Dual Role Of Researcher Research Articles

The Importance of Reflexivity in Program Development: A Case Study Involving Teaching Self-Defense to Middle School Girls in PE Class.

This research used a self-defense program to explore how middle school girls could change their perspectives on the gendered roles of victim and protector within an empowered self-defense approach. Taking the dual role of researcher and self-defense instructor, I developed a program to influence changing information strips directed toward gender norms, behavior, and discourse. Reflexive thematic analysis was utilized due to its intersection of the researcher's experience, literature, and theory. The research consisted of 40 girls journaling and 23 girls completing a post-program survey. Findings suggested that reflexive body techniques through self-defense could potentially impact internalized gendered information strips.

Music & Soundscapes of our everyday lives: Music & Sound-making, meaning-making, and self-making

The aim of this professional Doctor of Creative Industries (DCI) Research Project was to investigate music-making practice and self as a practitioner in the process of creating and producing a DIY music artefact, specifically to investigate why I as the practitioner felt an authentic connection with one form of music-making (acoustic instrument-based) and not a connection with another form of music-making (digital virtual-based). As a phenomenologist, I situated self into this auto-ethnographic study in the dual roles of researcher and practitioner, developing first-person narratives of my personal journey, critical reflection, and reflexive practice. The holistic and multidimensional nature of this research has provided rich and nuanced data, illuminating the co-constituted nature of self, interpreting meaning, and practice. In particular, the research study contextualizes contemporary DIY creative practice relative to three interdependent tenets: Music & Sound-making practice, meaning-making, and self-making, where these tenets are understood in terms of hybridity, agency, and subjectivity. The emergent cultural production artefact exemplifies a broader interpretation of Music & Sound-making practice: an authentic, subjective, auto-ethnographic Music & Soundscape.

An Autoethnographic Study of the Use of Mobile Devices to Support Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

This autoethnographic study involved the author in the dual role of researcher and subject in a self-study language learning episode. The paper describes a foreign language learning experience of using a mobile phone (Apple iPhone) word card application to learn Italian vocabulary. Data from diary entries were analysed and categorised, and the findings show that learning strategies, content, motivation and interface design are prominent themes. The significance of these themes is addressed in the discussion, and suggestions for further research are made. The findings are of value in order to inform the design, development and deployment of mobile device-based vocabulary learning resources for language learners, and are therefore of interest to language educators, mobile device materials designers, developers and publishers, as well as researchers.

Managing Tensions Between Evaluation and Research

Developmental evaluation (DE), essentially conceptualized by Patton over the past 30 years, is a promising evaluative approach intended to support social innovation and the deployment of complex interventions. Its use is often justified by the complex nature of the interventions being evaluated and the need to produce useful results in real time. Despite its potential advantages, DE appears not to have been very widely used in research. The authors of this article decided to use this emergent approach in two evaluative research projects in health promotion. This article, coming out of their experiences, aims to assess the appropriateness of DE in research and describes issues related to its use. First, DE is presented, along with the potential advantages of its use in research. This is followed by a discussion of tensions related its application encountered in two studies carried out by the authors. The key issues are related to the links between academic and evaluative objectives, the dual role of researcher and consultant, and the temporality of the process. Finally, weighing the advantages of DE against its challenges, the authors conclude with a diagnosis regarding the application of this approach in research.

An Innovative Method to Involve Community Health Workers as Partners in Evaluation Research

We developed a process through which community outreach workers, whose role is not typically that of a trained researcher, could actively participate in collection of qualitative evaluation data. Outreach workers for a community-based intervention project received training in qualitative research methodology and certification in research ethics. They used a Voice over Internet Protocol phone-in system to provide narrative reports about challenges faced by women they encountered in their outreach activities as well as their own experiences as outreach workers. Qualitative data contributed by outreach workers provided insights not otherwise available to the evaluation team, including details about the complex lives of underserved women at risk for poor pregnancy outcomes and the challenges and rewards of the outreach worker role. Lay health workers can be a valuable asset as part of a research team. Training in research ethics and methods can be tailored to their educational level and preferences, and their insights provide important information and perspectives that may not be accessible via other data collection methods. Challenges encountered in the dual roles of researcher and lay health worker can be addressed in training.

Ethical Tensions in Genetic Counselling Research

Ethical tensions are recognised as part of the everyday practice of conducting research and practising genetic counselling. What are the conceptual frameworks that can assist researchers and genetic counsellors to deal with ethical tensions when conducting research? How might the overlap that arises from being a researcher and clinical genetic counsellor be dealt with? This article uses a case study to consider the ethical tensions between conducting research in genetic counselling and maintaining a clinical practice as a genetic counsellor. It examines the reconciliation of the dual roles of researcher and genetic counsellor. It explores conceptual frameworks that can combine the needs of ethical research practice, while maintaining ethical clinical practice.

A study of teasing in the real world through the eyes of a practice‐inspired researcher

This paper centers on the process of conducting research on children’s social development through a partnership between university‐based researchers and teachers and students in an urban New England school district. It does so through the eyes of its first author, a second year graduate student who is negotiating the dual roles of researcher and teacher. In the process of investigating more about young children’s perceptions of teasing in conjunction with her research team, this student learns that theories about children’s social awareness developed in university settings virtually always require modification when examined in the real world. Ultimately, she concludes that the partnership between theorists and practitioners leads to a fine‐tuning of research protocols that elicit more complicated and variable responses from students, and that classroom climate factors, temporary or longstanding, may either facilitate or prevent effective data collection and analysis.

A Land before Time

to develop and test theories, methods, and techniques. Having expended so much effort doing so, we quite naturally wax eloquent about our findings. Seldom, in contrast, do we encourage teachers to use their professional judgment to thoughtfully and analytically decide when (and when J L R not) to use our ideas. Presidential So, if I was to give another presidential address today, I would talk about Retrospectives my attempts to develop teachers who are thoughtfully independent of authority figures. I would argue that, to do so, I have learned I must set aside my personal preferences in teaching reading. Instead, my focus must be helping teachers develop their own vision for what they want to be as reading teachers, and how to use that vision as a moral compass to guide them as they make decisions. Only if they possess such a personally moral sense of where they want to go will they have the strength and courage to deal effectively with the complexities and dilemmas of day-to-day reading instruction. But I know I am going against the grain whenever I present the idea to colleagues, I am invariably met with the question, yeah, but what if the teacher has the wrong vision? The assumption persists that there can be only right vision. Somehow, we must separate our own position as researchers (and the vision that drives it) from our teacher education responsibility. Our dual roles of researcher and teacher educator require from us vastly different psychological orientations. When we do research, it is quite proper that our vision drives us, because we tend to study what we value. But when we are in our reading educator role, we must set aside our preferences and, instead, help teachers develop professional positions independent of us. It means that when we teach teachers we have to be less powerful so teachers can learn to be more powerful. Am I still going against the grain? Probably.