Beginning the Quilt: A Polyvocal and Diverse Collective Seeking New Forms of Knowledge Production

Abstract

This article contributes to scholarship on collaborative knowledge-making by documenting our methodological experiences of conducting multiple ethnographies and the emergence of what we describe as a methodology of quilting and vulnerability. We borrowed from critical and decolonial frameworks for knowledge production and knowledge dissemination to reflect on the organic processes that we implemented to document our polyphonic conversations about the challenges, passions and perspectives of being educational researchers and language teachers. We argue for the use of dialogical interactions, using “quilting” as an aesthetic representation of lived experiences and as a medium through which knowledge creation becomes democratized and supported by interdisciplinary scholarship. In this article, we demonstrate the utility of a methodology of vulnerability in learning about the complexities involved with negotiating identities in collective work in the field of language education. We use the metaphor of the quilting bee to theorize vulnerability in collaborative knowledge production. The ultimate goal of this paper is to inspire educators and researchers to explore other forms of studying themselves and their relationships with their identities, cultures, and languages, especially from international contexts. In the end, as an emerging research collective, we advocate questioning and challenging whose voices are being heard and the power relations involved in collaborative and interdisciplinary research processes.