Provoking positionality in fieldnotes: Primary school case study research in Kenya

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: What about fieldnotes in comparative and international education research? Approaches, practices and ethical considerations

Proposal

Fieldnotes are subjective reflections of the researcher’s perceptions that record the gaze of the researcher as much as the activities being observed (Koro-Ljungberg & Grackhamer, 2005). My doctoral dissertation used qualitative case study research to examine the relationship between gender safety, gender violence and learning processes in two primary schools in Kirinyaga County, Kenya. Fieldnotes were an important tool documenting my observations during the participant observation and the interview stages of the project. They were coded alongside transcripts of individual semi-structured teacher interviews and individual art-based student interviews using Charmaz’s Constructivist Grounded Theory (2014) as the primary analytical framework. Frequent memoing across data sources was important to stimulate and record critical self-reflection on ethical dynamics related to positionality and privilege in the research process, including the use of fieldnotes. This presentation highlights the challenges encountered in taking fieldnotes, enhanced by disconnects of privilege and power between researcher and participants, and describes strategies used to maximize the detail and accuracy of the field notes while limiting the discomfort they can impose upon the research participants.

Fieldnotes are a prominent method used in qualitative research in comparative international education, making them important to consider from an ethical perspective. This research draws on the concept of ‘researching others’ (Fawcett & Hearn, 2004), which calls for continued self-reflexivity and interrogation of the researcher’s social bases of knowledge, political agendas, and the historical context of the research setting and topic. In examining reflexivity, it considers the role of the researcher as both writer and reader of fieldnotes. It also identifies the ways in which the fieldnotes capture multiple power relationships including between researcher and her participants, her ‘multiple selves’ and her audience or epistemic community (Doucet, 2008).

Discourse analysis is used to examine the typed and handwritten fieldnotes, as well as the resulting doctoral dissertation and methodological and empirical journal articles in which analysis of the fieldnotes and other data sources is presented. These sources illuminate the process by which the fieldnotes were initially taken (handwritten notes), then transformed into usable data (typed notes), and finally presented in academic writing. My analysis will provide guidance for other education researchers using fieldnotes, particularly in research communities in which they are an outsider. The critical suggestions offered based on my experience form part of a conversation leading to increasingly ethical research that prioritizes participant comfort over research agenda.

Author

• Catherine Vanner, McGill University