Power and positionality: negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures

Early discussions of insider/outsider status assumed that the researcher was predominately an insider or an outsider and that each status carried with it certain advantages and disadvantages. More recent discussions have unveiled the complexity inherent in either status and have acknowledged that the boundaries between the two positions are not all that clearly delineated. Four case studies - a Black woman interviewing other Black women, Asian graduate students in the US interviewing people from ‘back home’, an African professor learning from African businesswomen, and a cross-cultural team studying aging in a nonWestern culture - are used as the data base to explore the complexities of researching within and across cultures. Positionality, power, and representation proved to be useful concepts for exploring insider/outsider dynamics.     

Grasping at methodological understanding: a cautionary tale from insider research

This article offers an account of a doctoral insider research project that became problematic. The project was investigating mathematics teaching in a university in the UK, and by contrasting the research account with research diary entries pertaining to two interviewees, different interpretations of the interview data are evident. These differences offer illustrations of four aspects of the problematics of interviewing as follows: (1) personal relations and expectations position everyone in the interview; (2) the motivation for the research affects what the researcher learns; (3) the same material generates accounts that emphasize different things; and (4) things happen in people’s heads during the interviews that are not recorded. The argument developed by considering the examples is that authorial voice is constructed out of decisions regarding the data together with considerations regarding the researcher’s position. The validity of insider research requires reflexive consideration of the researcher’s position, and this is especially pertinent in the case of research undertaken by practitioner researchers on professional doctorates.     

Insider–outsider perspective: revisiting the conceptual framework of research methodology in language teacher education

The present paper discusses three types of research perspective on the insider–outsider continuum: outsider research, (insider's) outsider research, and insider research. It examines the essential features of the insider–outsider distinction with reference to categories such as researcher, students, classroom context, contribution, control of condition, quality criteria, disclosure of information, and example of research. The paper concludes that the insider–outsider perspective can serve as a means of building a strong theoretical base in language teaching research that will help language teacher practitioner–researchers to situate their work within a wide variety of research types.     

Peer Assessment of a Group Project in a Primary Mathematics Education Course

This paper discusses the problem of discriminating between individual contributions in the assessment of group projects. It is argued that peer assessment is a necessary element of any proposed structure but that the use of any ‘weighting‐factor’ system is contrary to the philosophy underpinning collaborative groupwork. A structure that separates the process and product elements of the assessment is described and a set of generic criteria for the process peer assessment identified. This structure was implemented with a group of students at Hong Kong University and evaluated using questionnaires and in‐depth interviews. The paper discusses the results of this evaluation and in particular identifies the need for ‘benchmarking’ when using the criteria and also the problematic nature of the ‘insider‐outsider’ syndrome as an important cultural factor.     

Cultural transitioning of Jewish immigrants: Education, employment and integration

This paper discusses the cultural transitioning process that immigrants undergo in order to attain educational, occupational, and social integration within Canadian society. Results of this phenomenological study examining 31 Jewish immigrants from Argentina, Israel, France and the Former Soviet Union, reveal that lack of educational equivalency and lack of recognition of foreign work experience, language barriers, discrimination, insider/outsider sentiments and the structure of the community were common impediments to cultural transitioning. However, findings suggest that despite a common religious identity, immigrants’ ethnic identities and expectations lead to divergent cultural transitioning experiences.     

Inside–out: analysis of the insider–outsider concept as a heuristic device to develop reflexivity in students doing qualitative research

This paper focuses on one approach to making research students more reflexive in their writing. It is argued that the development of the ability to be reflexive in regard to their own qualitative research does not come easily to a significant number of students. A range of possibilities which supervisors might present to their research students as questions to be considered in these respects is outlined. Four relevant case study vignettes are presented of the work of doctoral students (with the full cooperation and written permission of all involved) who have been supervised by the author of this paper. It is argued that these demonstrate that the students concerned have found consideration of their own, sometimes shifting, positions on the insider–outsider continuum of considerable value in developing their reflexivity in relation to their own research.     

Deconstructing Doctoral Students’ Socialization from an Institutional Logics Perspective: A Qualitative Study of the Socialization of Chinese Doctoral Students in Finland

While socialization has become a major lens of research in doctoral education, this paper advances the theoretical foundation of the socialization process in doctoral education by using the institutional logics theory. Specifically, it proposes an analytical framework for understanding the socialization of doctoral students, where it is seen as a process of reconciling different or even competing institutional logics that drive students’ development in doctoral education. The framework has been applied in an empirical study of ten doctoral students in Finland who were funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC). While proving the usefulness of the analytical framework, the study shows that CSC doctoral students mainly face the competing logics of profession and corporation during socialization. Influenced by a strong profession logic, the Chinese students have transformed themselves into novice professionals and knowledge producers. Corporation logic competed with profession logic in the management of doctoral students and has resulted in a lack of teaching experiences in doctoral training and a weak recognition of professional identity in the students’ host universities. The influence of family logic, inherited from CSC doctoral students’ cultural backgrounds, has been decoupled in the socialization process and has led to a strong sense of loss in handling the supervisory relationship between supervisors and students. Based on the findings of this study, the author provides several recommendations for host universities, supervisors, doctoral students, the CSC, and the Chinese Embassy in Finland to enable them to work together and help CSC doctoral students tackle the aforementioned challenges.     

My face is more than me. A Nordic researcher in the South: An autoethnographic retrospective perspective

A white person from the Global North, referred to in Kiswahili as a mzungu, can hardly conduct research anonymously, observe unnoticed or merge with staff and students in the context of African university classrooms. This article builds on the author’s six years of research at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania, examining staff and students’ everyday practices in terms of how they are characterised by linguistic constraints. Using an autoethnographic, self-reflective and retrospective approach, the author discloses some of her experience during fieldwork as a researcher on the university campus. Through this form of qualitative research, she connects her personal experience to the discourse on the language of instruction policy and practices in higher education in Tanzania. The aim of her self-reflection is to understand the wider meanings of how cultural, political and social language practices unfold in staff and students’ daily lives. Using the concepts of insider and outsider, preconception, and theory-ladenness of observation, the author aims to depict the challenges and limits of being a researcher in a totally unfamiliar context. During her fieldwork, using a mixed-methods approach of questionnaires, interviews and participating observation, the author also kept a notebook with her. She made field notes of self-observation, reflecting on her reactions to what she encountered in the research process. While making these notes was not deliberately a part of the data collection, it was an important way of talking to herself. In retrospect, a few years after submitting her doctoral thesis, these notes have become more important to her. The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, the author reveals some of her own experience as a researcher in unaccustomed surroundings, on the other hand, she uses her personal experience to describe, question and shed light on the discrepancies caused by language practices in Tanzanian higher education.     

Reflexivity,positionality and power in cross-cultural participatory action research with research assistants in rural Cambodia

This paper draws on the experiences of a doctoral student undertaking a cross-cultural, cross-language participatory action research (PAR) project in rural Cambodia. Cambodia is a largely Buddhist country with a complex history of religion, invasion, colonisation, war and oppression. Despite a democratic constitution, political control and fear of challenging authority are ever present; and all had an impact on the participation and development of this project. I recruited eight volunteer community health workers (CHWs) and two research assistants (RAs) with an aim to explore methods and challenges faced when trying to improve health with and for community members. Over eight participatory workshops and a two-day training session CHWs identified, implemented and reflected on solutions to community health problems. Simultaneously, the RAs and I reflected on the processes and challenges we faced. Creating opportunity for reflexivity allowed for discussion to emerge around culture, position and power and how these were impacting on the research process and outcomes. Established social hierarchical power structures in Cambodia presented challenges to undertaking a PAR project with emancipatory and social change aims. Such structures also impacted on the ability and readiness of participants to be critical and analytical. The importance of the RAs as cultural navigators and the necessity of embracing their situated knowledge as both an insider and outsider is a key finding.     

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ Using the researcher's insider and outsider positions as a sensitising concept

This article uses the notion of a ‘sensitising concept’ in order to understand insider and outsider dynamics in cross-organisational field research. The analysis is based on a study of learning and innovation in the social and health care educations in Denmark. As these educations combine classroom training and workplace internships, the students and educators frequently cross organisational boundaries as part of their training and educating. In my attempt to understand the boundaries as learning and innovation resources, I reflect on my own shifting insider and outsider positions as a field researcher. It is argued that the researcher's experience of changing insiderness and outsiderness in cross-organisational field studies can serve as a starting point from where to investigate emotional and material aspects of boundary-crossing.     

Ethics of engagement and insider-outsider perspectives: issues and dilemmas in cross-cultural interpretation

ABSTRACT

This article offers insights into the ethics of engagement and methodological issues and dilemmas in cross-cultural interpretation for researchers who are positioned at different points of the insider-outsider spectrum. The discussion uses examples from qualitative research with Sikh families in Britain and focuses on the design of the methodology and co-interpretation of data from in-depth interviews, both during the interactive data gathering phase and the post-interview analysis and interpretation phase. The researchers represent differing degrees of insider-outsiderness in relation to the British Sikh community; one is a cultural insider (a Sikh) whilst the other is an outsider (non-Sikh). In other respects they share a number of characteristics, including gender, a history of migration, bilingualism and living and teaching in superdiverse communities which all impact on the nature of their engagement with the research participants and with each other as co-researchers. Our reflexive analysis shows that established binary distinctions and polarities in research practice, such as insider/outsider, are inadequate for conceptualizing the fluidity and complexity of the ethics of engagement in co-researching. We argue that both theoretically and empirically a more nuanced conceptualization reflects the realities of multiple researcher positionalities, interpretations and power relations.     

Using Cognitive Interviews to Explore the Many Different Meanings Undergraduate Students in China Attribute to the Term “College Teacher”

The cognitive interview method was applied to evaluate survey questions translated and adapted from a US-based college student survey instrument. This paper draws data from cognitive interviews with 45 undergraduate students in China and explores the different meanings they attribute to the term “college teacher.” Students understood college teacher as course instructor, academic advisor, class headteacher and counselor, student organization supervisor, and student service personnel. Students developed the understanding through a socialization process of student-teacher interaction. This paper also discusses the importance of using cognitive interviewing to improve questionnaire design, implications for research on student-teacher relationships, and suggestions on fostering student-teacher interaction in Chinese higher education institutions.     

Re-entering my space: a narrative inquiry into teaching English as a foreign language in an imagined third space

The purpose of this study is to reflect on my experience of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in an inland Chinese university when I returned from Australia: I re-entered the space of EFL teaching, and experimented with a new model of teaching. In my experiment, I applied the concepts of third space and hybrid identity as a theoretical framework for teaching EFL. A personal narrative form is chosen to report and reflect on the experiment, as this is the form that directly expresses experience, allows for reflection on it, and is appropriate for studies of identity. Using anecdotes and reflection, I relate the observed responses of a cohort of Chinese EFL learners to this new EFL teaching model. From this account, reflections are drawn on the challenges that reform of traditional teacher-centred EFL methods in the Chinese cultural context brings to the learners, and by implication, the teacher, from the perspective of an insider (teacher) returning home from an outsider’s third space as a learner in another culture.     

Investigative interviewing with children: evaluation of the effectiveness of a training program for child protective service workers.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research suggests that training workshops on investigative interviewing conducted with front-line workers, such as police officers or child protective service (CPS) workers, may result in improved knowledge about appropriate strategies to use. Limited research has addressed whether such training programs result in improvements in actual interviewing skills. The present investigation assessed the impact of a training workshop on CPS workers' knowledge about conducting and behavior during investigative interviews. METHOD: Twelve CPS workers participated. To evaluate the impact of the training, a quasi-experimental design was used. Participants completed outcome measures prior to, immediately following, and 3 months following the training. Outcome measures included (a) a questionnaire to assess knowledge about interviewing practices, (b) simulated interviews with a confederate to assess participant behavior during an investigative interview, and (c) questionnaires to gather information related to the simulated interviews (e.g., materials requested for use during interview, abuse status of confederate). All participants completed 6 hours of training during 3 weekly 2-hour sessions. RESULTS: Participants' knowledge on the topic, as well as several interviewing skills during simulated interviews, improved following the training. However, the training failed to impact several key interviewing skills such as the types of questions asked or the length of the interview. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge-based workshop training programs may not adequately prepare CPS workers to conduct appropriate investigative interviews with children who were allegedly abused. Further, knowledge about how to conduct such interviews may not be the best indicator of whether someone is prepared for this aspect of the job.     

师生互动模式与博士生的知识生产--以M大学化学学科某实验室为例

博士生是知识生产的重要贡献者,在博士生知识生产的过程中,师生合作与互动的影响不可忽视。本文从博士生社会化和学生自我调节的理论出发,以一所"双一流"高校(以下简称M大学)化学学科的某实验室为例,采用案例分析法,并综合运用深度访谈、参与式观察、文献计量等方式进行数据收集,以分析博士生知识生产过程中的师生互动模式对知识生产所带来的影响。研究发现,化学实验室中的知识生产存在不确定性,不同的师生互动关系会带来四种差异化的知识产出结果,且学生的内在动力对于知识生产的结果起着更为关键的作用。     

Socialization to interdisciplinarity: faculty and student perspectives

Socialization has become a common framework through which to understand the doctoral student experience; however, the framework has predominately been used as a lens through which to understand traditional, single-discipline doctoral student experiences. Interdisciplinary doctoral programs are becoming increasingly common in both the United States and elsewhere but relatively little empirical research exists about this distinct experience. Through multiple interviews with 18 doctoral students and their 35 faculty members, we discuss differences in the socialization process for these students in regard to knowledge acquisition, investment, and involvement. Implications for practice and future research are included.     

Complicity and control in the workplace: a critical case study of TQM,learning, and the management of knowledge

This article analyses how a Total Quality Management process with an embedded workplace literacy programme was implemented in an industrial manufacturing plant. Designed as an insider/outsider team research project, data were collected through interviews with management personnel, education and training providers, and hourly workers. Findings reveal that the Total Quality Management process and the literacy programme were implemented under the guise of providing education and training for workers, but were driven by corporate policy to reduce labour costs. The study also examines the way in which adult education was complicit in controlling workplace knowledge.     

Understanding,embracing and reflecting upon the messiness of doctoral fieldwork

This Forum issue discusses the centrality of the fieldwork in doctoral research. The inevitability of researchers’ influence and of their values apparent during and after their fieldwork calls for a high degree of reflexivity. Since the standard methodology textbooks do not sufficiently guide on addressing such challenges, doctoral researchers go through stressful phases, at times revising various decisions they made before starting fieldwork. By drawing upon four case studies from varied contexts, this forum highlights some of these challenges including: going beyond signing the consent form and building rapport to elicit student voices; the ethical implications of White privilege of researchers turning consent into an obligatory contract with participants; unanticipated delays in the fieldwork opening up new possibilities; and tensions resulting from negotiating between insider and outsider identities while researching in two hostile contexts.     

Method as a journey: a narrative dialogic partnership illuminating decision-making in qualitative educational research

Qualitative education research is an inherently complex landscape, presenting the qualitative researcher with constant ethical and reasoned decision-making. Presented as a narrative dialogic, this paper traces and juxtaposes the method stories of two qualitative researchers who focused their work around education phenomena, but in different contexts and in different ways. One researcher’s narrative study of phenomena via interviews is juxtaposed with the other’s phenomenographical investigation utilizing Facebook status updates. Seeing researcher thinking side-by-side provides a comparison that teases out the ways in which researchers might consciously grapple with thinking around method. These twin method stories offer ways for other qualitative researchers to think about their own decision-making as they address the challenges of balancing subjectivity and rigour, authenticity of reported data, and protection of participants. This dialogic partnership points to the malleability of method. It also encourages further exploration of the complexities of qualitative education research in which the researcher is often insider–outsider or outsider–insider.     

Cultural capital and gender differences in parental involvement in children's schooling and higher education choice in China

This article employs the concept of cultural capital to examine the ways in which social difference in terms of gender are played out in parental involvement in children's schooling and higher education choice. The intention has been to provide an in-depth analysis of the ways in which Chinese mothers and fathers are involved in the process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 47 secondary school students and 50 parents in Beijing. This article reveals that the transmission of cultural capital is gendered. Mothers have a different and more direct relationship to the generation of cultural capital than fathers. This article reveals that patriarchal relationships are common among Chinese families, with fathers having a controlling role and mothers having a servicing one. I suggest that the traditional cultural norms, such as that based on Confucian patriarchy, have had influences on gender relationships in the transmission of cultural capital to children's educational achievement.