Emergent pedagogy and affect in collaborative research: a metho-pedagogical paradigm

Abstract

The widespread turn towards ‘collaboration’ in qualitative research methodologies warrants careful and continuous critique. This paper addresses the possibilities and the challenges of collaborative methodology, and in particular what happens when the line between pedagogy and methodology is blurred in classroom-based ethnographic research. Troubling the prized notion of collaboration, and decoupling the easy relationship drawn between collaborative, participatory methods and empowering, democratic research experiences, we draw upon empirical data from one site in a multi-site, international ethnographic project: Urban School Performances: The Interplay Through Live and Digital Drama, of Local–Global Knowledge About Student Engagement. In underscoring some tensions and conflict in the creation of a Verbatim Theatre unit, we analyse significant affective encounters that surfaced in the course of our research work. Mobilising feminist post-structuralism and current theories of affect, we question the privileging of voice as an unmediated and authentic phenomenon, while ultimately arguing for the importance of affect and emotion in ethnographic analysis and for persistent reflexivity in the negotiation of collaborative metho-pedagogical work.