Experiencing “Paragliding”: A Student-Teacher Perspective on Doing Qualitative Research in a Chinese University

Abstract

In this article, I (the first author) explore my qualitative research teaching for a cohort of Chinese students and their interactions in the classroom. These students reported experiencing feelings of paragliding from unsafe distrust to enjoyment through writings, drawings, questionings, feelings, reflections, and struggles. By graphic elicitation, I unfold a cartography of becoming a qualitative researcher and describe lines of becoming-events that entangle with rhizomatic relationships of self and language, self and other, and self and knowledge. The process of learning and teaching qualitative research involved multiple interactions, connections, reflections on the contingencies along the way, and searching for the meanings of life and research under the governance of audit culture. This paper contributes to qualitative research teaching and unpacks its impacts on learners, and it also calls for scholars, particularly those from China, to reassess the value of qualitative research in the academic field.