Researcher Reflexivity

Researchers are in the world and of the world. They bring their own biographies to the research situation and participants behave in particular ways in their presence. Qualitative enquiry is not a neutral activity. (Cohen et al, 2011, p.225)

With regard to researcher bias, Bourdieu highlights the significance for knowledge claims of the “neglected objectifying relation between subject and object, knower and known” (Maton, 2003, p.57). Bourdieu’s epistemic reflexivity comprises making the objectifying relation itself the object for analysis; the resultant objectification of objectification is, he argues, the epistemological basis for social scientific knowledge.

He identifies three principal sources of bias in a knowledge claim: the social origins and coordinates of the researcher; the researcher’s position in the intellectual field;

and ‘intellectual bias’, the result of viewing the world as a spectacle (Schirato &

Webb, 2003). If I consider my own potential biases that may emanate from my social origins, my life history and personal story have led me to investigate this particular research area and therefore this must be considered. As well as this, my position in the intellectual field and my position regarding academic bias must also be taken into account.

I will not dwell on my intellectual journey, but will highlight that I initially engaged with the academic field of the Professional Doctorate in Education as a positivist: my entire academic life until that point had been an exploration of the world through computer modeling, questionnaires and quantitative data. However, quite early on in the programme I considered the issues surrounding objective truths, and I questioned the limit of what numbers could tell me about the complexity of the social

world. This moment was quite unsettling and it fundamentally changed my perspective as researcher. The philosopher Wittgenstein (1921/2001) intrigued me with his perspectives on the role of language in human thinking and its representation of reality, especially in our supposedly neutral use of words even though we belong to a particular culture. I also considered Bruner (1986) and his theories of human understanding and thinking in terms of storied text, and Husserl with his concepts of habituality and habitus, a constituted self as a stable and abiding ego (Moran, 2011).

The sociologists and philosophers Michael Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu provided me with fresh intellectual tools with which to go out and unpick the world. New perspectives on the nature of ‘Truth’ and knowledge, the concept of the ‘archaeology of knowledge’ (Foucault, 1989), how discourse and understanding are socially constructed and sedimented over time – all these interested me. The thinking tools of habitus, field and capital (Bourdieu, 1977; 1984; 1990) provided a framework that would help me unravel the complexity of social interaction, forming complex field analysis between the macro and micro, an analysis that could play back and forth between field and habitus. I wanted to understand the way the social world shaped the individual, but the notion of the individual shaping the social world had a resonance that bought clearer understanding. I firmly found my self rooted in a social constructionist ontological and epistemological frame, preferring to create meaning and understanding through rich interpretative methods, ones that could employ complementary forms of both qualitative and quantitative data, escaping the subjective-objective dichotomy.

It is worthy of note that I inhabited two intellectual worlds during the course of my research, that of Plymouth University’s Professional Doctorate in Education programme, with requisite study weekends, assignments and conferences, but also my professional world. As a part-time student, the majority of my time was spent at work rather than in the university, a professional world dominated by numerical analysis and objective-based evidential decision-making. Therefore, my research and professional life were in tension. My exploration of the subject of ‘the employment of ex-military as teachers’ would potentially develop into a critical analysis of the subject area and put me in a sensitive position with respect to my findings and my professional position with my employer.

Once located in the research field, conducting data collection and undertaking the physical act of analysis, I had to position myself in a different frame to proceed in a reflexive manner. To do this, I had to acknowledge, understand and recognize my relationships to the knowledge, knower and known within the research (Bourdieu &

Wacquaint, 1992). I also had to recognize my metaphorical relationship to the world, including how the world is constructed, the power relations within the research process and how questions can be loaded regarding my own ‘map of the world’ or habitus. In short, I had to ensure a balance within my arguments and guard against unconscious influence in my embodied way of being in the world (ibid). I reflected that a way of countering researcher bias would be through giving research participants ‘voice’ within the data collection process and a role in the interpretation of data. This could have potentially introduced risk into the data collection process and conflict if participants had challenged what was said during interviews or what was recorded during participant observations:

When it comes to writing up, the principle of reflexivity implies a number of things. The construction of the researcher’s account is, in principle, no different from other varieties of account: just as there is no neutral language of description, so there is no neutral mode of report. The reflexive researcher, then, must remain self-conscious as an author, and the chosen modes of writing should not be taken for granted. (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983: p.207-8 cited in Cohen et al, 2011, p.541)

I concluded that the researcher’s narrative would never be the research informant’s narrative. As researcher, I would be using others’ words and presenting them within my thesis and that this was the reality with this particular method of research. I therefore decided that the approach I would adopt to ensure a level of trustworthiness in my research would be peer review, which was already being achieved through the research supervision process. I had chosen my research supervisors not only because of their illuminating perspectives on the work of Bourdieu, but also because I felt they would challenge me regarding my particular subjectivities. I believe that this has helped guard against bias within the research and provide greater reliability and validity, or rather confidence and trustworthiness (Clandinin & Connelly, 1990) in the case of my interpretative approach, through continuous critical review of my work throughout the entire research process.