What Paradigmatic Perspectives Make Possible: Considerations for Pedagogies and the Doing of (Post-)Qualitative Inquiry

• In Event: Writing Together-Apart: Navigating the Post-Qualitative, New Materialist, and Critical Posthumanist Research Across Disciplines

Abstract

Purposes & Perspectives
For some time now, I have (co)researched the teaching of qualitative research, specifically from an ethico-onto-epistemological stance and the ethics and justice of doing this work in the academy (Author, blinded). We write about paradigms not only as things or nouns but also as verbs, do/thing--paradigming. We discuss the inten(t/s)ional ways we tried to create spaces for thinking about paradigms as polyphonic and proliferating. We also share the joyful tensions of this work (hence, inten(t/s)ionalities) and specific pedagogical practices that we believe created a space for students to lean into and explore paradigms not only as a thing but also as a doing—paradigming.

Various philosophical assumptions on ontology (being), epistemology (knowing), and axiology (doing) make particular paradigms thinkable. In this paper, paradigmatic assumptions within the ontological turn are discussed in relation to post qualitative inquiry practices and discusses what paradigmatic perspectives make possible for inquiry practices, pedagogies, and ethics. I discuss various aspects of paradigms (e.g., the subject, language, discourse, reality, truth, knowledge, identity, agency) and how those shape practices of inquiry. This paper is an invitation to think of paradigms not as a safety net or fixed category that one has to belong to with allegiance. In other words, “choosing” a paradigm (if one does that) does not mean that research will follow neatly in a linear order.

Modes of Inquiry & Data
This paper is methodological, theoretical and pedagogical all in one! Drawing upon post-philosophies such as posthumanism, poststructuralism and feminist ‘new’ materialisms, I discuss how they make inquiry practices (un)thinkable and (im)possible. Thus, throughout the paper, transcripts from conversations with graduate students (from various focus groups since 2015) are presented as interlude(ing) insights. I share questions and provocations from my learning-with students regarding paradigmatic assumptions of paradigms and how the tensions between paradigms can be a productive space and perhaps even produce new ways of thinking, knowing, and doing inquiry. The paper is organized by the following areas:
Paradigms at a Crossroads: Thomas Kuhn Warned Us
Paradigms Becoming Colors, Sports, and Drinks: Learning from Patti Lather
Becoming Paradigm Masks: Dramatic Sketches of Paradigms and Creating with Artistic Tools
Becoming Post Qualitative Inquirers: Considerations from Elizabeth St. Pierre
Becoming Paradigms: Living in a World Out of Joint

Insights & Scholarly Significance
Those of us engaging in (post) qualitative inquiry, find ourselves creating new relationships, concepts, terms with one another as we try to do inquiry differently inspired by post philosophies. There is an ethics-of-the-now in this work as it matters how we do inquiry—how we go about engaging with/in the world and research relationships with humans and more-than-humans. Our inquiry practices (are a part of) produce(ing) the world. There is also an ethics in how we teach our students to become inquirers in this lively world. It isn’t enough to teach students to be socially just and ethical researchers, we also have to live-out these theories and philosophies in our pedagogies in higher education—now.

Author

• Candace R. Kuby, University of Missouri