical study of their own standpoints and assumptions. By revisiting data from ethnographic research studies of adolescents’, I examine how my insider-outsider perspectives and identities (Caribbean, Black, immigrant, teacher/teacher educator, researcher) inform the research contexts both directly and indirectly. The guiding questions: 1. What knowledge and experiences do I bring to the research process? 2. How do my identities position participants? 3. How do my identities position me as participant and the observer? 4. How and whose voice is re-presented?
2. Perspective/ Theoretical framework
The study draws on Bourdieu’s (1977) theory of notion of “reflexive objectivity” that suggests that the meta analysis of the research context provides differentiated and nuanced points of view about the research contexts. By framing the subject/researcher as object explores self within the context of the ethnographic data sets. Maximizing of reflexivity becomes a tool for “objectivication” of social, cultural and academic relationships and points of view of the researcher within in the research.
3. Methods, techniques, modes of enquiry
For this self-study, I use narrative as a method of inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) to interrogate the reflexive practices-in-action, the social contexts, and the affordances and constraints when conducting research, analyzing data, and representing findings with immigrant and minority-group adolescents. The findings are thematically represented in a confessional narrative constructed using supporting empirical data.
4. Data Sources, evidence, objects, materials
Using three longitudinal case studies, the paper examines the primary ethnographic research data collection methods (participant observation, documents/researcher field notes, and interviews) and findings (central themes) across the three ethnographic case studies of immigrant youth in the US secondary schools and home contexts.
5. Results and/ or substantive conclusions
Three key initial findings from this meta-analysis: 1. “Access” to power—Power operates along a continuum of access that defines and delimits the researcher-participant relationships; 2. The omniscient-participant—Researcher as participant who directly and indirectly shapes the research; 3. Navigating Self-and-Other—Tensions of positioning and cultural norms and the ethical responsibilities.
6. Scholarly significance of the study
The field of literacy research and education in general needs not only to understand what knowledge produced but also who is producing it. Re-visiting and examining the role of the researcher in conducting research leads to deeper and more critical understandings of the ways in which the researcher’s habitus, cultural capital and the field (Bourdieu, 1990), inform the research process and outcomes: data collected, the knowledge formed, generated and disseminated, and the experiences produced within that context.

Author

• Cheryl A. McLean, Rutgers University