Accounting for – and owning up to – the messiness in cross-cultural/linguistic qualitative research: toward methodological reflexivity in South America’s Internet cafés

The author, a polyglot and world traveler, who lives and breathes multiculturality, examines her own contextual and methodological reflexivity while conducting fieldwork to explore youth’s public Internet use (in Internet Cafés) in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Although the process of conducting (qualitative) research is known to be non-linear, messy, complex, and unpredictable, many published research articles still convey data collection, analysis, and even findings in an orderly and uncomplicated fashion. In this paper, the author joins other scholars to call for greater transparency about the “messiness” of the process, and the meaning-making across linguistic/cultural/social borders, and argues that there should be more acceptance toward the ambiguities inherent in our research “findings.” Drawing from the work of hermeneutic philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), the author claims that “fusion of (hermeneutic) horizons” in cross-linguistic/cultural research requires that researchers maintain an active, critical presence in the field and beyond, as well as continuous attention to contextual and methodological flexibility and reflexivity. Finally, the author offers some practical suggestions on conducting fieldwork to researchers planning to conduct cross-cultural/linguistic qualitative inquiry.     

Teacher mediation of curriculum making: the role of reflexivity

This research explores curriculum making by teachers and offers a nuanced way of understanding these practices through the concept of reflexivity. The study draws from a collective case study of teachers in an online focus group, in order to identify and analyse diverse thinking on the curriculum making by teachers from Scotland and Wales. A WordPress® page was set up to generate both synchronous and asynchronous discussions over a period of five weeks to discuss curricular issues. Six teachers from Scotland and three teachers from Wales participated in the discussions. Data collection tools comprised iteratively designed interview questions and an Internal Conversation Indicator (ICONI), for indicating participants’ dominant mode of reflexivity. Data were analysed thematically, drawing from Margaret Archer’s theoretical constructs relating to reflexivity and internal conversation. Data analysis suggests that reflexivity provides a useful lens for understanding teachers’ particular approaches to curriculum making. The research suggests that curriculum making practices can be understood, at least partially, in relation to different modes of reflexivity. Further research is needed to substantiate these arguments and provide a richer picture of curriculum making.     

Doing Whitefella 1 Research in Blackfella Communities in Australia: Decolonizing Method in Sports Related Research

There is much for non-Indigenous researchers to consider when researching in Indigenous contexts. This paper is a story of discovery for two researchers working on a project with the Indigenous Sports Program section of the Australian Sports Commission. It documents the slow, meticulous and sometimes clumsy steps taken to gain access to communities and conduct research guided by a social justice ethic. The research was successful in that eventually it was possible to develop the trust of individuals and some of the Indigenous communities more broadly, so that information could be gathered and given within the context of shared understandings and mutual interest. However, it is the turbulent journey, filled as it is, with latent tendencies, privileged assumptions and eventually reflexive readings of the data, which remains the focus of this paper. Tentative recommendations are offered to those wishing to advance this politically and epistemologically challenging approach to culturally based research.     

Black power in Berkeley: Postmodern constructions in the rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael

In the speech at Berkeley, Carmichael revealed a potential in discourse that enabled him to develop, from out of the confines of a tactical rhetoric, a strategic rhetoric of blackness. Close analysis of Carmichael's speech, grounded in Burke's paradox of purity, illuminates the internal logic of Black Power, as well as Carmichael's use of reflexivity, reversal, deconstruction and re‐construction of dialectical terms and relationships. Contemporary discursive practices addressing issues of civil rights and race are then examined in light of the principles and purposes developed by Carmichael. The results challenge rhetorical scholars and critics to disrupt reliance on dialectical constructions within discourses of race.     

Mobilizing ‘implicit activisms’ in schools through practices of critical emotional reflexivity

This paper discusses the role of emotions in mobilizing implicit activisms – that is, small-scale, personal, and modest activisms – in schools. For this purpose, the discussion evokes the notion of critical emotional reflexivity to illuminate how creating spaces for critical reflection on emotions may contribute to making implicit activisms more visible, plausible, and perhaps sustainable in schools. Although an empirical example is used to show how critical emotional reflexivity can instigate implicit activisms in schools, this paper is meant as a conceptual, rather than empirical, contribution. In particular, it is argued that critical emotional reflexivity can serve both as a pedagogical approach and space that provide opportunities for teachers and students to engage in modest acts, words, and gestures toward social justice. Therefore, it is suggested that it is valuable to pay more attention to how critical emotional reflexivity may contribute to the initiation and sustainability of implicit activisms in schools.     

Young people and high school in Mexico: subjectivisation,others and reflexivity

This article is based on the finding that for many students, high school is a place for young people's life and living together, a place for subjectivisation. The process of subjectivisation is approached through a discussion that questions conceptions of students as strategists of their school trajectory, as well as conceptions of youth life as the excitement of vibrating together. The claim is made that young people's life at school is a process of finding meaningful Others: other styles, other friends, and the other gender. Faced with options and risks, students also develop reflexivity. These topics are examined in three different scenarios: a general high school that is part of the university system in Mexico City, a technical high school in the metropolitan area, and community intercultural high schools in an indigenous rural zone.     

The only honest thing: autoethnography,reflexivity and small crises in fieldwork

There has been a rising acceptance of autoethnography in the past 15 years. Instead of studying social phenomena, in an appropriately reflexive way, some scholars have taken to researching themselves. Drawing on concrete examples from an ongoing ethnographic project, the paper contrasts the beneficial, even essential, practices of autobiographical and reflexive thinking about fieldwork with the narcissistic substitution of autoethnography for research.     

On the margins of education,or two stories of arriving at school

Arrival stories are said to be typical components of anthropologically informed ethnographies in which the ethnographer as ‘stranger’ comes face to face with research subjects as ‘others’, establishes a context for the research and perhaps uses the story to justify the validity of his or her observations. The notion of a conventional ethnographic arrival is critiqued from the position of teacher–ethnographer, revealing a less conventional sense of arrival and a text relying more on reflexive ethnographic practice. After briefly considering arrival stories in ethnographic studies of schooling, those illustrating modernist epistemological tendencies are compared to more recent attempts to write a more reflexive sense of arrival. The trope of the arrival story is illustrated with reference to the author's arrival as a teacher–researcher at a school where research for this paper was carried out, and to the arrival of a student. Arrival is shown to be far more than an innocent physical activity but one that is accompanied by a range of emotions as both researcher and student confront their subjectivation. In the case of the student, the process of getting to school and arriving reveals some of the intensity with which his subjectivation is contested and throws light on what it is to be regarded as disaffected with one's schooling.     

倾斜的飞翔——近五年小说结构突破一瞥

对近五年几部优秀小说的结构作个案分析,指出它们对传统小说的突破,探讨在结构变动后面隐藏的不仅是小说体裁的革新,更是暗示新的知识范式的革命和新的认识装置降临。当前的文学处在“断裂”的峡谷中,或者说,一个时代正将悄无声息的离去,新的时代在润物细无声地着陆。