Reflexivity
So many of the words written by Diane Watt (2007) reflected and reverberated in my own thoughts as I read the article On Becoming a Qualitative Researcher: The Value of Reflexivity. Since this is one of the readings for the upcoming DS1 course, it started as a task to be completed and but is ending up as a crystal in the collection. Within the first lines of the article Watt (2017) mentions trepidation, emergent design, unique project, no precise formula, interpretation, and reflection. These caught my attention, primarily due to the current work I’m grappling with for eCampus OEFellows research on teaching and learning. By the second paragraph, Watt mentions the use of a research journal which became the means and mechanism through which she was able to reflexively examine her praxis as a researcher. The inclusion of a reference to Richardson (2000) kept me reading, since the article Getting Personal: Writing Stories was an interesting one for me, thus building a connection between these two documents.
Watt (2007) describes how her research journal supported her work as a researcher – design, participant issues, data collection and management, interview techniques, the emergent nature of the inquiry, issues with trustworthiness, data analysis, and personal issues. By returning to read, review and reflect on the journal entries, Watt (2007) describes how clarity and confidence grew. Each reflexive act became a refraction from a crystal, shattering the initial solitary beam of writing into a myriad of new directions and ideas, becoming permutations from the original. Through this reflective stance, she was able to “connect theory and practice” while “gaining new insights into the complexity of qualitative inquiry and what it means to be a qualitative researcher” (p. 98).
This practice of reflection is not lost on me, as I begin this PhD experience. I’ve been blogging for years and will now need to consider how this public nature of my writing will fit into the reflective, reflexive and refractory nature of ideas, theories, practices, decisions, methodologies as I negotiate all things shared, stated or kept private.
I have the crystal in my hand. Beams of light are streaming through – readings and writings bend through the crystal and are refracting onto new pages, yet to be read, written, and reflected.
References:
Richardson, L. (2001). Getting Personal: Writing stories. Qualitative Studies in Education, 14 (1), 33–38.
Watt, D. (2007). On Becoming a Qualitative Researcher: The Value of Reflexivity. Qualitative Report, 12(1), 82-101.
Image Attribution:
Photo by Luke Leung on Unsplash – reflection
