Listener's Guide Research Articles

Acceptance and rejection of “morally challenging” behaviour in online sperm donation communities: narrative interviews with recipients and donors

IntroductionOnline sperm donation allows those hoping to conceive a baby (“recipients”) to meet prospective sperm donors online, via “connection” websites or social media. These sites offer some advantages to clinical donation (including lower costs and greater choice over donation arrangements) but previous research has suggested that these sites may also pose risks and challenges to those who use them. Therefore, the aim of this exploratory research was to better understand online sperm donation communities and the experiences of both recipients and donors, particularly with respect to situations that could be “morally challenging” or involve harm.MethodsThree prolific donors and five recipients were interviewed using an in-depth narrative approach. Carol Gilligan's Listening Guide was employed to analyse the data.ResultsThe findings demonstrated that the donors sought to find ways to maintain autonomy in their donating practices and were concerned about the character and parenting abilities of recipients, as well as the potential for recipients to make unwarranted complaints. The recipients were concerned about their safety and finding a donor they could trust, discussing issues relating to donor “dishonesty”, online abuse, and a lack of support from connection sites and related authorities. Both donors and recipients identified “morally challenging” behaviour relating to donor anonymity (donor use of fake online profiles or aliases) and the sexual motivations or (mis)conduct of some donors. The participants each discussed the ways in which they managed perceived risks.DiscussionThe degree to which the participants voiced their acceptance or rejection of challenging behaviour in online sperm donation communities varied across and within participants, highlighting the complexity of the way in which people interact in this environment. Further research is required to understand how this form of sperm donation can be as safe and supportive as possible, while also respecting the importance to donors and recipients of autonomy and choice when making donation arrangements.

Positioning, power and agency in postgraduate primary care supervision: a study of trainee narratives

BackgroundPostgraduate supervision takes place within complex training environments, where experiences are shaped by the socio-cultural context and wider profession, and where tensions permeate. Bordin’s working alliance-based model of supervision suggests that quality relationships encompass agreement on the goals and tasks of supervision, in the context of an emotional bond. However, as trainees and their supervisors navigate the demands of providing safe clinical care, alongside educational support, disagreement on expectations for supervision may emerge. By applying a critical lens, this research draws on positioning theory to explore General Practice trainees’ experiences of supervision.MethodsIn 2017–2019 a series of narrative interviews were undertaken with 13 General Practice trainees in the United Kingdom (UK). Participants were purposively sampled based on end-of-year performance, gender, training location and training status. Interviews were analysed using Brown and Gilligan’s Listening Guide, which was adapted to incorporate an exploration of positioning, power and agency.ResultsTrainees appeared to hold variable positions, such as ‘insiders’, ‘outsiders’, ‘peers’ and ‘problem trainees’. Supervisors, through talk and the degree of access afforded, contributed to this positioning. Some trainees viewed their supervisors as brokers and guides as they navigated their training, whilst others were suspicious of the supervisor role. For trainees who raised concerns about their supervisor through formal channels, results were not often satisfactory. Others chose to navigate difficulty in supervision through informal means. This typically involved mastery of artefacts of training, such as the electronic appointment book or training portfolio.ConclusionsThis paper builds on Bordin’s model of supervision to encourage greater clarity in supervisory discussions, exploring assumptions, and recognising the influences of environment, power, positioning, and agency. We have developed a Model of the Supervisory Alliance in Postgraduate GP Training (MSA-GP) to serve as a springboard for discussion for trainees and their supervisors.

“I have my family right here”: Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and peer support among a cohort of fosterscholars

This paper presents findings from a focus group conducted as part of a larger Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study with a cohort of university students with experience in foster care. Six foster scholars (ages 18–21) participated in a research collective offered as a collaboration between the School of Social Welfare and the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) at a large Northeastern public research university. Over the course of several semesters, students received an overview of research methods, evaluated existing research regarding the educational outcomes of youth with foster care experience, then designed an interview guide for a focus group that they later participated in. Focus group data was transcribed and then analyzed in two ways, first through thematic content analysis using ATLAS TI qualitative software, and simultaneously through participatory narrative analysis using an adapted version of Carol Gilligan’s Listening Guide. The cluster of findings presented in this paper highlights co-researchers’ experiences of a YPAR approach to research. Three themes emerged: validation of experience and peer support, connection to available resources, and YPAR as a tool of collective action and empowerment. An overview of the significant actions and change efforts associated with the YPAR process is also provided. Findings highlight the importance of peer support and the possibility of participatory research approaches in catalyzing peer connectivity and agency among foster scholars in higher education. Integrating youth voice and perspective to the existing body of knowledge about youth with foster care experience in higher education adds an important perspective needed to more holistically understand what resources and supports are most critical in ensuring their success. Recommendations are made for both universities and child welfare scholars desiring to center the voices and experiences of youth with foster care experience.

Keepers of the Flame: Gender, Race, and the Myth of Meritocracy in K–12 Educational Leadership

Purpose: This study is part of a larger study of 18 aspiring school leaders that aims to understand how gender identity and gender performance impacted their experience in the K–12 independent school leadership pipeline. One of the key findings was that meritocracy played an important role in how individuals understood what the outcomes of their ascent to leadership should be. This article focuses on that finding through the voices of aspiring K–12 independent school leaders who have tried to enter the pipeline or have come through the pipeline. Method: This study uses Carol Gilligan’s Listening Guide method of data analysis. It was important to use a method and frame the study in a methodology that enabled marginalized voices to be heard. The Listening Guide requires the research to go through three “listenings” of the data: listening to the landscape, where the researcher takes note of everything that was said in the interview and what was not said; listening for the I, where the researcher makes I poems out of all of the I statements in the interview to hear for a deeper layer of consciousness; and finally, listening for contrapuntal voices, which acknowledges that people speak in multiple voices. Through these three listenings, a voice emerged from the data of the keepers of the flame: White women believed that specific work would guarantee them access to leadership. Findings: White women believe and are complicit in upholding meritocracy while White men articulated meritocracy as a lie that they benefit from. One of the interviewees, Joe, was unique among the men I interviewed—he was the only sitting head of school that I interviewed, and he was the only man who spoke so pointedly about the leadership pipeline advantaging someone like him. Black women, on the other hand, have always known from their racialized and gendered experience of the world that their hard work will be overlooked. This also came through in study interviews with Black women aspiring to leadership. For them, keeping silent is an issue of survival. As Carol Gilligan wrote, the story of women’s voices and women’s silences is not a simple one: It is not a question of one gender or race being above another. Rather, it is a story about resistance. An individual’s belief about how much work is necessary to gain access to leadership proves how White patriarchy centers the pipeline and either enforces silence or enables voice in one’s ability to move up. Meritocracy, and whether or not the individual believed it, turned out to be explicitly tied to one’s gender and racial identities. More diverse school leadership may lead to more equitable independent schools.

Listening for the ‘I’ in infrastructure (and community) repair

Infrastructure work and maintenance are forms of care work as they involve the upkeep and repair of systems that sustain communities. We explore a global experiment of digital infrastructure stewardship and collective imagination called Solar Protocol: a network of solar-powered servers distributed around the globe. Through Sam, a dedicated maintenance worker in the Kalinago Territory in Dominica, we examine a journey through renewable energy technologies and community infrastructure in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The Solar Protocol network was created as a provocation and social invitation into collective stewardship and into rethinking planetary limits and environmental rhythms as creative opportunities rather than constraints. By using the Listening Guide (LG), a qualitative and relational research method focused on uncovering how people navigate human experiences, we explore the emotional aspects, challenges and motivations associated with caring for and with infrastructure. We demonstrate how the LG sheds light on the nuanced and complex emotional landscape of individuals and communities involved in digital stewardship work.

“You have an affiliative leadership style. That's going to be a problem for you.”: Feminized orientations to school leadership and navigating the pipeline

All gender identity is socialized, but anything gendered feminine is marginalized. Up to this point, work on gender and education leadership has remained within the bounds of patriarchy and thus been confined to binary, hierarchical gender definitions. This study pushes past prior work to advance a more complex and messy understanding of how identity impacts aspiring leaders in their careers. The main question for this study is as follows: How do gender identity and gender performance impact the career journeys of aspiring K12 school leaders? Using Carol Gilligan's Listening Guide Method, this study contains the interviews of 18 aspiring K12 school leaders who are graduates of Education University. This study focuses on the key finding that relational leadership, which we come to understand as a feminized orientation to leadership, had a significant impact on aspiring leaders' career journeys. This feminized way of leading, keeping relationships at the center of how school leaders thought about their roles, created obstacles and barriers for them on their way to leadership and for some subjects, once they became school leaders. This study focuses on the interviews of four of the subjects: Rachel, Winston, Taylor, and Charlie. These interviews are representative of the themes around relational leadership. Rachel is a white, heterosexual woman who is at a mid-to-late career stage. She has struggled to advance into school leadership because she thinks about her colleagues first and the institution second. Winston is a white, heterosexual man who was successful in becoming a school leader but has left education all together. He found that the higher he ascended as a school leader, the more he was forced to sever his relationships with faculty and students. Taylor is a gender non-conforming school leader who keeps relationships central to his leadership but has questions about how a non-DEIJ-focused leadership position will enable him to show up. Finally, Charlie is a Black, heterosexual woman school leader who has been able to keep relationships central to her work. All four interviews demonstrate how relational leadership is marginalized, keeping white patriarchy as the framework for school leadership.

Angela’s Story of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Abstract The aim of this article was to gain an in-depth understanding of one woman’s experiences of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The analysis presented in this article is grounded in the voice-centred relational or the listening guide (LG) method of narrative analysis developed by Gilligan and colleagues. The LG is an analytical framework that allows for the systematic consideration of the many voices embedded in a person’s story. Analysis illuminates (1) how the religious practice of ‘spiritual baths’ served as a risk factor for the CSA Angela experienced and (2) how the patriarchal family structure and gendered expectations provided the contexts for the perpetration of CSA and the silencing of her voice. Angela speaks of her on-going struggles with her experiences of CSA, a voice which represents her voice of psychological distress. Nonetheless, her coping strategies are understood through her voice of resilience speaking of embracing her Christian faith and the role of motherhood in her journey to resilience. Findings highlight the need for effective safeguarding policies within religious settings, and for social workers to apply cultural sensitivity when working with or planning intervention for Nigerian children who experience CSA.

From adversity to university - the transformational power of a bespoke bridging module to support those affected by homelessness into higher education

This paper reports the findings of a small-scale project which examines how a bespoke bridging module supported those affected by homelessness into higher education. The module was developed on the premise that a successful widening participation project needs to base learning on the lived experience of the individuals. It aimed to support individuals by valuing their personal experiences and developing academic confidence through shared ownership of learning. The findings draw on qualitative interviews with six participants who took part in the bridging module. All had been affected by homelessness and many were recovering from alcohol and/or drug addiction. A narrative methodological approach was used, drawing on Brown and Gilligan's Listening Guide (1991), to explore how participants changed throughout the course of the module. Out of the six who took part, five were accepted onto higher education courses. In addition, all experienced multiple personal benefits, including increased confidence, raised aspirations, improvements in mental health, support with recovery from alcohol/and or drug addiction, and new and renewed relationships. It is concluded that a bespoke bridging module can be both powerful and transformational for those who have been affected by homelessness.

Beyond listening: the value of co-research in the co-construction of narratives

In this article, we discuss how co-research – two researchers working together at each stage of the research process – can be used to analyse narratives created from qualitative interviews (drawing on Brown and Gilligan’s Listening Guide). We argue that co-research affords a richness and depth of analysis and propagates multiple, layered interpretations through a process of co-reflection. To illustrate our approach, we present an analysis of two case studies from the ‘From Adversity to University’ project, a longitudinal qualitative study evaluating the effectiveness of a bridging module as a way into higher education for students who have been affected by homelessness in England. We co-reflect on how our participants, our relationship with our participants and our relationship with each other as researchers has changed over time. We conclude that a co-researcher approach to analysing narratives is textually and emotionally enriching, as the co-constructed multiple interpretations transform not just the analysis of the text but also the relationship between researchers and their participants in new and unexpected ways.

The Mother‐in‐Law Mystique: A Tale of Conflict, Criticism and Resistance

While women have been described in various disciplines as the kin keepers of family relationships, empirical data show that the greatest rivalry in newly constructed heterosexual families exists between two women: the mother‐in‐law and the daughter‐in‐law. Numerous rituals are employed across cultures in order to ease the expected tension between these two rival women. Yet, the topic seems to have been overlooked by feminist and family therapy research alike. Inspired by Bowen's (1978) concept of differentiation of self and Linn's (1998) and Gilligan's (Linn & Gilligan, 1990) ideas of the resisting self, the present study examines these female rivals as moral critics in the war zone of the family. The study sample consists of 14 mothers‐in‐law, daughters‐in‐law, and sons/husbands, belonging to five Israeli families of diverse cultural origin. Gilligan's Listening Guide was used to assess how participants saw the dilemmas of their situation, adopted a critical distance, and formed an authoritative moral voice.

Inconceivable: South African Lesbians Talking about Being Voluntary Childfree

Little is known about lesbian couples who choose to be childfree at a time when motherhood is an increasingly available option, particularly given that they live in societies which still conflate motherhood with womanhood. Without their voices, there is an incomplete understanding of women opting out of motherhood and a risk of excluding the experiences of those who do not fit within dominant heterosexual norms. Therefore, in this South African study, we utilized a feminist social constructionist lens to explore the accounts of 20 middle-class, White lesbians in committed relationships who identified as voluntarily childfree. Employing Gilligan’s Listening Guide, we identified two voices related to their experiences of and reasons for being childfree: a voice of Conviction that confidently articulated not wanting children and a voice of Discovery which reflected the participants’ inner conflict regarding lesbian couples conceiving and raising children. We argue that our findings emphasize that reproductive freedom requires a context in which equal rights and opportunities are available to choose to opt in, or out, of motherhood. There is a need for credible, validated constructions of lesbian motherhood to enable lesbians to view motherhood as a natural and equally inclusive option for themselves, should they choose it. However, there is also a need to encourage lesbians to speak out about why and how they choose to remain childfree and how they are still held captive to heteronormative ideas despite wanting to be free to choose alternative paths.

“I Grew Up… I Was Still Small”: Experiences before and after Juvenile Incarceration in South Africa

ABSTRACT Child maltreatment and exposure to violence are pervasive in South African townships. Coupled with economic hardships, many youth turn to drugs and crime, and eventually come in contact with the juvenile justice system. The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how one young man perceives aspects of his life prior to, during, and after incarceration in South Africa. The study focuses on a semi-structured interview with “Bobby”, a twenty-six-year-old male living in a city in western South Africa. The theoretical perspective guiding this study was Dilthey’s hermeneutics. The interview data was analyzed using Gilligan’s Listening Guide methodology. Prevalent themes include pervasive violence for Bobby at home and in school, drug abuse, gang activity, and crime. Bobby’s experiences often produced dissonant melodic lines – conflicting voices that are in opposition with one another. Two voices of conflict were the voice of knowing his current reality and the voice of evading the violent reality that surrounds him. This study illustrates the need for research to hear the voices of other youth, as well as the need for research on effective school- and community-based interventions to address issues with the maltreatment of youth, substance abuse, and gang involvement.

Clinical Data Mining With the Listening Guide: An Approach to Narrative Big Qual

We developed a novel approach to narrative Big Qual research that combines Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown’s Listening Guide with Irwin Epstein’s clinical data mining. We adapted the voice-based research methodology of the Listening Guide for use with a corpus of clinical case notes drawn from an integrated data system (IDS) of a social service intervention serving families in an immigrant enclave. This methodological innovation was inspired by the insight that the Listening Guide can be used to trace and name the layering of meaning within any narrative, whether that narrative reflects the experience of an individual person or, as in this case, the community and everyday life of a social service intervention. Critically, this approach pivots on theorizing the subject as the collective of the intervention itself, as narrated by case managers, who can be understood as narrating subjects within the cultural, figured world of the intervention. In the context of a larger process and outcome evaluation, marrying these two approaches provided context, texture, and depth to supplement existing data sources like self-report survey data and participant observation, and offered a glimpse inside the “black box” of the intervention. We adapted the Guide through three readings of the clinical case notes: once for stanza structure, once inspired by the I-Poem technique but modified for these third-person narratives, and once with an eye to the contrapuntal voices of the inner and outer worlds of the intervention. As a methodological innovation this approach represents an advance in Big Qual and a promising approach to conducting narrative research on large qualitative data sets within mixed methods studies.

Exploring educational and social inequality through the polyphonic voices of the poor: A habitus listening guide for the analysis of family-schooling relations

ABSTRACTThe aim of this methodological article is to contribute a new form of qualitative data analysis that is relevant for the comparative study of family cultures and schooling. We describe the development of our Habitus Listening Guide linking Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction to critical narrative theory. The interpretative tool outlines (a) social-structural (b) horizontal intergenerational (c) vertical gender and (d) mythic-ritual listenings which can be used to explore the engagement of youth and their families with schooling. Such listenings reveal the dispositional positioning of schooling in family values and the complex structural and human relational effects of schooling on family members’ livelihood and wellbeing. It offers the possibility of comparing families in terms of their gendered and generational relations and the ways in which religious and mythic-ritual discourses legitimate their aspirations in the context of changing communities. The Guide offers a way of accessing and comparing subjective micro level experiences of social inequality and the contribution that schooling plays, or is expected to play, in relation to individual and/or family social mobility.

Bringing together the Listening Guide and Moral Self-Definition for narrative analysis of older people’s understanding of health-related decision-making

Identity and decision-making are interrelated concepts, but the relationship between them is complex particularly when an unwell person’s ability to make decisions is compromised. In this article we discuss how moral self-definition (Nelson, 2001;Walker, 1987) can be used within a Listening Guide (LG) analysis to extend analysis of the temporal relationship between identity and decisions. In this project, the LG was used to analyze interviews exploring older people’s understanding of medical decision-making when the unwell person’s capacity is diminished. The second step of the LG drew attention to the participants’ expression of decision-making voices and health-related identities, but the iterative and temporal relationship between identity and decisions was less well illuminated. Therefore, we applied the theoretical framework of moral self-definition within the third listening. The focus of this article is on how moral self-definition can be integrated as a theoretical framework within the contrapuntal listening to extend the LG analysis.

Looking and listening for learning in arts- and humanities-based creations.

The arts and humanities are gradually gaining a foothold in health professions education as a means of supporting the development of future clinicians who are compassionate, critical and reflexive thinkers, while also strengthening clinical skills and practices that emphasise patient-centredness, collaboration and interprofessional practices. Assignments that tap into trainee creativity are increasingly used both to prepare learners for the demands of clinical work and to understand the personal and professional challenges learners face in these contexts. Health professions educators need methods for interpreting these creations in order to understand each learner's expressions. This paper describes two theoretical frameworks that can be used to understand trainees' unique learning experiences as they are expressed in arts- and humanities-based creations. The authors introduce the philosophical underpinnings and interpretation procedures of two theoretical frameworks that enable educators to 'hear' and 'see' the multilayered expressions embedded within arts- and humanities-based student creations: Gilligan's Listening Guide and Kress and van Leeuwen's approach to visual rhetoric. To illustrate how these frameworks can be used, the authors apply them to two creative summaries that learners made as part of a humanities-informed, interprofessional education intervention that took place in a non-acute-care teaching hospital. The interpretations of two creative summaries, a poem and a pair of paintings, highlight how applying these theoretical frameworks can offer important insights into learners' experiences. This cross-cutting edge paper describes how the Listening Guide and visual rhetoric can help health professions educators listen to and read the arts- and humanities-based creative expressions made by learners. Insights gained from these interpretations can advance the understanding of students' personal experiences in different learning environments and can inform curriculum development.

The Listening Guide

As qualitative researchers, our identities are inevitably mixed into our methodological approaches, and many of us secretly wonder about our roles and the quality of our listening. Researchers who are seeking a meaningful method of analysis that will honor the role of the researcher, and respect the voices and experiences of the human beings in their studies, will benefit from the multidisciplinary method of The Listening Guide (LG). The LG is a qualitative, relational, voice-centered, feminist methodology, predominantly used as a way to analyze interview transcripts. The LG differs from other means of analysis in that it places emphasis on the psychological complexities of humans through attention to voice. It does so through the creation and special analysis of voice poems as well as by attending to silences. The LG serves a very specific need in research analysis in the ways it honors the role of the researcher–researched relationship, the intricacies of voice and silence, and perhaps most importantly, unearthing trends which may have gone unnoticed. An explicit how-to guide does not exist. When researchers are new to a method, sometimes a more explicit how-to guide is necessary, and my intention is to share one in this article. In this article, I will share the democratic and multidisciplinary significance of the LG in how it matters right now, as well as a precise how-to guide on its utilization, and innovative examples of creative, interdisciplinary uses of the LG.

Learning to Listen

The Listening Guide (LG) is a relational, voice-centered method to analyzing qualitative research data. This article provides an account of how the LG was modified for a study that examined personal critical reflection papers written by 27 fourth-year dietetics university students after they participated in an arts-informed module on body image in a dietetics professional practice course. By relying on the main principles of the LG, we demonstrate how the LG can help us to listen and hear previously unnoticed and underappreciated voices. The purpose of this article is to serve as a source of guidance and support for researchers looking to implement the LG method beyond its original purpose, which was for transcribed interviews.

'That was what Life in Bridgeburn had Made Her': Reading the Autobiographies of Children in Institutional Care in England, 1918-46

Historians and sociologists who have utilized self-narratives have frequently encountered the dilemma of providing either extensive quotation without analysis, or selective quotation to serve an analysis. New approaches developed after the challenge from post-structuralism are frequently flawed; for example, cultural analyses can be reductive, slotting personal accounts into categories of discourse. Although historians such as Mathew Thomson and James Hinton have emphasized the importance of individual subjectivity while acknowledging the constructed character of self-narratives, a productive new approach has failed to develop. Following psychologist Carol Gilligan’s Listening Guide, in this article I will conduct a close reading of four extracts from autobiographies written by subjects who were in institutional care in England as children between 1918 and the early 1940s. This method helps to solve our central dilemma by combining a consideration of the text as a whole with close analysis. Paying rigorous attention to these four texts as well as a range of self-narratives from children in care during this period may begin to illuminate our understanding of the experience of institutionalization, and how state welfarist policy that elided the distinction between the neglected and delinquent child might be negotiated by the subject in practice.

(K)not an Impasse: Working Through Lacanian Theory as Research Methodology

This essay illuminates key points in the development of a psychoanalytic theory–informed case study of student writing in Criticizing Television, an undergraduate, writing-intensive art education course. The discussion describes the research context, including a select group of concepts that structure the inquiry: subjectivity and desire, the Other, thick interpretation, critical consciousness, and resistance. In addition, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and methodology are briefly explicated and problematized, providing a foundation for an exploration of Ellie-Ragland Sullivan's Lacanian Poetics and Carol Gilligan's Listening Guide, followed by discussion of an impasse method of reflexive data analysis. The impasse, first perceived as an obstacle in the research, is linked with the concept of critical (un)consciousness, becoming the metaphorical, methodological (k)not upon which the case study and its data pivot.