A Foucauldian perspective on service-learning
Chapter 5 Methodology
5.2 Researcher reflexivity
5.2.1 Complementary and competing positionings
Robinson (2002) proposed that “the researcher is more able to recognise the contingency and partiality of any account produced about the ‘other’ through examining their
implication in the research process” (p. 4). In conceptualising how I was implicated in the
research process, I found it useful to imagine my various roles or positionings and their relative distance from the critical reflection process during the service-learning course.
Figure 5.1 below is a graphic representation of this.
Figure 5.1: Complementary and competing positionings.
Being constructed in these different positions resulted in my having differing investments in the process. At the level of participant and subject, I was part of the critical reflection process; the talk was between the student participants and myself. I was involved in the construction of the students and myself through the process. At this level, my stake was about providing students with the space to reflect on and learn from the experience. In this position, I wanted to present myself as a resource, sounding board and critical listener – pushing students to deeper levels of critical reflection. As a participant, I wanted to model authenticity to the students and thus used self-disclosure to achieve this. I was a participant as a research subject. I was also constructed in various other subject positions in and
through the participants and the process.
At the level of instructor, I had academic objectives that I was trying to achieve. This position afforded me the rights to prescribe readings, assignments and assessments. It allowed me
Instructor Researcher
Participant and subject
Author
to direct the process in particular ways (through key questions or the focus of the readings prescribed for the sessions). At stake here was the ability to demonstrate that I had met my responsibilities as lecturer/academic, to be able to produce a report which reflected on the goals of the course and the outcomes in relation to these goals. I also needed to be able to produce evidence of student learning.
At the level of researcher, I needed to ensure that good enough quality data were collected through the process to be able to answer the research questions. At the time the course took place, I did not have a conceptual framework through which to the view the process, and thus my original research questions concerned ways of ‘knowing’:
1. What ways of knowing emerge in the critical reflection process in service-learning?
2. How are these ways of knowing facilitated through this process?
3. Why do these ways of knowing emerge in the critical reflection process?
These questions changed following my uptake of a Foucauldian lens, when I realised that what I was interested in was more than knowing, but also included ways of doing and being, that is, Foucault’s notion of subjectivities. Although I did not approach the data collection process with a Foucauldian lens, this does not mean that there was no imposition of a research agenda on the critical reflection process. I approached the research from a psychological perspective (given that this is my disciplinary preference). My predisposition was therefore more inclined towards the pastoral, as is a norm in my discipline. Further, a scientist-practitioner model is encouraged in psychology, and this was also a frame of reference as I proceeded with the research. In addition, In the position of researcher, I wanted to ensure that the course ran to completion and that no participants withdrew, so that the data collected was considered sufficient.
Being positioned as author was temporally different from the other three positions, as this occurred after the data collection had taken place. In writing up the research, the author provides her account of the process and her observations. Thus, although this role is separate from the others, it encompasses the others, as this ultimately determines what
‘truth’ is told of the process within which the other subject positions are subsumed. At stake
for the author are the credibility and trustworthiness of the account and the usefulness of the story for other researchers and stakeholders in the service-learning field.
Claims of distance from the data or the process are likely spurious, as these multiple subject positions meant that I was being all of these subjects across temporal and spatial
dimensions. Coffey (1999) argued that, because we are a part of what we study, we analyse and author ourselves, our experiences and conversations. Thus, as the author position constructs the preferred account, I have represented it as subsuming the other subject positions. Ultimately, the author decides the story that will be told. At the same time, I was both participant, subject, instructor and researcher. These different subjectivities with their differing investments in the process interacted, complementing and competing with each other during the process. As participant, I was invested in having an authentic encounter with the other participants. As instructor, I had authority to regulate and direct the process.
The interplay between authenticity and authority has been discussed in previous chapters;
however, suffice to state that these are not easy bedfellows and create conflict for either position. How could I be authentic and real and self-disclosing, without losing my authority?
This interplay of power effects was one of the foci of the study. From the researcher position, my investment was in ensuring defensible methodological procedures and decisions. Again, the interplay with issues of authenticity was relevant here – how could I ensure that all the participants remained in the process and attended all the sessions, and remain congruent? Lastly, as author, trustworthiness was the issue at stake. The issue of trustworthiness involved my capacity to be all of these roles and, at the same time, ‘extract’
myself from these roles to provide more than an anecdotal account.