Complicating methodological transparency

Abstract

A historical indicator of the quality, validity, and rigor of qualitative research has been the documentation and disclosure of the behind-the-scenes work of the researcher. In this paper, we use what we call methodological data as a tool to complicate the possibility and desirability of such transparency. Specifically, we draw on our disparate attempts to address calls for transparency about methodological processes in our respective dissertation studies in order to examine how novice researchers can explore transparency as a situated, ongoing, and philosophically informed series of decisions about how, when, and if to be transparent about our work. This work contributes to conversations about how qualitative researchers in education can understand, discuss, and teach qualitative inquiry while continuing to push the boundaries of the field.

Keywords:

• methodological data
• transparency
• doctoral education
• phenomenology
• poststructuralism
• writing as inquiry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kuntz (2010) uses misrepresentation here as we have throughout this paper. He recognizes, for example, that there are “complex issues inherent in representation” (p. 423) that emphasize what Foucault (1972) said of representation, that “everything is never said” (p. 118). The struggle about representation that Kuntz describes – a negotiation between the desire to honor theoretical commitments and the desire to do justice with representation – renders “representation as necessarily incomplete” (p. 423). Kuntz further explained that “representation as an ethical issue extends to deeply set philosophical beliefs about what can be represented and how such representations might be articulated” (p. 429). Because our discussion here is situated in the emphasis on theoretically informed inquiry, each time we use the word representation, it can be assumed that we include the poststructural assertion that all representation is partial and situated and is, therefore, (mis)representation.

2. Bringer et al. (2004), for example, advocated for “[maximizing] transparency in a doctoral thesis” in light of the increased use of electronic tools for analysis. They argue that such transparency is necessary to “provide enough evidence for the examiners to evaluate the study with criteria designed for evaluating qualitative research within the chosen methodology, grounded theory” (p. 251). Using our studies, which were informed by poststructural and phenomenological theories, we build on this work by illustrating how transparency will necessarily look different for different studies depending on the assumptions and expectations of the particular epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies that guide the work.

3. Researchers whose work is informed by poststructural theories, in particular, problematize constructs like data, making it difficult to read them as neutral, normal, and beyond question. Some researchers have even wondered if those constructs are so problematic that we would be better off leaving qualitative research behind in order to “do/live something else” (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013, p. 631). Indeed, Sarah and Jessica have grappled with that tension in other spaces (e.g. Bridges-Rhoads & Van Cleave, 2013). However, we have found that naming a shared concept can be a useful strategy that both enables us to have conversations with colleagues whose research is grounded in different theories than our own and that further serves as a reminder that concepts do not function the same way for all researchers (Hughes & Bridges-Rhoads, 2013). For example, each time we write data in this article, Sarah and Jessica read it as “data (under erasure), data-undone, data-rethought, data-particles, or maybe data-becoming” (Koro-Ljungberg & MacLure, 2013, p. 219), prompting them to continuously question its self-evidence.

4. All three authors of this article completed their PhDs at the same institution during which we took many of the same classes and had occasion to interact socially as well. Sarah was in writing and reading groups with both Jessica and Hilary.

5. We use object of knowledge to signal to a field of inquiry for research (e.g. a research topic, problem of the present, and on-the-ground project) and to refer to that which is often separated from the methods and methodologies that analyze, produce, and so on. We recognize the term object of knowledge, like all of the terms we use in research, is inadequate and problematic because it implies easy separations between objects (e.g. disciplines and phenomena) and subjects (e.g. researchers), specifically given the ontological turn in which scholars, like Barad (2007), foreground the connection between knowing and being. However, we use it here as a way to both talk about how philosophically informed inquiry might be put to work in the world and to reaffirm our commitment to cross-paradigmatic discussion.

6. Although we recognize the epistemological and ontological contradictions between poststructural and phenomenological theories, we also recognize that within each category there is much diversity. We use these terms for convenience and communicative ease, not to homogenize the work accomplished within them.

7. See Van Cleave and Bridges-Rhoads (2013), Bridges-Rhoads and Van Cleave (2014), and Hughes and Bridges-Rhoads (2013) for an extended description of how writing functioned in each of our studies.

8. See Derrida (1991) for a concise discussion of what deconstruction is not and see Caputo (1997) for discussions of deconstruction “in a nutshell.”