Navigating Messy Research Methods and Mentoring Practices at a Bilingual Research Site on the Mexico-U.S. Border

ABSTRACT

Using a dissertation research project at a transnational site, this pedagogical process piece explores the experience from both the student and mentor perspectives. We discuss challenges gaining access to the research site and navigating frequently-acknowledged-but-rarely-described affective, relational dynamics that disrupt qualitative research in everyday technical and professional communication. To assist students’ and their mentors’ engagement with these dynamics, we suggest heuristics derived from critical reflection on our own tactical responses to these research and pedagogical challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogical theory
• mentoring
• research methods
• workplace studies
• qualitative research
• messiness research
• multilingual research

Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to BPUSA and Productos de la Frontera for their time and willingness to contribute to this project. Even amidst all the challenges outlined here, we greatly appreciated participants’ patience, good humor, and substantive contribution to Beau’s project.

Notes

1. Participants and business entities were assigned pseudonyms in order to help protect their privacy.

2. Though not part of the original intention of the research project our piece here emerges from our reflection on the recurring dynamics of unexpected contextual realities that impeded Beau’s progress. The questions about how one mentors future qualitative researchers also intensified as a result of the unique way we sought to cope tactically with the complexities of research in a particular multilingual research environment.

3. WhatsApp exchange reconstructed from exported records downloaded directly from WhatsApp to Notepad.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beau Pihlaja

Beau Pihlaja is Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on intercultural rhetorics, digital mediation, activity theory, and actor-network theory.

Lucía Durá

Lucía Durá is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Her work on positive deviance, intercultural communication, and participatory methodologies focuses on understanding and leveraging the assets of vulnerable populations to solve complex problems.