Using researcher self-reflexivity in international inclusive education to leverage change: Applications in a study in India

• In Event: Roundtable Group 6
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Addressing the need for change through educational infrastructure, equity and inclusivity

Proposal

Researchers argue the need for engaging in a process of recognizing their own positionality when conducting educational research, particularly within international contexts (Bukamal, 2022; Chin, et al., 2022; Halilovic, 2022; Massoud, 2022), and of paying “greater attention to how their self-identifications, experiences of marginalization, or professional privileges influence their research questions, data collection, and analysis” (Massoud, 2022, p. 65). This phenomenon of opening up one’s self-identifications – rather than only one’s scholarly ideas – to criticism (Bukamal, 2022) through self-reflexivity can yield “confessional accounts of methodology” (Finlay, 2002; Supski & Maher, 2021). Emerging from anthropological research, positionality and self-reflexivity are still methodologically new to the field of international inclusive education. However, given the intersectionality of gender, caste, class, language, disability, and religion, among others, in any analysis of inclusive education, particularly within the complex contexts of the global South, the need for researchers to engage in reflexivity and understand the influence of their self-identification on their research becomes significant. Finlay (2002) identifies five variants of reflexivity, of which this presentation will focus on three, introspection, intersubjective reflection, and social critique, to illustrate how aspects of the researcher’s insider/outsider statuses can permeate an entire study. The analysis is based on a qualitative study I conducted in a metropolitan area in India over four months in six English-medium, private schools, three of which were low-fee-paying. Situated within the theoretical framework of DisCrit which argues the need for critical understandings of the intersection between disability, class, race, gender, and sexuality (Annamma et al., 2018; Erevelles, 2011; Ferri & Connor, 2005), the purpose of the study was to understand teachers’ and parents’ perspectives on student success and failure, and how these might vary based on students’ socio-economic status and access to English outside of school. While data collection methods included interviews with teachers and parents, classroom observations, and document analysis for triangulation, this presentation delves deeply into the reflective journal that I maintained for the duration of the study and analyzes my own positionality and insider-outsider status when conducting this study in the six schools. Instances of introspection that influenced the choice of topic include my own prior experiences as a teacher of non-English-speaking students in an English-medium school in India. Instances of intersubjective reflection that affected the data collection include my realization that, as a caste- and class-privileged Indian woman, my interactions with low-income, so-called “lower caste” parents were limited by their automatic deference towards me. Instances of social critique affecting the data analysis include my awareness as an insider of how much power imbalances between parents and teachers were influenced by perceptions of English-speaking skills and “good accents”, resulting in differing levels of parents’ ability to demand supports for their children who were struggling academically. The presentation asks: How can self-reflexivity and researcher positionality become tools for activism and leverage for protest by opening up a more radical consciousness that researchers can use to empower their participants?

Author

• Maya Kalyanpur, University of San Diego