This article was downloaded by: [York University Libraries]On: 12 November 2014, At: 09:05Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Theory Into PracticePublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/htip20

Researchers, Reflexivity, and Good Data:Writing to UnlearnAudrey M. KleinsasserPublished online: 24 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Audrey M. Kleinsasser (2000) Researchers, Reflexivity, and Good Data: Writing to Unlearn,Theory Into Practice, 39:3, 155-162, DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip3903_6

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip3903_6

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”)contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and ourlicensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication arethe opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoevercaused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use canbe found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

155

Writing to UnlearnKleinsasser

Reflexivity: (a) the process of critical self-reflec- tion on one’s biases, theoretical predispositions,

preferences; (b) an acknowledgement of the inquir-er’s place in the setting, context, and social phenom-enon he or she seeks to understand and a means fora critical examination of the entire research process.(Schwandt, 1997)

Researchers want good data. As Creswellwrites in this issue, validity criteria are met, inpart, by good data. Throughout a study, research-ers focus on theoretical groundings, timelines, col-lecting and analyzing data, and writ ing upinterpretations. Separating these thoughts and ac-tions from reflexivity is impossible.1 Researcherreflexivity represents a methodical process of learn-ing about self as researcher, which, in turn, illumi-nates deeper, richer meanings about personal,theoretical, ethical, and epistemological aspects ofthe research question. Qualitative researchers en-gage in reflexivity because they have reason tobelieve that good data result.

Schwandt (1997), in the definition above,identifies elements of a reflexive process and ac-knowledgment of the researcher’s place (positionali-ty). Schwandt is referring to a specific kind ofdocumentation that may be written down in long-hand, keyed into a word processing program, per-haps dictated into a tape recorder for transcription.

The documentation format is flexible, revealing thepreferences and strengths of the researcher and,often, the conventions of the discipline or field.

Anthropologists, for example, take and keepcopious field notes, sometimes a private second setthat includes reflexive writing. In a text introducingqualitative research for educational researchers,Bogdan and Biklen (1998) suggest that researchersbracket observer comments within a set of fieldnotes. Bracketing provides a visual reminder thatthe researcher observes and comments on self andis, in fact, part of the text.

Regardless of the form, researchers intent onprizing reflexivity collect and examine reflexivitydata as they would interview and observation data.Such documentation makes researcher thinkingabout personal and theoretical commitments visi-ble and, as suggested by Schwandt, open to a crit-ical examination of the research process. Thus,researcher reflexivity and researcher writing forman important and close connection.

Untangling the Personal and TheoreticalDynamic and creative, reflexivity gives qual-

itative research its pulse. The excerpt below, fromBehar’s The Vulnerable Observer: AnthropologyThat Breaks Your Heart (1996), provides one ex-ample of reflexivity.

My grandfather’s dying and death while I was inSpain brought home to me—because I was away from

Audrey M. Kleinsasser is associate professor and di-rector of the Center for Teaching Excellence at theUniversity of Wyoming, Laramie.

Audrey M. Kleinsasser

Researchers, Reflexivity,and Good Data: Writing to Unlearn

THEORY INTO PRACTICE, Volume 39, Number 3, Summer 2000Copyright © 2000 College of Education, The Ohio State University0040-5841/2000$1.50

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

156

THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Summer 2000Getting Good Qualitative Data

home—the profound emotional power of the situa-tion of the peasant elderly in Santa Maria. I couldshare, with Leonardo, with Sixto, and others of theirgeneration, the force of emotion that death and mor-tality evoked for them—what it meant to have tocome to terms with the dramatic changes that hadtaken place in the Spanish countryside to build deathhouses for themselves that the next generation wouldnot have to care for. By another movement of mem-ory, my conversations about death with people inSpain heightened my memory of my grandfather andthe ways links to his past had been severed. And mypreoccupation with the death of memory in SantaMaria provoked a resurgence of memory, for me,about my own Jewish heritage and how I had be-come alienated from it. In the course of these move-ments and shifts of perspective, the boundary betweensocial realms that are purely personal and those thatare part of ethnographic fieldwork became blurred.My grandfather was subjected my anthropologicalgaze while I was drawn close personally to the peo-ple of Santa Maria. (p. 82)

Behar juxtaposes what seem to be separate experi-ences and roles to develop theory: How do theSpanish peasant elderly of a small village under-stand death? At the same time, she acknowledgesfeelings affecting her work—guilty feelings aboutbeing away from home. Reflexivity enables Beharto blur distinctions between the personal and thetheoretical rather than hold them separate or ig-nore one at the expense of the other. At the sametime, the researcher acknowledges multiple roles.

Fulfilling her role as a university professor,Behar attends conferences and presents papers. Likemany researchers, she struggles with the tensionof engaging the powerless and voiceless in researchonly to report those findings from the platform ofexpensive conference hotels situated in upscaleshopping districts of fine cities:

But, you may say, if I don’t want to be in Texas,why am I here before a lectern in a hotel where thechandelier dangles by a thread. I don’t know if it’sthe immigrant in me or the neurotic in me, but I amlike that. Although I am here, I imagine there issomewhere else I ought to be instead. And so I don’tstop tormenting myself: Is this there where the voy-age through the long tunnel leads? Is this why myparents left Cuba? (p. 161)

Both Behar excerpts illustrate a kind of writ-ing that the book’s flyleaf describes as anthropolo-gy and memoir. In labeling herself vulnerable,Behar uses a word with Latin and Greek rootsmeaning to wound physically, make assailable and

susceptible, open to censure or criticism. Research-er reflexivity creates physical evidence of personaland theoretical tracks through a created text, evi-dencing the researcher’s deep learning and unlearn-ing. The infusion of reflexivity represents acomplicated and vulnerable anthropology. Behar, inrevisioning anthropological text, acknowledges posi-tion, power, bias, gender, race, voice, and politics.

In the late 1970s, Audrey Shalinsky, a colleagueof mine at the University of Wyoming, conductedfieldwork in Afghanistan to understand gender andits related social issues. Ten years later, unable toput aside ethical and political implications of thatwork, she wrote an article detailing the researchaftermath for her and the informants she assistedin their eventual emigration to the United States.Shalinsky’s (1991) struggle to write about troublingaspects of the fieldwork yielded the following com-ment:

Through the years it has become easier to talk aboutfieldwork trials and tribulations. Teaching studentsabout the anthropological concerns for the ethics andpolitics of fieldwork has helped me more than any-thing else to understand and deal with my own field-work and its aftermath. The new emphasis onreflexivity and ethnographic writing indicates my ex-periences are not unique among anthropologists. (p.8) (see also Marcus & Fischer, 1986; Clifford &Marcus, 1986)

In an oft-cited essay, Rosaldo (1989), likeBehar and Shalinsky, weaves a text in which theresearch question and findings cannot be separatedfrom the personal. In “Grief and a Headhunter’sRage,” which introduces Culture and Truth: TheRemaking of Social Analysis (1989), Rosaldo re-counts the accidental death in the Philippines ofhis wife, anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo. Withtheir two young children, the Rosaldos were livingamong the Ilongots, conducting field research. Il-ongot informants told Renato Rosaldo that in therage of bereavement, men could headhunt. BeforeMichelle’s death, Rosaldo didn’t understand whatthey meant. But then, connecting his own bereave-ment to that of the Ilongots, he writes:

Not until some fourteen years after first recordingthe terse Ilongot statement about grief and a head-hunter’s rage did I begin to grasp its overwhelmingforce. For years I thought that more verbal elabora-tion (which was not forthcoming) or another analyt-ical level (which remained elusive) could better

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

157

Writing to UnlearnKleinsasser

explain older men’s motives for headhunting. Onlyafter being repositioned through a devastating lossof my own could I better grasp that Ilongot oldermen mean precisely what they say when they de-scribe the anger in bereavement as the source of theirdesire to cut off human heads. (p. 3)

Behar, Shalinsky, and Rosaldo craft texts thatmay seem risky, especially to beginning research-ers. Each example shows how the researcher makesnew connections between the personal and the the-oretical, especially over time. Each example evi-dences an unlearning of personal and theoreticalcommitments through reflexivity. Without collect-ing more data, reflexivity enables the researcher topresent a more passionate, wise, and rich account.

Ethical and Epistemological TensionsFor some researchers, ethics is straightfor-

ward, an acknowledgement of informed consentprocedures spelled out in federal regulations thatguide research involving humans. Such a stancepositions the researcher as powerful expert andcloses off the opportunity and challenge of consid-ering ethical and epistemological implications intandem. For the qualitative researcher, however,no aspect of the research process and product maybe more important to problematize and unlearn thanethics. Whether an experienced anthropologist or abeginning researcher, reflexivity enables the re-searcher to explore ethical entanglements before,during, and after the research. Reflexivity may alsoenable the researcher and the researched to resolvein a practical, working sense, other ethical issues.Ethics cannot be separated from epistemology and,to this end, reflexivity on ethics has everything todo with good data.

In an Educational Researcher article, Howeand Dougherty (1993) address ethics, institutionalreview boards, and what they term a “changingface of educational research” (p. 16). I serve onmy institution’s review board for human subjects.During this almost 10-year period, I have observedthe ratio of positivisitic projects to qualitativeprojects flip. In contrast to 10 years ago, a majori-ty of projects now coming to the board are qualita-tive. Depending on the way the researcher presentsand conceptualizes the inquiry approach in the pro-posal, the university staff attorney who works withus and some members of the board view qualita-

tive research projects as a type of survey research.As survey research, the project would include aone-time consent and almost always be approvedat a minimal risk level.

The full board does not hear many of theseproposals. Consequently, the proposals earn an ex-pedited review. An expedited review may send amessage to the researcher that he or she has ful-filled the minimal ethical responsibilities of in-formed consent, i.e., identifying potential risks andbenefits of participation, and has, in fact, taken careof ethics. At the same time, the board’s understand-ing of various forms of postpositivistic research andthe inherent ethical dilemmas is not furthered.

Howe and Dougherty identify intimacy andopen-endedness as two uniquely qualitative re-search features that “muddy the ethical waters andexclude much of it from the scope of the special[human subjects] exemptions for education re-search” (p. 18).

Qualitative research is intimate (in comparison withexperimental research) because it reduces the distancebetween researchers and “subjects.” Indeed, there is atendency to abandon reference to “subjects”—for whom“treatments” are to be developed—in preference to “par-ticipants”—with whom “meanings” are to be negotiat-ed. The methods associated with this general emphasisengender certain potential ethical difficulties that donot typically attend experimental methods. Interview-ing, for example, requires one-to-one contact as wellas removing children from their “normal” educationalactivities. Video- and audiotaping create records thatpose a potential threat to confidentiality.

Qualitative research is open-ended (again, in com-parison with experimental methods) because param-eters and a mapped research direction—instead ofhaving to be set at the outset—unfold during thecourse of the investigation. This significantly com-plicates obtaining participants’ “fully informed con-sent” before the research begins because researchdirections will constantly be renewed and revised asa result of the researcher’s activities and discoveriesalong the way.2 (pp. 18-19, emphases in original)

Responding to Howe and Doughtery’s con-cerns, Cooney and I (1997) identified juncturesdeconstructing informed consent. Cooney’s concep-tualizations resulted from her working through andmaking sense of what happened during her owndissertation research. Early drafts of the articlestarted with our rereading some of her reflexivewriting and theoretical memos that were part of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

158

THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Summer 2000Getting Good Qualitative Data

dissertation data. As a collaborator on the article, Iwrote a response after which we would talk aboutthe meanings we were developing about informedconsent.

Through this reflexive process, we identifiedfour critical junctures affecting the researcher/re-searched relationship: gaining access, maintainingaccess, drafting the document, and bringing thestudy to closure. Depending on the juncture, werecommended specific strategies that included writ-ten memos, member checks, an affirmation of con-tinued participation, negotiation, and the final,formal report. Virtually every strategy involved re-flexivity, much of which first was made publicthrough conversation or more writing, and then,eventually, a published article.

Clark and Moss (1996) ground their concernsabout ethics and epistemology in a collaborativeresearch project in a high school. Over a 4-yeartime period, university researchers collaboratedwith high school teachers and students to examinecollections of student writing for accountabilitypurposes. Interested in maximizing validity, theresearchers invited 10 students to join the projectas co-researchers. The students were paid for workthat included interviewing classmates and peers,collecting literacy artifacts, and reading transcriptsto identify themes. Clark and Moss view the ethi-cal and epistemological implications as equallyimportant:

How does one engage in such an inquiry—one thatis collaborative and change-oriented but where au-thority over the work is negotiated and shared? And,in chronicling such work, how do we, as universityresearchers, assess and ensure the soundness of ourfindings and interpretations when, in fact, such workinvites multiple interpretations from the various par-ticipants? (p. 521, emphasis in original)

All of the excerpted texts in this article illus-trate how researchers produce good data throughwriting-to-learn and unlearn, a process detailed fur-ther below. The process enables them to reexam-ine personal and theoretical commitments andconsider more deeply, ethical and epistemologicaltensions. This is what anthropologists and qualita-tive researchers in education mean when they use theterm, making the familiar strange. From the perspec-tive of rhetoric and composition scholars, reflexivityrepresents writing-to-learn, making the familiar

strange (see, for example, Britton, Burgess, Martin,McLeod, & Rosen, 1975; Bruffee, 1986; Emig, 1977;McLeod, 1988). Sounding like an anthropologist,Worsham (1991) provides a helpful conceptualiza-tion of unlearning in the context of writing-to-learn:

Our emphasis should shift from the notion of writ-ing as a mode of learning to that of writing as astrategy, without tactics or techniques, whoseprogress yields “unlearning.” This result does notmean that writing produces ignorance; rather, it pro-duces a sense of defamiliarization vis-a-vis unques-tioned forms of knowledge. Writing would no longerfunction primarily as an agency in the articulation ofknowledge and redistribution of power; instead, itwould become an indispensable agency for makingthe world strange and infinitely various. (p. 101)

Writing-to-Learn and UnlearnWhat anthropologists and other qualitative

researchers term reflexivity, composition and rhet-oric scholars term writing-to-learn (see, for exam-ple, Emig, 1977; McLeod, 1988). Writing-to-learnmakes thinking visible. When thinking becomesvisible, it can be inspected, reviewed, held up forconsideration, and viewed as a set of data. Howcan a beginning researcher develop reflexivity likethat illustrated by Behar, Shalinsky, and Rosaldo?

Practicing reflexivityIndispensable to the qualitative researcher,

reflexivity must be developed and valued, espe-cially in graduate school experiences. One way forbeginning researchers to develop reflexivity is topractice it. In a graduate level qualitative researchcourse I teach, beginning researchers plan, imple-ment, and write up a pilot study. As a teacher, Ibalance the almost overwhelming expectations ofproducing a pilot study in a 15-week semester withthe promise that no one will be punished for mak-ing well-intentioned mistakes (Kleinsasser, 1991).

In the context of the pilot study and our in-class research community, we examine, throughreflexivity, intentions, mistakes, and learnings asmuch as theoretical groundings and research find-ings. The success of the pilot study write-ups thushinges on researcher reflexivity. Most of the grad-uate students I work with do not write with thetheoretical depth and understanding of a Behar,Shalinsky, Rosaldo, Clark, and Moss. However,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

159

Writing to UnlearnKleinsasser

graduate students are just as able to engage in re-searcher reflexivity by writing about their devel-oping theories, research dilemmas, biases, andvulnerabilities.

Writing-to-learn presumes that the researcherdevelops a voice with multiple timbres, i.e., power-ful, sensitive, and vulnerable. Writing-to-learn helpsbeginning researchers start thinking and writing likequalitative researchers.

Together, the beginning researchers and Iconstruct a rubric to assess the pilot study. I sharerubrics from past classes, but every year, each classdevelops its own unique rubric. We use the rubricat different but interconnected junctures through-out the course. First, I use the rubric as a coachingtool to frame class discussions and one-on-one con-ferencing about pilot project drafts. Second, therubric provides specific language to use when thebeginning researchers seek feedback from peerreaders in the class and from me. Third, the begin-ning researchers use the rubric as a road map toorganize and write the pilot. Fourth, the beginningresearchers self-assess the write-ups using the ru-bric. Finally, outside readers who are colleaguesand former students take the rubric to score thewrite-ups in a simulation of a blind review processfor an educational research journal.3

The rubric focuses conversation and helpsbeginning researchers practice the language of qual-itative inquiry. Because we have created it togeth-er, the language of the rubric belongs to the studentsand might be more accessible than the articles andtexts we also use. We produce as many as four orfive drafts of the rubric until we agree that it rep-resents what together we value in the pilot. Be-cause we talk about each draft in a combination ofsmall and large group discussions, each draft pro-duces a deepening conversation. By being in con-versation with each other and me, the studentsslowly become more confident about qualitativeresearch criteria. Students have their own pilotstudy data to work with and write about reflexive-ly. They also call up Behar, Shalinsky, Rosaldo,and other exemplars to critique and emulate.

The combination of focusing on the languageof the rubric and writing up pilot studies helpsbeginning researchers move beyond a definitionallevel of qualitative research (e.g., member checks,

researcher ethics, voice). Each beginning researchercreates a text that exemplifies the features of qualita-tive research as presented in the rubric. Though theexchanges may be uncomfortable, class conversationsabout the rubric, i.e., qualitative research methods,sharpen and deepen. In order to talk about the ru-bric meaningfully, examples from the projects en-ter our conversations, as do new insights andunanticipated dilemmas. Often what we talk aboutduring a class session or a one-on-one conferencebecomes the focus of reflexive writing that the re-searcher incorporates into the pilot write-up.

Accounts such as those of Behar, Shalinsky,and Rosaldo illuminate a range of scholarly writ-ing important for beginning researchers to see.Educational research has been affected in positiveways by styles typical of what we may be moreaccustomed to seeing in journalism, fiction, andnonfiction—a conversational tone, use of the firstperson, I, and the kind of self-revelation connect-ed to theory development that is depicted above. Amore interesting written product results.

“But can we call this research”Writing in the Handbook of Qualitative Re-

search, Richardson (1994) titles her chapter, “Writ-ing: A Method of Inquiry.” In the followingexcerpt, Richardson shows herself to be in the con-ceptual company of writing-to-learn advocates. Butshe takes on research writing at a level rarely ad-dressed in research methods texts: Is the accountinteresting to read?

I write because I want to find something out. I writein order to learn something that I didn’t know beforeI wrote it. I was taught, however, as perhaps youwere, too, not to write until I knew what I wanted tosay, until my points were organized and outlined.No surprise, this static writing model coheres withmechanistic scientism and quantitative research. But,I will argue, the model is itself a sociohistorical in-vention that reifies the static social world imaginedby our nineteenth century foreparents. The modelhas serious problems: It ignores the role of writingas a dynamic, creative process; it undermines theconfidence of beginning qualitative researchers be-cause their experience of research is inconsistent withthe writing mode; and it contributes to the flotilla ofqualitative writing that is simply not interesting toread because adherence to the model requires writ-ers to silence their own voices and to view them-selves as contaminants. (p. 517)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

160

THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Summer 2000Getting Good Qualitative Data

In the course I teach, we read “An Anthro-pologist on Mars,” excerpted in The New Yorker(Sacks, 1993/1994). In the essay, Sacks paints aportrait of Temple Grandin, a Colorado State Uni-versity animal sciences professor who has autism.Sacks develops Grandin’s story at the same timethat he develops a second story. The second storyexplains the way researchers have examined au-tism as a neurological aberration. Grandin exem-plifies an anomaly among anomalies, not fittingthe theoretical frameworks of the way neurologiststheorize and treat autism. Sacks unlearns what hethought he and others understood about autism byinteracting with Grandin on her home and workturf, sharing meals and drives into the Coloradomountains.

The essay is published in a book entitled AnAnthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales(1995). I purposefully use the article rather thanthe book chapter because I want to invite a discus-sion about where we find research accounts, whowrites them, and what they look like. Students in-variably come to class reporting that the articlewas almost impossible to put down, beautifully andinterestingly written. Almost in the same breath,they ask, “But can we call this research?” Theirquestions prompt a spirited and genuine conversa-tion that leads to additional questions. Is Sacks aless credible researcher because his work appearsin a glossy weekly like The New Yorker?4 Is heless credible because the piece is a good read? Arethe data less good? If Sacks can write up a re-search report like this, can I? Would a dissertationwritten up like this be acceptable?

The article and others provide one way forstudents to talk about the writing and the structureof qualitative research accounts. In our conversa-tions, we try to dispel myths about scholarly writ-ing. By reading widely and understanding that it isnot only acceptable, it is important to read outsideof their fields of interest, beginning researchersseek out and can be informed by exemplars of bothfine research and good writing. Students read andthen write reflexively about McPhee’s (1986) Ris-ing From the Plains, Bissinger’s (1991) FridayNight Lights, Montgomery’s (1991) Walking Withthe Great Apes, as well as Behar’s (1996) The Vul-nerable Observer.

The assignment is to read the book least likelyto be the one that the student would read indepen-dently or pick up for pleasure reading. By readingoutside the comfortable and predictable parame-ters of one’s field (or reading pleasures), begin-ning researchers gain some practice making thefamiliar strange. The exemplars provide models ofethnography, science writing, portraits, paradoxi-cal tales—forms that elude quick definition andover-simplified categorization. The writing thusshows beginning researchers that reflexivity ap-pears in more than one form in published work inand out of academe.

Some forms of researcher reflexivity are obvi-ous, clearly labeled, and stand alone, i.e., a research-er reflexivity section within a manuscript or anappendix positioned outside of the formal researchreport but part of the research account. Others aresimultaneously bold and subtle, woven seamlesslythroughout the text by a researcher who claimsneither invisibility nor objective detachment, asrepresented in the writing of Behar, Shalinsky,Rosaldo, Cooney and Kleinsasser, and Clark andMoss. First person voice signals the reader that theresearcher views her or himself integral to the re-search, just as Schwandt’s definition suggests.

ConclusionSimilar to Shalinsky’s (1991) experiences

noted above, my teaching-learning collaborationswith beginning researchers have helped me under-stand research reflexivity as much if not more thanmy own research and evaluation projects. In thequalitative research courses I teach, we struggleless with interviewing and observation strategiesthan with developing researcher reflexivity. Wehave seen that it is fully possible to interview andobserve but not create a text prizing that whichmost distinguishes qualitative research: interpreta-tion, theory development, reflexivity.

From an anthropologist’s perspective, Geertz(1975) provides the metaphor, “researcher as in-strument,” to show that a researcher collects datathat pass through the researcher’s theoretical, prac-tical, experienced, and inexperienced lenses. It maybe that qualitative research is distinguished, first,by a researcher’s practiced reflexivity and second,by acknowledging a set of multiple lenses, identities,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

161

Writing to UnlearnKleinsasser

and roles. In the process of writing up a study—through project planning, data collection, and dataanalysis—researchers (experienced or beginner)claim their mistakes and become vulnerable. Be-ing vulnerable opens up learning and unlearningthat researchers document and include in the re-search account or, like Shalinsky and Rosaldo, writeabout later.

Researchers new to qualitative research areengaged by texts such as those cited throughoutthe article at the same time that they question theintimacy and open-endedness of the methodology.In part, the questioning comes from years of class-room-situated writing that presumes to know andexplain. Beginners do well to wonder how textscan look so different and include the presence ofthe researcher when most conventional textbooksdo not. Such writing devalues researcher experi-ence and learning and undermines the potential ofthe interpretive account.

Through practice, i.e., creating texts in whichreflexivity is not only valued, but expected, begin-ning researchers come to see that reflexivity is morethan coming clean in an apologetic and confes-sional manner. Reflexivity enables the researcherto untangle personal and theoretical commitmentsand scrutinize ethics and epistemology. The pub-lished texts of well-positioned anthropologists whoreflexively work their way through muddy person-al, theoretical, ethical, and epistemological watersencourage rather than silence beginning researchers.Reflexivity produces good data and, to the reader,reveals a very human researcher who is writing-to-learn and unlearn.

Notes1. Researchers select language with care and purpose.Here I use the word reflexivity though some research-ers may label the same process and product as reflec-tivity. Schwandt (1997, pp. 135-136) views the wordsas synonyms and provides a helpful discussion of mean-ings. I use reflexivity because the word connotes the“relationship existing between an entity and itself, anaction directed back on the agent” (Webster’s NinthNew Collegiate Dictionary, 1991).2. Howe and Dougherty pose similar concerns aboutprojects conducted by students for class requirements.Do such projects come before review boards? Whetherthey come before review boards or not, what under-standings do beginning researchers have about informed

consent? In what ways do understandings about quali-tative research’s intimacy and open-endedness changeafter one’s in the thick of the study? In reading a draftof this manuscript, Wendy Smith, a graduate studentin the course I teach, sent the following e-mail mes-sage. “One of the discussions in class that stands outfor me was when you talked about the option of us allcollecting data for a large study being done by some-one else on campus [Audrey had been contacted by auniversity administrator about class members’ conduct-ing focus interview data for an evaluation of a campusprogram.] In that way, we would be more protectedfrom hurtful feedback. By allowing us to all followour own lead, even with your guidance, you also al-lowed us to enter unknown ethical areas. Your reflec-tion to us in class was very meaningful and I think thatit would demonstrate your own vulnerability, even ifyou don’t point it out explicitly.” (personal communi-cation, May 23, 1999).3. Samples of scoring rubrics are available from theauthor.4. Sacks, a neurologist, publishes in a variety of scholarlyjournals and popular magazines. Another Sacks book,Awakenings (1973/1990), was made into a movie bythe same title.

ReferencesBehar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropol-

ogy that breaks your heart. Boston, MA: BeaconPress.

Bissinger, H.G. (1991). Friday night lights: A town, ateam, and a dream. New York: HarperCollinsPub-lishers.

Bogdan, R.C., & Biklen, S.K. (1998). Qualitative re-search for education: An introduction to theoryand methods (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Britton, J., Burgess, T., Martin, N., McLeod, A., &Rosen, H. (1975). The development of writing abil-ities. London: Macmillan Education.

Bruffee, K. (1986). Social construction, language, andthe authority of knowledge: A bibliographic es-say. College English, 48, 773-790.

Clark, C.T., & Moss, P.A. (1996). Researching with:Ethical and epistemological implications of doingcollaborative, change-oriented research with teach-ers and students. Teachers College Record, 97,518-548.

Clifford, J., & Marcus, G.E. (1986). Writing culture:The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berke-ley: University of California Press.

Cooney, M.H., & Kleinsasser, A.M. (1997). Re-vision-ing informed consent: Issues for classroom re-searchers who use qualitative methodology.Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research-er, 12(1), 15-20.

Emig, J. (1977). Writing as a mode of learning. CollegeComposition and Communication, 28, 122-128.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14

162

THEORY INTO PRACTICE / Summer 2000Getting Good Qualitative Data

Geertz, C. (1975). The interpretation of cultures. Chi-cago: Chicago University Press.

Howe, K.R., & Dougherty, K.C. (1993). Ethics, insti-tutional review boards, and the changing face ofeducational research. Educational Researcher,22(9), 16-21.

Kleinsasser, A.M. (1991). The value of a well-intentionedmistake: Notes from a qualitative research course.Mid-western Educational Researcher, (4)2, 7-9.

Marcus, G., & Fischer, M. (1986). Anthropology ascultural critique. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

McLeod, S.H. (1988). Translating enthusiasm into cur-ricular change. In S.H. McLeod (Ed.), Strengthen-ing programs for writing across the curriculum(pp. 5-12). New Directions for Teaching andLearning, No. 36. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

McPhee, J. (1986). Rising from the plains. New York:Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

Montgomery, S. (1991). Walking with the great apes:Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas. Bos-ton: Houghton Mifflin.

Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry.In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook

of Qualitative Research (pp. 516-529). ThousandOaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Rosaldo, R. (1989). Grief and a headhunter’s rage. InR. Rosaldo, Culture and truth: The remaking ofsocial analysis (pp. 1-21). Boston: Beacon Press.

Sacks, O.W. (1990). Awakenings (Rev. ed.). New York:HarperCollins. (Original work published 1973)

Sacks, O.W. (1993, December 27/1994, January 3). Ananthropolgist on Mars. The New Yorker, 69(44),106-125.

Sacks, O.W. (1995). An anthropologist on Mars: Sev-en paradoxical tales. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Schwandt, T.A. (1997). Qualitative inquiry: A dictionaryof terms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Shalinsky, A.C. (1991). The aftermath of fieldwork inAfghanistan: Personal politics. Anthropology andHumanism Quarterly, 16(1), 2-9.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. (1991).Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Worsham, L. (1991). Writing against writing: The pre-dicament of Ecriture Feminine in compositionstudies. In P. Harkin & J. Schilb (Eds.), Contend-ing with words (pp. 82-104). New York: The Mod-ern Language Association of America.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Yor

k U

nive

rsity

Lib

rari

es]

at 0

9:05

12

Nov

embe

r 20

14