Search

This paper explores reflexivity in qualitative research, challenging conventional perspectives that revolve around the binary of 'insider' and 'outsider' positioning. While traditionally reflexivity has been understood through the lens of a researcher's socio-historical positionality, we argue for a more dynamic understanding, emphasizing that academic self-formation is an ongoing process of self-creation. Drawing inspiration from the ancient Akadēmía, where writing was a method of self-reflection, we recontextualize reflexive qualitative writing, aligning it with Foucault's interpretations of Ancient Greek and Renaissance concepts. We posit that writing, especially in doctoral research, is not just a tool for communication but a means of self-formation. This perspective redefines reflexivity as a transformative intellectual and existential process. The paper critically examines the prevailing insider/outsider binary in the research literature, suggesting that researcher identities are fluid and constantly shaped by interactions. By integrating Foucault's later work on ethics, we explore the ethical dimensions of reflexivity and the formation of the ethical subject. Ultimately, this paper contributes to the academic discourse on reflexivity, offering a more fluid, transformative view of the doctoral process and reflexive writing in qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government implemented education access policies occupy a prominent place in the discourse on access to education. Education access issues have, thus, been examined almost exclusively from macro-level structural perspective. The micro-politics that take place behind the scenes after structural access issues have been resolved is minimally broached. Drawing on qualitative data from first generation educated women in Ghana and their mothers, this paper addresses the dark underbelly of girls' access to education, and the resistance activities undertaken by women to ensure that girls who become causalities of non-enrolment decisions are enrolled. Thus, the paper is guided by two questions. How do girls who become casualties of non-enrolment decisions go to school? How does the resistance activities women take against such non-enrolment decisions enable access for girls? In presenting the roles played by different actors such as mothers and kins, this paper makes an argument that, through women's resistance activities such as subverting the norms, covert diplomacy, and infractions of gendered rules in decision-making, women resist structural distribution of norms that exclude them from decision-making before girls can go to school unimpeded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on one approach to making research students more reflexive in their writing. It is argued that the development of the ability to be reflexive in regard to their own qualitative research does not come easily to a significant number of students. A range of possibilities which supervisors might present to their research students as questions to be considered in these respects is outlined. Four relevant case study vignettes are presented of the work of doctoral students (with the full cooperation and written permission of all involved) who have been supervised by the author of this paper. It is argued that these demonstrate that the students concerned have found consideration of their own, sometimes shifting, positions on the insider–outsider continuum of considerable value in developing their reflexivity in relation to their own research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the study on the assessment of published researches by Ruscio and colleagues. The author states that the authors take the duality of the numbers of citations and numbers of publications into a single measure of scholarly impact. The author says that provost and deans will assign more weight on the qualitative indicators of scholarly impact. The author adds that the authors are removing subjectivity from the qualitative aspect of analysis.

Philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari's figuration of the rhizome describes structures that are non-hierarchical and open-ended. Rhizomatic analyses are increasingly being adopted in educational research to challenge traditional power structures, give voice to those previously unheard and open issues in messy but authentic ways. Rhizomatic mapping involves depicting a number of points that elaborate, shape and disrupt each other, encouraging readers to draw their own interconnecting routes or separating chasms between them. In this paper, I adopt rhizomatic mapping techniques to open up issues of learning spaces in one Australian university, in order to problematise the mass university's approaches to student learning. In this mapping, I give voice to two of the least powerful groups in the university, first-year students and sessional tutors, alongside educational academics and administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

‘Researcher Researched’ calls for a complementary research methodology by proposing autoethnography as both a method and text that crosses the boundaries of conventional and alternative methodologies in higher education. Autoethnography rearticulates the researcher researched positions by blurring the boundary between them. This repositioning opens up the dialogue to question what constitutes acceptable research methodology and data. I outline the autoethnographic methodological framework before discussing concerns about this form of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to join the conversation about doctoral preparation that has been a persistent but intermittent topic of interest in educational journals. Previous articles have focused on the format of the dissertation, the purpose of the literature review, and approaches to supporting doctoral students in acquiring professional writing skills. The present article focuses on writing the literature review as an example of professional practice and uses the constructs of representation, decomposition, and approximation (Grossman et al., 2009) to analyze a seminar designed to support doctoral students in learning how to engage in the practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our universities are becoming increasingly diverse at the same time as online asynchronous discussions (OADs) are emerging as the most important forum for computer mediated communication (CMC) in distance education. But there is shortage of studies that explore how graduate students from different ethnic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds use OADs for academic discourse socialization. This article discusses a qualitative study conducted to address these issues. Language socialization and community of practice theories informed the study. Analyses of surveys, interviews, and Blackboard postings from seven hybrid courses reveal that participants perceived OADs highly positively and used them as a virtual community for academic and professional discourse socialization and appropriation. Findings also suggest that students experienced some frustrations and disappointments regarding professorial presence and grading. We discuss these findings, show how academic and professional discourse socialization occurs in asynchronous virtual reality, and draw implications for further research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument made in this essay is that it is necessary to theorize a form of assessment - the academic viva in higher education. It is threatened with extinction because of its high cost compared with written exams, multiple choice and other forms of assessment. However, little empirical research, both in Norway and internationally, has been undertaken to reveal what is actually going on in the viva. This has partly been because it has been difficult to gain access to systematically observe the viva examination as it takes place. In the qualitative research presented by the author, on the higher education viva in Norway, permission was obtained to film a number of master's in education vivas where candidates defended 50,000-word dissertations. Three research questions were asked: how was the viva talked into being, what kinds of judgements were made by examiners, and, lastly, what would a validity argument look like for the viva? Answering these research questions moves some way to proposing a theory of the viva and hence providing a foundation for determining whether its continued existence is legitimate, at least from a theoretical and qualitatively researched point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]