Collaboration as a Healing Research Tool: The Narratives of Three Early Childhood Researchers

• In Event: 44.052 - Decolonizing and Indigenous Cross-Cultural Research Methodologies

Abstract

Cross-cultural research can be time-consuming, costly, ethnocentric, and emotionally draining when undertaken as a solo event. As such, this paper examines three researchers from different institutions within the USA and with research agendas in various countries (Nepal, USA, & Nicaragua), to discuss the practical and theoretical aspects that we employed to create time and space for a cross-cultural research project based on collaboration as the salient methodological tool. Dillard (2006) suggests, “Qualitative research arises from a deep, sometimes even intimate relationship between human beings and within human beings themselves. The researcher cannot actually engage in the research by studying or reading alone. He/she must experience the research, the searching again, in the company of others. (p. 102). Here, Dillard (2006) points out the collective nature of research process and product, and more importantly, the need to “search again” in the company of others through collaborative relationships. Building off this concept, this paper examines the narratives of the three researchers while doing fieldwork in the United States, Nepal, and Nicaragua. The collaborative tools of this methodology rest on the assumption that the researcher acknowledge their own subjectivities as cultural, racial, gendered and spiritual human beings whom rely on the conditions of “unconditional love, compassion, reciprocity, ritual, and gratitude" when conducting research that is ethical and reflective as well as action-oriented towards helping members of the research become “more fully human” (Freire, 1970).

This becoming more fully human applies not only to the researched but also to those researching therefore, instigating application for a decolonizing framework (Smith, 2008, p. 3). Smith (2008) states that “sharing knowledge is a long-term commitment” and, although as researchers and scholars, we have the capacity to continue the knowledge sharing process, we must understand that in many communities, knowledge is regarded as a powerful tool. Therefore there is a profound need to go beyond our researcher norms by “decolonizing” our methodologies and ourselves as cross-cultural researchers. According to Smith (2008) “decolonizing or demystifying” is a method that is closely related to “imperialism and colonialism” at different levels. For example, a large number of researches in developing countries conducted by Western researchers were accepted as a process for the greater good no matter how culturally insensitive or offensive they were. These researches therefore, were ubiquitous embodiments of “power and dominance” (p. 60). In our efforts to develop a decolonizing methodology along with the healing methodology, we realized that our cross-cultural research did not seem any different from the ones that compared and contrasted communities in developing and developed countries. As three female scholars, from highly regarded universities in the United States, we understood that our attempt to collaborate and produce authentic knowledge through this cross-cultural research must begin with retrospection to find our own humanness. By juxtaposing our own research histories, our passions and our concerns with the ones being researched we would be able to “recover ourselves, to claim a space” and “develop a sense of authentic humanity” (Smith, 2008, p. 23).

Authors

• Samara Madrid Akpovo, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville

• Deborah Young, Naropa University

• Sapna Thapa, University of Wisconsin - Stout