Fieldwork supervision: supporting ethical reflexivity to enhance research analysis

ABSTRACT

This is an inquiry into my experience as a doctoral researcher undertaking an action research/narrative inquiry project investigating the emotion experienced in teacher practice. From the outset, I recognized my position as an active participant of the research – a protagonist, a story-teller, a listener, a re-teller – and facilitator. This recognition prompted me to innovatively employ fieldwork supervision (FWS), in addition to my research supervision, to support a process of ethical reflexivity. Such reflexivity refers to an interrogation into personhood by making conscious cognitive and emotional aspects of oneself that compel feeling and action to influence future action. Data from my reflexive journal, interview transcripts and supervision meeting minutes detail a gendered dilemma, which demonstrates how layers of experience, and associated emotion, weave together and that understanding their connection can add depth to research analysis. I argue that the FWS relationship allowed the research to unfold in ways that it might not have otherwise by helping me to understand the power dynamics of the research relationships. In essence, the FWS relationship deepened the rigour and ethicality of this qualitative study by strengthening researcher reflexivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion
• dilemma
• fieldwork
• power
• reflexivity
• supervision
• teacher

Acknowledgement

I wish to acknowledge and thank my research supervisors Professor Pat Drake and Dr Gwen Gilmore for their considerable contribution to the doctoral research project featured in this article as well as Dr Sharlene Nipperess who acted as my fieldwork supervisor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.