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.     

The language variable in educational research: an exploration of researcher positionality,translation, and interpretation

In qualitative educational research, the languages spoken by the participants and the researchers can greatly impact the quality of the data collected. This paper will explore the advantages and disadvantages of being an insider researcher by virtue of speaking the same language(s) as the participants. Whether the researcher is a linguistic insider or outsider, he or she will need to make important decisions with regard to translation and interpretation when conducting cross-language research. Such linguistic decisions can also impact the quality of the data collected and the trustworthiness of the research. The advantages and disadvantages of translation and interpretation in qualitative educational research will be explored. This paper offers researchers and students suggestions for conducting cross-language educational research in an ethical and transparent manner.     

Encounters in the third space: constructing the researcher’s role in collaborative action research

ABSTRACT

Action research is a methodology that has been increasing in educational studies in recent years. Previous studies have revealed that action research affects practitioners more than traditional methods, since the practitioners are not only participants but also researchers themselves. One branch of action research is collaborative action research (CAR), whereby practitioners and the researcher collaborate through the action research process. This study builds on material from CAR in one Icelandic preschool that lasted over 24 months. The focus of this article is on the role of the researcher in the action research project and how it was constructed through the process. The research material consists of the researcher’s self-narratives, practitioners’ diaries, interviews, and recordings from meetings. The findings show that the researcher’s role was constructed in a so-called third space where the researcher and practitioners collaborated. The researcher went through an emotional landscape while constructing her role and her position was something in between an insider and an outsider. Finally, she faced different kinds of tension concerning her role as a researcher in the CAR. The study contributes to the limited number of studies on the researcher’s role in CAR and how it is constructed during the process.     

The challenges of insider research in educational institutions: wielding a double‐edged sword and resolving delicate dilemmas

This paper explores the challenges faced by educational researchers investigating the places where they work. It reviews the literature on insider research and draws upon the author’s own experience of researching faculty appraisal at two Higher Education institutions where she taught. It argues that the insider/outsider dichotomy is actually a continuum with multiple dimensions, and that all researchers constantly move back and forth along a number of axes, depending upon time, location, participants and topic. The assumption that one kind of research is better than the other is challenged, and the advantages and disadvantages of insider research are discussed in terms of access, intrusiveness, familiarity and rapport. Finally, three dilemmas relating to informant bias, reciprocity in interviews, and research ethics are examined from an insider researcher’s perspective, and the ways in which the author responded to these dilemmas at different points in her own four‐year two‐site study are critiqued.     

质的研究中身份认同和角色体现

在质的研究中,研究者要考虑自己和被研究者的身份和角色.它们包括性别、年龄、性格特点、社会地位、受教育程度、形象装饰、懂行人、熟人或者生人、局外人或者局内人,听众或研究者等因素.考虑身份和角色时,在不同阶段要有所侧重,有以下几种情况:无你(以研究者为中心);无我(以被研究者为中心);有你有我(以双方为中心).     

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.     

Relationships matter: some benefits,challenges and tensions associated with forming a collaborative educational researcher group

Growing recognition of the complexity of children’s lives has led to strong advocacy in education research literature for greater collaboration between researchers from different paradigms to address the ‘wicked’ problems that face contemporary children and families. There is little literature, however, exploring how collaboration works in practice. This paper, drawing on researcher reflective narrative, and using Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a heuristic framework, describes and critiques the formative stages of an educational research collaborative group of five early and one mid-career early childhood education researchers (the authors), from two universities, and with quite different epistemological and ontological understandings. It outlines, from an insider perspective, some of the outcomes, challenges and tensions associated with participating in the research group, and concludes by providing some implications for policy and considerations for those contemplating forming a collaborative group.     

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.     

Getting inside the insider researcher: does race-symmetry help or hinder research?

This article engages with methodological concerns connected to insider education research and the ‘race-symmetry’ shared between the researcher and teacher participants. To do this, race critical reflexive strategies are utilized to show how and why this practice productively contributed to the knowledge about race making constructed in my study, a research process I describe as getting inside my insiderness. However, these reflexive practices also helped me to develop a deeper awareness of the potential for what I now describe as White shadows to infiltrate research of this type. The conceptualization of White shadows is a useful tool to describe research practices that silence or deflect attention away from issues connected to race, and hence, White shadows help expose concerns about the potential for Whiteness to remain protected by research. There are two interconnected aims of this paper. First, to illustrate the sort of race reflexive practices called for, and in doing so, to demonstrate why they are valuable and helpful in (educational) research. Second, I hope to encourage a rethink of the insider–outsider relationship that typifies ethnographic research by shifting attention to explore the inside of insider research.     

‘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.     

‘A guided walk in the woods’: boundary crossing in a collaborative action research project

This article discusses the ideal and practice of collaboration in a collaborative action research project in which university researchers work together with staff from the field of primary education. A qualitative case study was conducted using the theory of boundary crossing to make sense of the ways collaboration took place within the project team. The main theme, also a major dilemma in the project, referred to the transition from a democratic towards a more directive approach within the project design after the first year. The members of the project team took shifting and ambivalent positions within the project as they were trying to cross boundaries between the different goals of the project. Also, boundary objects on different levels contributed to the collaboration. We conclude that clear boundaries between groups or a strong shared identity, as proposed by an insider–outsider model of action research and the notion of first-order democracy, are not helpful in complex collaborative action research projects. Instead, we need the development of second-order democracy means in order to cross boundaries and sustain a critical dialogue about differences.     

教育叙事：教师专业成长的基本途径

教育叙事是指研究者(多数情况下是参与行动研究的教师本人)采用“讲故事”的方式“叙述”自己的教育故事,实质是“反思”自己的教育。教育叙事是通过教育生活经验的叙述促进人们对于教育及其意义的理解,教育叙事探究的本质在于寻找一种合适地呈现和揭示生活经验乃至穿透经验的话语方式或理论方式,教育叙事的特点为叙述性和反思性。教育叙事对于改善教师职业生存,促进教师专业成长有重要作用。     

The action researcher as tempered radical and strategic entrepreneur in higher education: a personal reflection

This article describes the discovery of action research by a ‘conscious incompetent’ in higher education. The influences on the development of an action researcher’s individual philosophy are discussed. These shape a specific investigation into the implementation of international staff exchange in a post-1992 UK university from the position of an ‘outsider within’, a tempered radical. Ontological and epistemological concepts of quasi-objectivity, subjectivity, participation and commitment are discussed in relation to entrepreneurship in the higher education context, concluding that action research is a methodology suitable for tempered radicals and strategic entrepreneurs and that the action researcher can play these roles to research the execution of international faculty mobility in higher education.     

Evidence-based policy-making and exam board insider researchers: creating communicative spaces

ABSTRACT

This article conceptualises the relationship between exam board insider research and the policy-making context in which they operate. Exam board researchers are constrained by commercial and political interests in disclosing their knowledge. and face pressures in disseminating research, butalso find themselves working in contexts where calls to ‘evidence-based policy-making’ are ubiquitous. This can deprofessionalise and disenfranchise the researcher.. This article will depict the context faced by exam board researchers attempting to influence policy before portraying possible responses, evaluating how these can be applied to exam board research, with reference to research on standard-setting. The article will build on a conceptualisation of successful exam board insider research as the creation of Habermasian ‘communicative spaces’, applying lessons from research–policy interface literature to that conceptualisation. Inapplying those lessons, the article will suggest possible solutions to the problems faced by that group in their attempts to influence policymakers.     

The method of empathy-based stories

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the processes of the method of empathy-based stories (MEBS) and illustrates the ways in which MEBS facilitates storytelling and narration. In MEBS, the participants narrate stories based on the frames and prompts provided by the researcher, and two different versions of the frame story offer variations in the story elements. This variation enables the researcher to study how the stories change when one element is varied – an idea that imitates traditional experimental research. MEBS is well-suited for examining the informants’ perceptions, reasoning, expectations, and values regarding a specific phenomenon or experience. Additionally, MEBS enables researchers to map out a research area, because the stories might provide new and unexpected insights into the topic. In this paper, we present the history of MEBS, outline how to design and implement MEBS research, discuss the advantages and limitations of the method, and conclude by exploring some methodological possibilities.     

Insider-outsider-inbetweener? Researcher positioning,participative methods and cross-cultural educational research

This article reflects on the use of participative techniques with final-year secondary school students in one rural community in Western Kenya as an enabling tool for an outsider to both gain insider perspectives and develop a more insider role in that community by privileging and legitimating participant-driven data. Conclusions put forward the concept of the ‘inbetweener’ researcher, neither entirely inside or outside, and consider how using such methods allowed the formulation of authentic participative knowledge (co-)construction and construction of meaningful relationships in the field.     

Breaking out,breaking through: accessing knowledge in a non‐western overseas educational setting—methodological issues for an outsider

This paper is concerned with processes of international enquiry. It focuses upon the relationship between a research problem and access to conduct research in a country. It uses data from an ethnographic study of primary education in a Northern Indian District. Conceptually drawing upon the insider‐outsider debate within the sociology of knowledge, the paper raises issues about the relationship between the research problem, accessing knowledge and being an outsider to a research setting. It considers problems facing a particular form of outsider—a foreigner. The paper maintains that when researchers who are outsiders embark on designing research in non‐western international educational settings, then questions considering the relationship between the research problem, access strategies and the culture of the research setting are vital. Grappling with such questions allows for the development and promotion of new forms of partnership, alongside a deeper understanding of culture and context, when developing comparative and international research policy agendas.     

Unveiling their worlds: the use of dialogue as a health-promotion tool for HIV/AIDS education in a poor community in Kenya

Three decades since the onset of HIV/AIDS, 33.2 million people worldwide are infected and prevalence in Kenya is on the rise. This paper contributes to discussions about HIV/AIDS education and draws on the health promotion approach and the emancipatory theory of Paulo Freire. Freire argued that through dialogue people unveil their world. The researchers used the method of dialogue to facilitate parents' and teachers' reflections on sexuality education for the children. The dialogues seemed to facilitate some reflection and showed the attitudes of the community to matters that impact on sexuality education (e.g. gender and sexuality). This paper illustrates how dialogic processes can be useful to the process of constructing realistic and contextually relevant HIV/AIDS education. The challenges for the researcher as an outsider are also discussed.     

教育叙事研究是什么

教育叙事研究是指在教育背景中包含任何类型叙事素材的分析研究,它强调关注作为个体的人的经历故事及其背后隐藏的之于该个体的意义,强调关注微观分析。克莱丁宁和康纳利的研究工作,以及强调教师的反思价值、强调教师知识的重要性、赋予教师言说其经历的权力等三种教育发展趋势,促进了教育叙事研究作为一种科学的研究方法的生成。作为一种质的研究形式,它有自己独特的基本操作程序,有自己的优势,但也有自身之不足。     

教育叙事研究:是什么与怎么做

叙事研究是质的研究的一种形式。关注教育叙事研究的意义在于:它提醒研究者面向实事本身或从实事本身中寻找内在的"结构",而不过多地用外在的框架有意无意地歪曲实事或滥用实事。教育叙事研究既可以显示为真实的叙事,也可以显示为虚构的叙事;教育叙事研究既可以叙述故事,不对故事做评论或解释,也可以对自己讲述的或他人讲述的故事进行再评论和解释。叙事研究无论采用历史研究的方式,还是采用调查研究的方式,其基本路径都是收集资料—解释资料—形成扎根理论,其重点是分析资料并形成扎根理论。