Reflexive Research Research Articles

When protest humor is not all fun: The ambiguity of humor in the 2017 Romanian anti-corruption grassroots mobilization

This article focuses on the ambiguous ideological work of citizen-produced humor in protest. Using the case of the 2017 Romanian anti-corruption protests as empirical data, the article shows how humor can simultaneously signal grassroots creativity and resistance to power structures, and reproduce conservative gender and class hierarchies. Unlike other types of texts, humor presents itself as an innocent and light message, absolved of the need for critical scrutiny. However, protest studies need to engage in a more nuanced way with the ideological articulation of democratic politics via protest humor by asking not only how humor helps protest communication, but also how it achieves shared enjoyment, for whom, and to what consequences for the ideological articulation of democratic politics. The article concludes by proposing that researcher reflexivity can afford a new sensitivity to the ambiguousness of protest humor.

“Acting ethically is down to you” applying ethical protocols in qualitative fieldwork in care homes

PurposeResearch ethics committees (RECs) and ethical standards govern research. To conduct research involving participants, researchers must first gain a favourable opinion on their protocol from a REC. This paper aims to promote researcher reflexivity and openness about applying agreed ethical protocols in practice.Design/methodology/approachUsing examples from qualitative fieldwork in two care home studies, the authors critically reflect on the issues encountered when applying ethics committee agreed protocols in real-world situations.FindingsThree areas of research practice are reflected on given as follows: recruitment and consent; approach to observations; and research processes, shared spaces and access to data. The interface between researcher and participant did not always mirror textbook scenarios. Ultimately, this left researchers accountable for taking ethically acceptable actions while conducting research.Originality/valueDrawing on research experiences in care homes, the authors consider the reliance on the researcher to be authentic and morally driven over and above formal ethical approvals. The authors conclude that the researcher is the bridging agent between ethical protocols and ethical practice in the field. As such, researchers need to be open and reflexive about their practices in fieldwork.

The need for formal reflexivity in conservation science

AbstractConservation issues are often complicated by sociopolitical controversies that reflect competing philosophies and values regarding natural systems, animals, and people. Effective conservation outcomes require managers to engage myriad influences (social, cultural, political, and economic, as well as ecological). The contribution of conservation scientists who generate the information on which solutions rely is constrained if they are unable to acknowledge how personal values and disciplinary paradigms influence their research and conclusions. Conservation challenges involving controversial species provide an opportunity to reflect on the paradigms and value systems that underpin the discipline and practice of conservation science. Recent analyses highlight the ongoing reliance on normative values in conservation. We frame our discussion around controversies over feral horses (Equus ferus caballus) in the Canadian West and New Zealand and suggest that a lack of transparency and reflexivity regarding normative values continues to prevent conservation practitioners from finding resilient conservation solutions. We suggest that growing scrutiny and backlash to many normative conservation objectives necessitates formal reflexivity methods in conservation biology research, similar to those required of researchers in social science disciplines. Moreover, given that much conservation research and action continues to prioritize Western normative values regarding nature and conservation, we suggest that adopting reflexive methods more broadly is an important step toward more socially just research and practice. Formalizing such methods and requiring reflexivity in research will not only encourage reflection on how personal and disciplinary value systems influence conservation work but could more effectively engage people with diverse perspectives and values in conservation and encourage more novel and resilient conservation outcomes, particularly when dealing with controversial species.

Generative critical conversation: A method for developing reflexivity and criticality

ABSTRACT In this paper we introduce a novel method—generative critical conversation (GCC)—which we propose can develop educator and researcher reflexivity and enhance criticality in enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE). We ground this method in literature from the field of educational research and reflexivity scholarship. We hybridize three methodological elements—the self-study strategy of reflecting on recorded material; exploring lived experiences through cogenerative dialogue, and a focus on critical questioning—to facilitate the development of educator-researcher reflexivity. We use illustrations from our own conversations to show how GCC opens up space over time to access and move between levels of reflexive interpretation. We suggest enabling conditions that support GCC and its potential as a method for developing educator-researcher reflexivity across EEE, initial teacher education, and other fields of research.

Using the Graphic Narrative to Stimulate Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory in Learners

This article describes a bounded action research case study that examines how reading and discussing a graphic narrative ( March Book Two, a comic autobiography of John Lewis’s life as a civil rights activist) enabled transformations in a group of seven adult student participants at a Canadian postsecondary institution. Data primarily gathered from photocopies of student work, including reflective journal entries, postsemester interviews, and the primary researcher’s daily reflexive and reflective research journal entries, were evaluated with Kitchenham and Chasteauneuf’s framework of assessing transformative learning with critical reflection types such as objective and subjective reframing of assumptions. The authors found that both the participants and the primary researcher engaged in a number of shifts, including engaging in systemic critical self-reflection of and on assumptions.

Doing feminist participatory action research for disrupting traditional gender discourses with Indonesian Muslim kindergarten teachers

The purpose of this article is to explore the authors’ and the co-authors’ reflexivity in feminist participatory action research, conducted in three kindergartens in Indonesia, aiming to disrupt traditional gender discourses in early childhood education settings. Kindergarten is one of the most gendered spaces that perpetuate the binary between femininities and masculinities. This research takes place in Indonesia, one of the most populous Muslim countries in the world. The first part of the study deals with our own reflexivity as university lecturers, middle class and Muslim women, and we use these as a departure point to understand multiple positioning taken by our nine co-researchers as kindergarten teachers, women as well as Muslims and how these influence their gender understanding. The second part of the study discusses the journey of our co-researchers from having gender blind to more gender flexible attitude. As the co-researchers began to acknowledge their personal values, they were better able to apply gender flexible pedagogies to their kindergarten context. The co-researchers also demonstrate different forms of action in implementing gender flexible pedagogy. Our study suggests continuous reflexivity and the possibility of translating gender flexible pedagogy into the co-researchers’ local context were essential factors in this action research.

The case for reflexivity in quantitative survey research in leisure studies: lessons from surf research

ABSTRACT Reflexivity has become a standard practice in qualitative research to improve the trustworthiness of the results and offer a critical perspective on the researcher’s role in the study. Qualitative researchers typically position themselves in their studies, acknowledging their identity, and the ways it may have influenced the study. I argue that reflexivity should be a part of quantitative survey research as well. The imperfect nature of social science, especially leisure research, makes purely positivist research difficult, despite the emphasis on this tradition and the outward appearance of ‘objectivity’ found in quantitative research in our field. Conducting quantitative survey research with surfers can be especially ‘messy,’ because they have long been thought to have their own antiestablishment, nonconformist culture. My pragmatist-grounded research with this user group provides compelling evidence for the importance of incorporating reflexivity into survey research. The paper concludes with recommendations for quantitative leisure researchers.

Reflective practice in action: an account of psychotherapists’ experiences in group-work training

ABSTRACT The importance of reflective practice in psychotherapy has long been acknowledged. However, there is a paucity of work that elucidates the process of reflection in the context of therapist development. The current study employs reflexive action research for a supervised group-work in a tertiary mental health hospital carried out by two trainee therapists. Group-work intervention was chosen because it was viewed as a cost-effective method given the client-clinician ratio. It also provided a richer context to boost reflective practices in various interactions- with the participants, the supervisor and the co-facilitator. Reflective notes and discussions among trainees, supervisor, as well as verbatim feedback from clients were the sources of information. The paper describes this process of reflection as well as the critical events in the process that posed a challenge for the therapists and opportunities for reflection in these interactions during the course of therapy. The paper, with its reflective stance, has implications for promoting and documenting reflective practice in psychotherapy training using different methods and modalities.

Transparency with Second Language and Multilingual Transcription

AbstractPrevious methodological discussions in TESOL Quarterly (TQ) discuss imperatives for transparent and reflexive research practices and reporting (Derrick, 2016; Rabbidge, 2017). This article follows these methodological discussions by considering issues in second language (L2) and multilingual transcription by inspecting transcription and analyzing its reporting in empirical contributions to TQ. The study analyzes a series of transparency continuums with transcription reporting in TQ as they pertain to general transcription reporting and reporting that is particular to L2 and multilingual transcription. The article draws its argument from seminal scholarly discussions on transcription, calling for greater transparency with the transcription process in scholarly research reports.

Dancing with power in ‘We are the university: Students co-creating change’

Much of the student-staff partnership literature calls for increased collaboration and power sharing among staff and students. Less common are accounts by student partners themselves that take up the challenge of what partnership and power feel like as universities embrace their neoliberal trajectory - and - purport to do so on behalf of students themselves. Especially acute is the conundrum of how partnership initiatives can, and do, reproduce the very power dynamics they set out to transform. We are a group of students and staff working in curriculum partnership together at Western Sydney University. The context of our work together is the 21C project, a university-wide strategy to transform curriculum, teaching, and learning, drawing on ‘partnership pedagogy’. In this paper, we engage in a process of reflexive inquiry to interrogate a new elective unit that many of us are involved in as advocates, co-creators, as students and staff learning together, and as evaluators, called We are the university: Students co-creating change (WATU). To highlight partnership’s intricate power plays, we offer a fictionalised account to reflect our multi-voiced experiences of being involved in WATU. We have come to understand power’s simultaneity in partnership as forms of power over, as permission-giving, as sharing (or partnership), and as the power to act (agency). The account is our story of partnership’s inevitable contradictions - a collaboration that teaches us about the challenges of working together while being cautious of partnership’s transformatory claims.

On Theory–Methods Packages in Science and Technology Studies

Our review essay contributes to the long-standing and vibrant discussion in science and technology studies (STS) on methods, methodologies, and theory–method relationships. We aim to improve the reflexivity of research by unpacking the often implicit assumptions that imbue research conduct and by offering practical tools through which STS researchers can recognize their research designs and think through them in a new way. To achieve these aims, we analyze different compositions of theories, methods, and empirics in three different STS approaches—actor–network theory, the biography of artifacts and practices, and ethnomethodology—by employing the concept of a theory–methods package (TMP). A selection of theoretical cornerstone texts and case studies in infrastructure research from each tradition serves as our material. Our findings point, first, to differences between the TMPs of the reviewed approaches and to the internal diversity of theory–method relationships in each approach. Second, we found some intriguing similarities between the approaches and discuss potential complementarities of their theory–method fits.

Braiding together student and supervisor aspirations in a struggle to decolonize

In this study, we explore a student-supervisor relationship and the development of relational and reflexive research identities as joint actions towards decolonizing management knowledge and practice. We frame a specific case of PhD supervision through he awa whiria the braided rivers metaphor, which emerges from Māori traditions. This metaphor recognizes a plurality of knowledge streams that can start from different sources, converge, braid and depart again, from the mountains to the sea. In this metaphor, each stream maintains its own autonomy and authority, but knowledge is created at an interface in partnership. We use this framing metaphor to illustrate the tensions between co-creating knowledge with an Indigenous community that a research student has kinship ties with and feels a strong affinity to, and navigating the institutional requirements for a PhD within a UK university. We surface two contributions that open up future possibilities for supervision, research and practice. The first is the use of the metaphor to frame the student-supervisor partnership and strategies for decolonizing management knowledge more broadly. The second is the requirement for relational and reflexive research identities in decolonizing management knowledge.

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn: poetic inquiry within health professions education.

Qualitative inquiry is increasingly popular in health professions education, and there has been a move to solidify processes of analysis to demystify the practice and increase rigour. Whilst important, being bound too heavily by methodological processes potentially represses the imaginative creativity of qualitative expression and interpretation—traditional cornerstones of the approach. Rigid adherence to analytic steps risks leaving no time or space for moments of ‘wonder’ or emotional responses which facilitate rich engagement. Poetic inquiry, defined as research which uses poetry ‘as, in, [or] for inquiry’, offers ways to encourage creativity and deep engagement with qualitative data within health professions education. Poetic inquiry attends carefully to participant language, can deepen researcher reflexivity, may increase the emotive impact of research, and promotes an efficiency of qualitative expression through the use of ‘razor sharp’ language. This A Qualitative Space paper introduces the approach by outlining how it may be applied to inquiry within health professions education. Approaches to engaging with poetic inquiry are discussed and illustrated using examples from the field’s scholarship. Finally, recommendations for interested researchers on how to engage with poetic inquiry are made, including suggestions as to how to poetize existing qualitative research practices.Supplementary InformationThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40037-021-00682-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Gendered encounters in mobility: Women researching migrant construction workers

Writing about sexism and sexual harassment in the field is still generally discouraged outside gender ethnography, despite a growing gender reflexivity in research. This is mostly due to certain established norms and expectations about ethnographic work that tend to ignore how these issues contribute to women’s fieldwork experiences and subsequent ethnographic accounts. In this article, we go against this tendency by setting out our gendered experiences as female ethnographers conducting research on labor mobility in the male-dominated construction industry among Brazilian internal migrants in Rio de Janeiro and among Polish migrant workers in Europe. We foreground how gendered dynamics affected our fieldwork experience and how they generated a degree of self-doubt and self-blame about our methodological choices. Our hope is that writing about our experiences will help female ethnographers to better prepare for and consider the different kinds of sexism that will inevitably shape their knowledge production.

Making space for relational reflexivity in longitudinal qualitative research.

In this commentary Gordon introduces relational reflexivity and discusses how researchers, participants and the research encounter can be involved in the creation of new knowledge.

Religion as a Dominant Logic for Entrepreneurial Activities: Theorizing the Dynamics in and Around ‘We’d Meat Burger, Kazakhstan’

As religion gains prominence in several countries, research to understand the dynamics between religion and business becomes critical. Extant research paid scant attention to the influence of religion on entrepreneurial activities. To develop insights into this phenomenon, we conduct reflexive field-based case study research on a family business in Kazakhstan that experienced the inclusion of religion as a dominant logic in the management. Kazakhstan provides an interesting context to study the phenomenon as religion gained prominence in post-Soviet Kazakhstan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Our study reveals how religion can influence the entrepreneurial mind and activities and transform the family business. Our inductive theorization offers a process model of entrepreneurial journey under the influence of religion and its impact on the organizing of family business. The model consists of influenced disruption, creative combination and pragmatic adaptation through which the entrepreneur with religion as a dominant logic can transform the family business and attain organizational stability. For academia, the study contributes to extend the scholarly understanding of religion as an influencer in entrepreneurship and family business. For practice, our work shows how religious principles as constraints can enact creativity and innovation in organizational transformation.

Inviting everyday creators to make, think, and talk

An array of methods in social research relies on participant-made images or in-process explanations to clarify thoughts and feelings. However, some of the most often-used instruments, such as verbal protocol analysis, think-aloud protocols, and iterations of photo elicitation, are diminished because they allow participants insufficient time for reflexivity before making or speaking. This article introduces Make-Think-Talk (MTT), a qualitative research method in which participants are encouraged to think about a specific topic as they create. The product serves as both a thinking tool and a prompt for discussion. We offer a theoretical and practical consideration of the method's potential in creativity research. We present a reflexive examination of using MTT to explore creative affordances and creative identity in a qualitative study (n = 42) of amateur creators in the U.K. and U.S. MTT stimulated rich narratives from the participants, and they confirmed that the protocol facilitated their thinking. We contend that the method's combination of making and reflection allows people to fully consider their thoughts and feelings before speaking about them. The resulting exchanges have the potential to enhance researcher reflexivity. We conclude by proposing instances in which MTT can further social research into creative identity and other areas.

Enhancing Researcher Reflexivity About the Influence of Leading Questions in Interviews

Interviewing is the most frequently used qualitative research method for gathering data. Although interviews vary across different epistemological perspectives, questions are central to all interviewing genres. This article focuses on the potential for the wording of interview questions to lead and unduly influence, or bias, the interviewee’s responses. This underacknowledged phenomenon affects the trustworthiness of findings and has implications for knowledge claims made by researchers, particularly in research that aims to elicit interviewees’ subjective experience. We highlight the problem of the influence of interview questions on data; provide a typology of how interview questions can lead responses; and present a method, the “cleanness rating,” that facilitates reflexivity by enabling researchers to review and assess the influence of their interview questions. This clarifies the researcher’s role in the production of interview data and contributes to methodological transparency.

Uncovering the hidden face of narrative analysis: A reflexive perspective through MAXQDA

Despite some struggles in acquiring full recognition, narrative inquiry is now well-established in applied linguistics, especially within the domain of language learning and teaching. Most importantly, there is a growing body of literature which specifically addresses methodological issues related to applied linguistics (e.g., Barkhuizen, 2013; Bell, 2002, 2011; Benson, 2018). This article extends the epistemological debates which have characterised narrative inquiry over the past decade and puts the spotlight on a specific method, narrative analysis, the process of writing stories as an approach to data analysis and representation of research findings. In particular, I will unpack my experience of doing narrative analysis through MAXQDA, a Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS) Software. The use of this software did not only facilitate narrative analysis whilst dealing with a large dataset and different data sources, but also supported my engagement with researcher reflexivity, thereby legitimizing further the rigour of this narrative methodology.

Ensuring quality qualitative research reporting in community pharmacy: a systematic literature review.

To evaluate the reporting quality for a sample of community pharmacy qualitative research articles based on the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) guidelines, data interpretation and use of theory. A systematic literature search was conducted using Ovid MEDLINE to identify qualitative research related to community pharmacy. Data were extracted and evaluated based on the SRQR standards, data interpretation level and use of theory. Adherence to standards was analysed using descriptive statistics. Eighty-one studies were retrieved through the database search (n = 81). Then, 31 studies met the inclusion criteria after screening abstracts and full texts. Twelve out of 21 SRQR were present in more than 80% of the studies. However, essential standards, such as research approach, reflexivity and trustworthiness techniques, were absent or partially present in 30 (97%) studies, 30 (97%) studies and 21 (68%) studies, respectively. Data interpretation level was descriptive in 27 (87%) studies and interpretive or partially interpretive in 4 (13%) studies. Theory was absent in 19 (60%) and implied, partially integrated or retrospectively applied in 12 (40%) of the studies. Trustworthiness and quality of qualitative inferences within community pharmacy research could be enhanced with increasing awareness about reporting; the approach and paradigm, reflexivity, trustworthiness techniques, data interpretation level and theoretical use.