Diffraction or Reflection? Methodological Implications for Educational Research

• In Event: 69.049 - Critical Posthumanism and Diffractive Post-Qualitative Methodologies

Abstract

Internationally, an interest is emerging in a growing body of work on what has become known as ‘diffractive methodologies’ drawing attention to ontological aspects of research. Diffractive methodologies have largely been developed in response to a dissatisfaction with practices of ‘reflexivity’, which are seen to be grounded in a representational paradigm and the epistemological aspects of research. While work on ‘reflexivity’ and ‘critical reflection’ has over the years become predominant in educational and social science research methodology literature, our reading indicates that there is still important conceptual work to be done putting these two practices--reflection and diffraction--in conversation with each other and exploring their continuities and breaks as well as examining the consequences for research methodologies in education. This presentation raises important questions about how the concepts of diffraction and reflection are defined and understood and discusses the methodological implications for educational research.

Our point of departure in this presentation is Haraway’s and Barad’s suggestion that diffraction constitutes an alternative methodology to reflexivity. From their perspective, reflexivity remains caught up in sameness because of its mirroring of fixed positions, whereas diffraction is specifically attuned to differences and their effects in knowledge-making practices. In addition, diffraction is not only epistemic, but also ontological and ethical (Barad, 2007, 2014). We, therefore, consider in this paper what the methodological implications of both this metaphor and method would be for doing research in education. We acknowledge that there have already been important efforts so far to theorize what a diffractive analysis would imply for research in education. Our analysis joins and builds on these efforts. In light of the prominent influence of the concepts of ‘reflection’, ‘reflexivity’, ‘critical reflection’ and ‘reflective practice’ in the fields of education, professional practice and lifelong learning in recent decades, we wonder: How is diffraction, as a concept/metaphor and a method, really different from reflection? Are there any points of convergence and divergence between these two concepts/practices/ methods? What are the epistemological, ontological, ethical and methodological assumptions in which diffractive analysis and reflexive methodology are grounded? We want to state upfront that our objective here is not to read one practice against the other nor to argue that diffraction is necessarily ‘better’ and can ‘save’ us; we are afraid that such a practice would reiterate the binaries that need to be overcome. Rather, we are interested in putting the two practices in conversation, delving more deeply into their continuities and breaks.

This paper emphasizes the prospects of the notion of diffraction as a tool of analysis, for attentive and detailed reading of texts for the consequential differences that matter. It is suggested that a diffractive analysis goes beyond the idea of reflexivity and interpretation and produces new entangled ways of theorizing and performing research practices, co-constituting new possibilities of strengthening and challenging knowledges. The time has come for educational researchers to reconsider the methodological implications of reflection and explore the ethico-onto-epistemological potentiality of diffraction in the historical continuities and breaks with the traditions of reflection.

Author

• Vivienne Grace Bozalek, University of the Western Cape