A methodological framework for studying policy-oriented teacher inquiry in qualitative research contexts

System-based and collaborative teacher inquiry has unexplored potential that can impact educational policy in numerous ways. This impact can be increased when teacher inquiry builds momentum from classrooms and teaching practices and simultaneously addresses district, state, and national discourses and networks. In this conceptual paper, I encourage scholars and practitioners to consider ways to methodologically, theoretically, and collectively strengthen teacher research and inquiry to increase its impact on policy. I propose a methodological framework for policy-oriented teacher inquiry that highlights multilayered research approaches and collaborative inquiry. I situate my arguments and the proposed framework in the context of qualitative research and Marx’s dialectic method.     

Navigating the complexity of qualitative research in postmodern contexts: assemblage,critical reflexivity,and communion as guides

For graduate students and other emerging qualitative researchers, the ever-evolving and sometimes conflicting perspectives, methodologies, and practices within various post-positivist frameworks (e.g. feminist, critical, Indigenous, participatory) can be overwhelming. Qualitative researchers working within postmodern contexts of multiplicity and ambiguity are tasked with working through challenges – related to methods, interpretation, and representation – throughout the research process. Through examining related literature and incorporating my own experiences, I explore ethical dilemmas that social justice-oriented qualitative researchers may encounter as a result of conflicting multiplicities of difference among researcher(s), participants, and readers. Such dilemmas include incongruent interpretations between participants and researchers, and participants’ and researchers’ conflicting desires about what should be shared, intercultural (mis)interpretations, rapport issues, and conflicts between research life and home life. I consider how combining the practices of attending to assemblages, engaging in critical reflexivity, and centralizing communion may be useful in navigating relationships and ethical dilemmas in qualitative research.     

Ethics and truth in archival research

The complexities of the ethics and truth in archival research are often unrecognised or invisible in educational research. This paper complicates the process of collecting data in the archives, as it problematises notions of ethics and truth in the archives. The archival research took place in the former Czechoslovakia and its turbulent political history influenced the way data were accessed and collected. The article analyses the productive power of archival institutions and their guardians, and examines the ethical dilemma of discovering sensitive information. Archival institutions hold the secrets that, once uncovered, can have powerful ramifications. It will be argued that the nature of truth in the archives is complex, and the author complicates and challenges the perception that archives are ethically neutral research spaces that do not need to consider approval from research ethics committees.     

Assumptions underlying quantitative and qualitative research: Implications for institutional research

For institutional researchers, the choice to use a quantitative or qualitative approach to research is dictated by time, money, resources, and staff. Frequently, the choice to use one or the other approach is made at the method level. Choices made at this level generally have rigor, but ignore the underlying philosophical assumptions structuring beliefs about methodology, knowledge, and reality. When choosing a method, institutional researchers also choose what they believe to be knowledge, reality, and the correct method to measure both. The purpose of this paper is to clarify and explore the assumptions underlying quantitative and qualitative research. The reason for highlighting the assumptions is to increase the general level of understanding and appreciation of epistemological issues in institutional research. Articulation of these assumptions should foster greater awareness of the appropriateness of different kinds of knowledge for different purposes.     

教育研究中定量与定性研究法的比较

加强教育研究方法的研究，是提高教育研究质量与水平的基础，定量研究与定性研究是教育研究中的两种主要方法，但不是两种对立的方法，本力图在比较研究的基础上，说明两种方法应该结合使用。     

Black Liberation research: qualitative methodological considerations

Abstract

This article provides an overview of critical qualitative considerations for Black Liberation Research. The methodological considerations focus on: (a) resistance research as paradigm, (b) researcher positionality, (c) naming Black deprivation as the problem of study, (d) situating Black Liberation as the aim of analysis, and (e) centering emotions as humanizing methods. Taken together, the articles in this special issue provide an example of how Black Liberation Research can support the #BLM movement and simultaneously seek to disrupt Black deprivation in the academy.     

Collaborative research in contexts of inequality: the role of social reflexivity

This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative project to align their interests and collectively extend their agency towards a common purpose. It influences the productivity and quality of learning outcomes of the research collaboration. The article is written by fourteen members of a larger research team, which comprised 18 individuals working within the academic development environment in eight South African universities. The overarching research project investigated the participation of academics in professional development activities, and how contextual, i.e. structural and cultural, and agential conditions, influence this participation. For this sub-study on the experience of the collaboration by fourteen of the researchers, we wrote reflective pieces on our own experience of participating in the project towards the end of the third year of its duration. We discuss the structural and cultural conditions external to and internal to the project, and how the social reflexivity of the participants mediated these conditions. We conclude with the observation that policy injunctions and support from funding agencies for collaborative research, as well as support from participants’ home institutions are necessary for the flourishing of collaborative research, but that the commitment by individual participants to participate, learn and share, is also necessary.     

Mundane Autobiography: some thoughts on self‐talk in research contexts

The paper considers the status of autobiographical interview data in life history and biographical research. Interviews tend to be treated, it is suggested, as ‘sacred’ texts‐‐as contemplative and authoritative versions that are as free as possible from the biasses and desires that ordinarily animate (and ‘contaminate') personal stories and anecdotes. It is argued here that, on the contrary, interview accounts are as mundane and pragmatic as any other kind of self‐talk. People use identity for practical ends‐‐to make sense of their conduct, to establish allegiances, to justify moral positions and defend educational ideals. The paper ends by examining a fragment from an interview. Using concepts from discourse and conversation analysis it shows how a teacher, Karen, constructs a particular professional identity and thus engages in an act of mundane autobiography.