Poser: A Research Imposter at Play

Abstract

This article explores the “behind-the-scenes” of the author’s dissertation study, a postqualitative examination of teacher subjectivity written in narrative form. Here, the author proposes a new name for her work— incidental research. Although she resists a prescriptive definition of the term, the article itself is a demonstration of what incidental research might look like—spontaneous, unpredictable, meandering, and evocative. Writing in a playful style, the author engages post theories to argue for an expansive notion of what post qualitative research can be and do, all the while fearing she might accurately be perceived as an imposter.