First-person Research Research Articles

Positioning the practitioner-researcher

When I considered research in my practice as a supervisor of teachers working inside a juvenile correctional facility, I sought ways to explore aspects of my personal experience. Heeding Reason's (1994) call for ‘critical subjectivity’ in attending to the ground on which one stands, I suggest that it is possible, by craning my neck or standing on tiptoe, as it were, to change positions, if not to leave the ground entirely. In this article I seek to capture a moment in the process of action research – a moment that occurs before engaging with others in collaborative sense-making in our joint practice. I explore my experience in this moment through five different perspectives: subjective embodiment in the practice; reflection on the practice; frames of reference; relevant and emergent theories; and personal stakes in the matter. While this effort falls within the realm of firstperson inquiry as discussed by Reason and Marshall (2001), Torbert (2000), and Reason and Torbert (2001), it also has elements of second-person inquiry, as it is oriented toward the practice I share with others.

Mindfulness: More Than Just a New Technique

Reviews Mindfulness and Psychotherapy edited by C. K. Germer, R. D. Siegel and P. R. Fulton (see record 2005–07373–000). In the past 10 years, mindfulness has moved from a largely unknown concept and practice among therapists to a visible and emerging field of study. “Paying attention in a particular way-on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 4) is a popular definition of mindfulness. Mindfulness, a highly systematic, empirical first-person inquiry at the heart of Buddhist psychology, is now meeting with the Western third-person empirical model of psychological inquiry, resulting in a synthesis that has the potential to advance the state of psychotherapy theory and practice. The book is a brave and brilliant compilation from 11 different authors that explores many of the different ways that mindfulness can inform the theory and practice of psychotherapy–drawing on Buddhist psychology and teachings while being sensitive to the culturally defined therapy of the West. Most of the contributors are therapists who have been practicing Buddhist meditation for many years. The main strength of the book is in its broad presentation of the many ways that mindfulness can inform therapy. What the book does not do is go into depth into any one particular area. And the biggest thing this book cannot do is engage in the practice of mindfulness for the reader. In summary, this book may be a marker for the direction of a paradigm shift taking place in the field of psychology. This shift may have been anticipated as far back as the early 1900s, with William James' famous prediction that psychologists would all be studying Buddhist psychology within 25 years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

From first-person inquiry to radical social action

A successful social entrepreneurship project in Dublin, Ireland, Fastrack into Information Technology (FIT) forms the backdrop for this article on the value, influence and significance of a dedicated first-person inquiry. The work makes the connections between the early poverty experiences of the author, a subsequent business career of high achievement and this followed by a deliberate choice to sell his assets and to commit himself to the resolution of serious social problems. Underpinning this new orientation is a faith-based spirituality reflected in the Spiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius (Founder of the Jesuits). The article explores the close relationship between these Spiritual Exercisesand first-person inquiry practice. In tracing their influence over a time span of quarter of a century, it places first-person inquiry appropriately at the core of the activity while, at the same time, describing the organic links which forge growthful outcomes in second and third-person arenas. With a descriptive image of the bloc of influence which make up the FIT project – government, industry and local communities – and emphasizing its co-creative nature, the work concludes with a vision for the next stage. The realisation of this vision will continue to see first-person inquiry in a central and pivotal role.

When first-person inquiry is not enough

We explore the ways second-person inquiry supports, deepens, and enhances first-person inquiry when an emotionally laden identity issue is at stake. The identity issue from which we draw our argument is the impact of one's own white supremacist consciousness on oneself and others. Using detailed accounts of three individual inquirers' experience, we examine how secondperson inquiry provides support for the first-person inquirer's capacity for critical humility as well as the inquirers' abilities to: live in the inquiry, practice new behaviors and unlearn old ones, reflect-in-action, conceptualize new learning and stay open to a range of emotional responses.

Reflections on Erica Gabrielle Foldy’s first-person inquiry

In support of Erica Foldy’s premise that we cannot learn about race until we make it a ‘discussable’, we join her in reflecting on the relationship between her white identity and her dissertation research. We describe experiences of our own that are very like Erica’s – seeking absolution and approval from people of color, hoping that we can develop relationships with people of color that will somehow transcend race, taking responsibility for our limited consciousness about white hegemony so that people of color won’t have to spend so much effort educating us. We also explore what we think are unanswered questions in Erica’s first-person inquiry and conclude by describing an important state of inquiring mind that we call critical humility.

From first-person inquiry to second-person dialogue

From first-person inquiry to second-person dialogue

Lewin’s Action Research Model as a Tool for Theory Building

This article explores the importance of first-person research strategies in enhancing practice and theory within the field of conflict resolution. The core of the article is a case study that describes a first-person experience working with police and community members to establish local community–police forums in post-apartheid South Africa. The case study echoes the processes of reconciliation and healing that took place at the community and national level. Using the Lewinian model of action research (Lewin, 1951) as a structured reflection process, the author analyzes this process of conflict transformation from the perspective of a participant, practitioner and researcher over an eight-year period. This reflection process combines first-, second-, and third-person data to develop and test a grounded theory of identity-based conflict. The application of the Lewin model to conflict resolution illustrates how action research can inform both research and practice by more closely aligning lived experience with theory.

Lessons on and from the dihybrid cross: An activity–theoretical study of learning in coteaching

AbstractDuring their training, future teachers usually learn the subject matter of science. However, they are largely left on their own when it comes to figuring out how to teach this subject matter, that is, how to find appropriate pedagogical forms. In this article we present a model of collective teaching and learning, which we term coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing, as a way to build deep learning of science concepts while learning about alternative ways to teach the same subject matter. As praxis, coteaching brings about a unity between teaching and learning to teach; cogenerative dialoguing brings about a unity between teaching and researching. Both are potential sites for deep learning. We articulate coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing in terms of activity theory and the associated first‐person research methodology that has been developed by critical psychologists as a method of choice for dealing with the theory–praxis gap. Our detailed case study highlights opportunities of learning subject matter and pedagogy by university professors who participate in coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing in an urban high school. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 253–282, 2002

Native Perspectives of Distance and Anthropological Perspectives of Culture

A growing literature on the relationship between the ethnographer and his or her subject of study goes beyond a confessional first-person stance that focuses primarily on the author, and directs attention to the construction of ethnography in its double spheres of the research process and creating the ethnographic text. This literature contributes to a general movement toward a more hermeneutical approach to ethnography that involves a radical shift of ethnographic knowledge from observation of reality (as transparent, empirical, and objectified) to understanding arrived at through mutual experience in interaction with the ethnographic other. Such knowledge is characterized by reflexivity and acknowledgement of prejudice (Gadamer 1975), so that explicit examination of one's bias and preunderstandings is a basic, positive step in a dialectical movement between interpreter and interpreted (Marcus and Cushman 1982: 38). In this view, ethnographic knowledge is constructed (and reconstructed) in an ongoing, reiterative manner (Dwyer 1979), so that knowledge of both the other and the self changes markedly over time (Crapanzano 1977). A significant shift in the construction of ethnographic texts incorporates these dimensions of ethnographic knowledge. In a number of experimental works, the ethnographer is introduced into the text that now is viewed as a by-product of relationships established with a series of people who actually do more than inform. Their personal interaction creates a ground, or a tie, within which cultural knowledge is defined and understood (e.g., Bohannan [Bowen] 1954; Briggs 1965; Read 1965; Rabinow 1977; Riesman 1977; and Dumont 1978). I refer here not to confessional narratives about the experience of fieldwork, which Dumont (1978) points out are strikingly similar, but to narratives which take the relationship between first-person research and the organization of ethnographic reporting. Yet problems remain with these experiments. Marcus (1980: 508) questions their relation to conventional ethnographies, and the relation between the first-person narrative (still regarded as subjective, soft and unscientific (Clifford 1983: 132) and the third-person narratives by the same authors (objective, hard, and scientific) is unclear, even contradictory. Ethnographic knowledge depicted in first-person narratives calls into question the third-person construction of certain and objective knowledge about others.2 New perspectives on ethnographic knowledge also lead to questioning the authority of the ethnographer to construct a discrete text from an experience permeated with ambiguity, ambivalence, and interpretation (Clifford 1983: 120). Finally, experiments in opening up the text to include more native voices to disperse authority are criticized by Clifford (1983), Tyler (1982) and Marcus and Cushman (1982). Most problematic for them is the fact that dialogues remain representations of dialogue, since they are texts, not dialogues, and retain the authority of the ethnographer as author (Clifford 1983: 134). Dialogue rendered as text...is no longer dialogue, but a text masquerading as a dialogue, a mere monologue about a dialogue since the informant's appearances in the dialogue are at best mediated through the ethnographer's dominant authorial role (Tyler 1982: 3, in