Living and writing the researcher‐researched relationship

Abstract

Abstract

This article recounts the development of a relationship between a university researcher and a public school practitioner, and describes how changes in this relationship affected the research process itself. The article addresses three issues central to qualitative studies in education: the attempt to have research benefit practice; the formation of reciprocal relationships between researchers and those researched; and the writing of ethnographic accounts. The story is told in separate voices, alternating between the person researched and the researcher. Each voice describes how the relationship moved through six distinct, yet related, phases. Beginning with caution and skepticism, moving toward trust and self‐disclosure, each of these phases affected the conduct of the research study and its findings.