Relational Constructionist Research Articles

Co-constructing women’s stories about the sexual effects of child sexual abuse: A relational constructionist approach.

Co-constructing women’s stories about the sexual effects of child sexual abuse: A relational constructionist approach.

FAMILY, INTERGENERATIONAL, AND CAREGIVING ISSUES

Framed by an idealist ontology and relational constructionist perspective (Blaikie 2010), this qualitative study explores how family carers experience role and identity transition as they progress from ‘family member’ to ‘family carer’, to ‘post-carer’, with the latter reflecting the cessation of the caring role as the individual being cared for moves to or dies in a care home or dies at home. Such transitions approximate cumulative rites of passage (Van Gennep 1960, Turner 1969) comprising identity rebuilding and present practical and emotional challenges for family carers. In line with Barnhart and Penaloza (2013), we characterize family caring as a dynamic and situated, socially constructed group phenomenon, where the assisting functions of family, friends, and paid service providers create a family caring ensemble (FCE). Depth interviews were conducted with eight family carers, four females and four males, who had experienced loss in relation to their family caregiving role. Emergent themes relating to carers’ experiences of role and identity transitions and losses were induced from participants’ narratives (Spiggle 1994). We induced three phases of role and identity transition precipitated by multiple losses across the care giving life course, which we term reconfiguring, distancing and reconstituting. While the role and identity transition phases induced might suggest a linear transition from family member to family carer over time, they were in fact cumulative, multifaceted and overlapping. Each transition require carers to juggle multiple roles, which lead to chronic stress for the duration of the caregiving period and imply intensive identity re-building within and beyond family networks, while over time a sense of renewal and positive emerged as post carers refashioned identities within and beyond the family. We conclude with implications for carer organizations, service providers and policymakers.

Co-constructing a Sense of Community at Work: The Emergence of Community in Coworking Spaces

As more individuals are working remotely, many feel increasingly isolated and socially adrift. To address this challenge, many independent workers are choosing to work in coworking spaces – shared spaces where individuals do their own work but in the presence of others with the express purpose of being part of a community. In this qualitative, single case study, we analyze how members of a coworking space work together to co-construct a sense of community through their day-to-day interactions in the space. We apply a relational constructionist lens to unpack the processes of ‘community work’ as an interactive, agentic process. We identify three types of collective actions, or interacts, that contribute to a sense of community: endorsing, encountering, and engaging. These interacts represent different forms of community work that members interactively accomplish to maintain a desired community experience. The rapidly growing coworking movement offers insights, as uncovered in this study, on how to integrate a sense of community into the world of work.

Construcción de la identidad en adolescentes talentosos

Identity research is a key issue in helping the knowledge of topics of interest in educational psychology such as the development and wellbeing of talented and high-abilities adolescents. According to Buescher and Higham (2011) talented adolescents frequently report a number of problems as a result of their abundant gifts. In this review are reviewed some theoretical proposals that seek to deepen from a social and relational constructionist approach, how the construction of identity is carried out in talented adolescents.

Differences that matter: developing critical insights into discourses of patient-centeredness.

Patient-centeredness can be considered a popular, and at the same time “fuzzy”, concept. Scientists have proposed different definitions and models. The present article studies scientific publications that discuss the meaning of patient-centeredness to identify different “discourses” of patient-centeredness. Three discourses are presented; the first is labelled as “caring for patients”, the second as “empowering patients” and the third as “being responsive”. Each of these discourses has different things to say about (a) the why of patient-centeredness; (b) the patient’s identity; (c) the role of the healthcare professional; (d) responsibilities for medical decision-making, and (e) the role of health information. This article compares and contrasts the discourses in ways that allow us to see differences that matter for practitioners in healthcare. On the basis of a relational constructionist philosophy, it is argued that discursive diversity is both an inevitable and a potentially valuable aspect of conversations in healthcare. We are therefore invited to center the challenge of dealing with diversity in productive ways. This article ends with a discussion of the practical implications of the discourse analysis for projects that aim to make healthcare more patient-centered. Debates on patient-centered “Health Information Exchange” are used to explain the need for a recognition of different discourses of patient-centeredness and a reflexive stance towards them.

Gods, Germs, and Petri Dishes: Toward a Nonsecular Medical Anthropology

This commentary calls on medical anthropology to become programmatically non-secular. Despite recent anthropological critiques of secularity, within and outside of anthropology, most contemporary medical anthropologists continue to leave deities and religiosity out of their examinations of healing practices, especially in their accounts of biomedicine. Through a critical, relational constructionist lens, which traces how all entities are both constructed and real, a non-secular medical anthropology would insist that when deities are part of medical practice, they are integral to analysis. Importantly then, within the symmetrical nature of this same constructionist lens, biomedical entities like germs and petri dishes need to be accounted for just as much as deities.

Conversing Life: An Autoethnographic Construction

This autoethnography is a constructed account of a co-exploration into the nature and effects of a longitudinal dyadic conversation process from a relational constructionist perspective. The conversations, between me as participant autoethnographer and a co-participant, aimed at maximising personal learning for both. Through co-created contexts of mutual engagement and respectful presence, we were able to focus our learning on the spontaneous process and content of the conversations. The qualitative data were sampled purposively from diary entries summarizing the conversations which spanned a period of five years. The data were analysed into themes and together, with selected illustrative examples of significant conversational moments, were woven into an autoethnography that attempts to convey the embodied and systemic learning that emerged from these conversations.

Research within Our Everyday Reach: A Review of Research and Social Change: A Relational Constructionist Approach

I review the 2012 book, Research and Social Change: A Relational Constructionist Approach, by Sheila McNamee and Dian Marie Hosking concentrating on two ideas critical to constructionist inquiry. I emphasize and discuss “everyday-ness” (p. 4) in relation to studying one’s own practice as well as the notion of “engaged unfolding” (p. 45) in relation to methodological decision-making.

(Re)constructing Reflexivity: A Relational Constructionist Approach

This article distinguishes three discourses of reflexivity in relation to human inquiry. One of these arises from a post-modern, relational constructionist perspective which radically re-conceptualizes reflexivity: (a) as a local and co-constructed process oriented towards the question (b) how are we 'going on' together, and therefore paying attention to (c) the realities and relations we are co-creating during the research process and so (d) is concerned with local pragmatic and ethical issues (Gergen & Hosking, 2006; McNamee, 1994) rather than with the quality of truth claims. Regular reflexive dialogues as part of, and directed at, the research process can heighten the local use value of research for all participants and can facilitate new possible realities and relations.

Spirituality in narratives of meaning

This article forms part of a study which was inspired by the ever-growing need for significance expressed both by my life coaching and pastoral therapy clients as well as the need for existential meaning reported both in the lay press and academic literature. The study reflected on a life that matters with a group of co-researchers in a participatory action research relationship. The study has been positioned within pastoral theology and invited the theological discourse into a reflection of existential meaning. Adopting a critical relational constructionist epistemology, the research was positioned within a postmodern paradigm. The implications for meaning and research were explored and described. This article tells the story of how spirituality was positioned in the narratives of meaning by my fellow researchers.

Research and Social Change: A Relational Constructionist Approach

Research and Social Change: A Relational Constructionist Approach

Narrative tensions

We focus on four major tensions pervading much narrative inquiry to date, tensions that threaten to divide the field into alienated enclaves. Of specific concern are psychological vs. social explanations of narrative, structural vs. process orientations to research, approaches that celebrate experience vs. those that textually deconstruct experience, and accounts that center on singularity of self-narratives vs. incoherent multiplicity. Finally, we open discussion on a relational constructionist account of narrative, with an eye toward reconciling these disparate orientations.

Adolescent developmental needs: lost or addressed in health sector transitions?

Purpose: To produce a conceptual summary of literature focusing on models which inform and guide the transition from paediatric to adult services for Adolescents and Young Adults (AYA). The review was conducted as part of a larger study exploring the experiences of AYA in their transition from the paediatric to the adult cancer setting. Theory: This review draws on interpersonal, relational and social constructionist perspectives of adolescence and Erikson’s stages of psycho-social development. Methods: A critical narrative review, informed by systematic techniques for searching and appraisal, was conducted on recently published (1998–2008) literature which focused on transition models from across a range of illness conditions. Results and conclusions: Current models do not adequately meet the needs of adolescents during transition as they are limited by the level of understanding of adolescent development which they incorporate. Therefore, models are needed which reflect the dynamic and often complex nature of adolescence and contextualise the interrelationship of transitioning between services and life-course transitions for AYA with chronic conditions. Discussion: To ensure effective co-ordination and continuity of care during the transition process, pathways of care should be informed by and constructed within both medical and psycho-social paradigms.

Process Consultation Revisited

Process consultation as conceived and reformulated several times by Edgar Schein constitutes a seminal contribution to the process of organization development in general and to the definition of the helping role of the consultant in particular. Under the pressure of a pragmatic turn in organizational change work, the practice of process consultation was fading away during the eighties and nineties. In some particular training and organizational consulting contexts nevertheless, the foundational principles and practices of process consultation are experienced to be more relevant than ever before. A relational constructionist theoretical lens, an emphasis on joint consultant—client practices, and a proper contextual embedding constitute a relational practice perspective that embodies in a new form and language those foundational ideas.

Narrative

This article reviews one current concept of experiential learning, using the work of David Kolb as an exemplar of this genre of learning theory. Working from a relational or social constructionist perspective, the article suggests that there are three problematic assumptions within current experiential learning cycles. First, there is a realist treatment of world and events. Second, a distinct and independent individual is assumed to be able to experience, know and act on this real world. Third, cognition, be it in the form of knowledge, interpretation or perception, is treated as the unproblematic precursor to action. In contrast to these assumptions relational premises invite multiple narratives to replace ‘concrete experience’, social rather than individual action and coordination with others in contrast with adaptation to a real world. These alternative premises form the basis of an alternative, narrative reflective cycle that is argued to offer practical reflective ‘tools’ that would be of benefit, even if the reflector did not share the author’s relational constructionist assumptions.

Evaluating Appreciative Inquiry: A Relational Constructionist Perspective

Appreciative inquiry (AI) has become increasingly popular as a social constructionist approach to organizational change and development. Many claims are made about its status and value but there are few published evaluation studies. Furthermore, some interesting and important issues arise as to how AI can be evaluated appropriately – given its social constructionist context. The heart of our argument is that AI could appropriately and usefully be evaluated using the approach of ‘responsive evaluation’. We lay out our views by putting forward a particular, relational, narrative of social construction processes. We then draw upon this relational narrative to develop three themes. One theme is that both AI and social constructionism should be viewed as variable social constructions and not fixed ‘things’. This means that AI manifests in many different ways in different local-cultural and local-historical contexts. 1 A related theme is that, if theory and method co-define one another, then AI is much more than just a method. Finally, viewing evaluation as a variable social construction suggests that some evaluation practices will be more consistent with the premises of relational constructionism and AI than others. These themes are developed in several parts. In the first, we briefly introduce AI, the links that have been made between it and social constructionism, and potential implications of these links for evaluation. In the second, we outline the defining premises of relational constructionism. In the third, we examine AI, its multiple meanings, and its central premises. We then explore links between relational constructionism and AI. This brings us to the fifth part in which we introduce evaluation and its potential relations with AI. Finally, we write of how AI and evaluation could be performed in ways that reflect relational constructionist premises.

Accounting in Babel? Constructing social accounting as a multi-logical performance

All social practices reproduce certain taken-for-granteds about what exists. Constructions of existence (ontology) go together with notions of what can be known of these things (epistemology), and how such knowledge might be produced (methodology)—along with questions of value or ethics. Increasingly, reflective practitioners—whatever their practice—are exploring the assumptions they ‘put to work’ and the conventions they reproduce. Questions are being asked about how to ‘cope’ with change in a postmodern world, and ethical issues are gaining more widespread attention. If we look at these constructions then we often find social practices: (a) give central significance to the presumption of a single real world; (b) centre a knowing subject who should strive to be separate from knowable objects, i.e. people and things that make up the world; (c) a knowing subject who can produce knowledge (about the real world) that is probably true and a matter of fact rather than value (including ethics). Social practices of this sort often produce a right–wrong debate in which one individual or group imposes their ‘facts’ (and values) on others. Further they often do so using claims to greater or better knowledge (e.g. science, facts …) as their justifications. We use the term “relational constructionism” as a summary reference to certain assumptions and arguments that define our “thought style”. They are as follows: fact and value are joined (rather than separate); the knower and the known—self and other—are co-constructed; knowledge is always a social affair—a local–historical–cultural (social) co-construction made in conversation, in other kinds of action, and in the artefacts of human activities (‘frozen’ actions so to speak), and so; multiple inter-actions simultaneously (re)produce multiple local cultures and relations, this said; relations may impose one local reality (be mono-logical) or give space to multiplicity (be multi-logical). In this view, the received view of science is but one (socially constructed) way of world making, as is social constructionism, and different ways have different—and very real—consequences. In this paper, we take our relational constructionist style of thinking to examine differing constructions of foot and mouth disease (FMD)1 in the UK. We do so in order to highlight the dominant relationship construction. We argue that this could be metaphorised as ‘accounting in Babel’—as multiple competing monologues—many of which remained very local and subordinated by a dominant logic. However, from a relational constructionist point of view, it is also possible to argue that social accounting can be done in a more multi-logical way that gives space to dialogue and multiplicity. In the present (relational constructionist) view, accounting is no longer ‘just’ a question of knowledge and methodology but also a question of value and power. To render accounting practices more ethical they must be more multi-voiced and enable ‘power to’ rather than ‘power over’.

The Quality of Life from a Child's Perspective

During the last decade, both in politics and research methodology there has been an increased interest in listening to children's experiences and viewpoints, as separate and different from their adult carers. In the line with these interests, this article discusses how the quality of life, from a child's perspective, can be sociologically framed, and the relevance this has for people in the social work field. The article begins by clarifying the meaning of talking about quality of life from a child's perspective by reference to the concept of generational order. Next, some methodological experiences and empirical findings regarding quality of life from a child's perspective are briefly reported. This is partly because these experiences and findings by themselves are regarded as relevant for administrative practices and social work regarding children, and partly because they support and have been a source of shaping the sociological frame. Then, on the basis of these experiences and findings, and by adopting a relational social constructionist approach, the quality of life from a child's perspective is framed sociologically. Finally, based on the findings and framing of children's quality of life from a child's perspective some recommendations for social work regarding children are suggested.

Group Psychotherapy for Adolescents Comorbid for Substance Abuse and Psychiatric Problems: A Relational Constructionist Approach

The group psychotherapy of adolescents comorbid for psychiatric and substance abuse problems is fraught with inconsistent attendance, frequent verbal and physical disruptions by the adolescents, and intense countertransference toward patients and their parents on the part of treating staff. A relational constructionist approach assists staff and patients in overcoming these obstacles and in focusing on the adolescents’ search for personal meaning. Multiple group psychotherapy conducted in a combined day treatment and high school program is described and illustrated by case examples during the course of a year of treatment. These examples illustrate the importance of a relational non-hierarchical approach to adolescent patients by treating staff.

Work and Organization through Intercultural Dialogue

This article presents 25 years of experience with the theory and practice conducted through the intercultural relationships between an indigenous rural Mexican community and a team of urban professionals who became an insider partner in regional human and community development. The first section offers the synchronic and diachronic aspects of the epistemological perspective that has been evolving over the years; the theoretical basis that includes three challenges and six levels; and the methodology of presence, interdisciplinarity and agency. The second section is the narrative of the experience. It was rewarding and enriching to discover at international psychology congresses the convergence of our approach with that currently used by the social relational constructionist group led by Dian Marie Hosking.