Shaping qualitative research: the significance of shape in collaborative inquiry and other circles

ABSTRACT

This article explores the use of the circle as a shape metaphor in qualitative and education research and particularly in research designs. Circles dominate the shape metaphors found in the literature and the paper argues that this is because circles have key features that align well with designing and conducting qualitative research. Circles represent non-hierarchical dialogic spaces with horizontal interaction. These are often safe spaces for sharing stories, experiences, emotions, information and support, communicating a sense of belonging to a community. The paper examines the structure and intent of sharing circles, talking circles, yarning circles, belonging circles, research circles, diary circles and collaborative inquiry circles in qualitative research, including the influence of concepts from indigenous methods. The authors reflect on their own experiences in using an online diary circle and collaborative inquiry circles and the circular aspects of the research supervision at the heart of their collaboration. The paper concludes that shape matters in conceptualising qualitative research as places of belonging and dialogue and that research training will benefit from understanding how circles suit particular kinds of people and particular kinds of qualitative research endeavour when seeking collaboration and equitable participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Research design
• collaborative inquiry circles
• sharing circles
• diary methods
• metaphor
• dialogue

Introduction: shapes in education and research

The design of qualitative research is shaped by the researcher(s). The design is a product of the research imagination as well as a product of the experiences, knowledge and ambitions of the researcher(s). In this paper we explore the various ways in which the process of shaping qualitative (education) research draws on the idea and qualities of the circle. We refer to the circle as a metaphor as metaphors are used to enhance understanding of one ‘kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003, 5). Metaphors allow us to bundle ideas together to communicate them in new, sometimes clearer and more manageable ways (Schmitt 2005). Metaphor has an established place among the tools that qualitative researchers use, often seen in analysing metaphors that are found or elicited or in communicating findings. The circle is a metaphor we have found, used, analysed and reflected upon in a process of gathering multiple interpretations and making new ones. The use of metaphor in the language of research design has rather eluded the focus of the methodological discussions around metaphor, which makes this paper novel. Moreover, our discussion of circles moves between the abstract, metaphorical and representational and on to more material manifestations in research.

Circles and cycles are popular in education work and theory more broadly, and the circle idea has been variously in the shadows or foreground of representing dialogue and fluent movement in particular. Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle for example provides a well-known cyclical explanation of learning through continuous reflection, dialogue, and action. Similarly, as Nagda et al. (2003) discuss, Freire’s dialogic learning illustrates how experience and action circle around each other during the learning process and in linking theory and practice. Another influential circle representation appears in the public sphere outlined by Habermas. Although the notion of the public sphere has been continuously redeveloped by Habermas and critiqued by many, this perspective connects with the idea of encircling or creating democratic dialogic spaces.

Circle representations recur in Brofenbrenner’s concentric circles in his ecological systems theory, widely applied in education research. According to Brofenbrenner (1979), the ecological system is represented by a nested structure of six concentric circles that have at their core the developing person. This is followed by the individual’s immediate environment, the microsystem, typically represented by home, school and work. Next, the mesosystem comprises the relationships between the individual and the microsystem followed by the exosystem, represented by employment, the extended family, friends, local governments, and mass media. This is followed by the macrosystem, comprising further instances where the individual is hardly present, such as political and economic systems and the social norms, but which affect individuals’ development. In the outer circle the chronosystem represents specific points in the lifetime of individuals who interact with these other levels at different periods. Following Brofenbrenner’s logic, we claim that the theories here outlined are present at different levels of the concentric circle. For example, Kolb’s experiential learning is nested at the core of the system with the individual’s own learning. Freire’s dialogic learning for social justice at school and work is nested at the microsystem. Habermas’ public sphere aimed at public democracy is nested both at the exosystem and the macrosystem depending on the issues being discussed, because as Fraser (2017) explains, the public sphere has transcended the national to take the global stage.

In more tangible terms, circles manifest in education with mentoring circles in higher education (Darwin and Palmer 2009) and Swedish study circles (Larsson 2001; Suda 2009), both valuing the co-productive, supportive nature of collaboration in groups or circles which have the dimensions of equal participation, horizontal relations, deliberations, knowledge that informs standpoints, recognition of diverse identities, internal democratic decision-making, and action to form society (Larsson 2001, 201). The circles combine the energies and experiences of the people within them during a participatory and inclusive process. The concept of learning circles (Ravensbergen and Vanderplaat 2010; Rowell et al. 2015) bridge these dimensions with research and social action agendas, the agendas that are of primary interest here.

Moving beyond a brief look at circle representations in education theory and research, our interest in writing this paper stems from a mix of research in the field, reading around circle and indigenous research methods, and a process of research supervision, together with our collaborative reflections on all of these. To be transparent about our positionality, Cristina and Melanie supervised the doctoral research of Sadhbh and we all focus on social justice in education in our work. Melanie is also a methodologist and Sadhbh’s research approach of collaborative inquiry circles has been the focus of prolonged reflection for us as colleagues. We return to this focus later in the paper when we demonstrate the metaphor of the circle in action in Melanie’s online diary circles amongst doctoral and early career researchers and Sadhbh’s collaborative enquiry circles amongst dyslexia specialists in HE. First, though, we briefly discuss the shape of the research relationship in doctoral supervision as this informs our argument that shape matters in education and qualitative research and that the circle has a distinctive place in the research imagination as we show in pertinent methodological literature.

A starting point for shaping research can be the induction of new researchers into the academic community where the relationships created during doctoral supervision are crucial. Supervisors have a central role (Halse 2011) as students depend on their expertise and support to accomplish their projects (Gunaskera, Liyanagamege and Fernando 2021). We look back on our development of this high-stakes relationship in the formation of the new researcher and recognize our shaping of a kind of supervision circle characterized by dialogue, collaboration, and collegiality. This contrasts with literature on doctoral supervision that depicts hard edges and linear steps (Bryant and Jaworski 2015; González-Ocampo and Castelló 2019) rather than more circular and fluid supervisory experiences. Halse (2011) shows increasing instrumentality and accountability policies across the university sector shaping doctoral supervision experience, and Macfarlane (2021) highlights the overt competition and performativity characterizing Western neo-liberal universities that might hamper meaningful relationships between supervisors and their doctoral students.

Although the metaphor of the circle scarcely appears across the literature on doctoral supervision, there are spatial references, such as Hemer (2012) advocating supervision in informal neutral spaces as a strategy to develop trust, mentoring and collaboration. There are also references to dialogic relationships of mutual enquiry between students and supervisors (Carter and Kumar 2017; Hickey and Forbes 2022) and to the use of storytelling in managing the supervisory relationship (Ta and Filipi 2020). Many researchers concur that what matters is doctoral researchers’ gradual formation of autonomy (Guerin and Green 2015; Henderson 2018) to become career-ready graduates (Carter and Kumar 2017). In terms of this paper, this means ready to shape future research designs. Our discussion of circles in research design is pertinent for new and experienced researchers alike.

Our own experience of supervisory meetings was characterized by working within an atmosphere of collaboration, collegiality, and continuous laughter in our meeting around a round table, literally and metaphorically. Following Freire’s dialogic learning, our lived experiences, relevant academic hegemonic language, and pastoral support were entwined not only to support the timely submission of Sadhbh’s thesis (see also Carter and Kumar 2017) but to assist her transformation into an independent researcher (Hemer 2012). To play with the circle idea, we closed the circle when Sadhbh completed her doctorate, and we now turn this into a spiral in co-authoring an academic paper together as her career develops.

Circles in research design: a review of the literature

In exploring the use of the circle as a shape metaphor in qualitative and education research and particularly in research design, our engagement with the literature began from intellectual curiosity. We were intrigued to find whether other researchers, like us, found the circle to be a useful way of framing educational and qualitative research. This exploratory review process used circle and cycle as keywords in searching social research methods journals, following trails looking for where circles were important in research and what they meant for researchers. The process involved a journey into some of the literature on indigenous methods as well as community-based research. Here we thematically synthesize our findings.

The circle as a metaphor for time and sequence

The cyclical nature of research dominates methodological thinking in a swathe of literature about (educational) action research. Sometimes represented visually as an eternal circle, the core concept in shaping this kind of research design is that we come back to where we began and start all over again. In contrast to the very linear logic and distinctive steps of much quantitative research, (social justice) action-oriented qualitative research is frequently designed to support flow aided by reflection. In action research based on the early work of Kemmis and MacTaggart (1981), this is typically flow from the plan of action to improve what is happening, to the action to implement the plan, through observation of the effects of the action, to reflection on these effects as a basis for subsequent cycles. The basic cycle of action research has been complexified into the image and design of the loop or spiral (McNiff 1997) and cycles within cycles which communicate the principle of improvement through iterative learning (List 2006).

Similarly, DeLuca, Bolden and Chan (2017, 4–5) describe how a cycle of inquiry approach in educational research enables non-hierarchical collaboration in.

an iterative process of (a) identifying an inquiry focus; (b) determining what knowledge and skills teachers need; (c) deepening professional knowledge and skills; (d) implementing changes in practice; (e) collecting and co-analyzing student data related to the inquiry focus; and (f) reflecting on learning and subsequently refining the inquiry focus.

The sequential element, of circling back round to the beginning is evident at the more micro level of method rather than methodology too. DeTurk and Foster (2008, 23), for example, celebrate the intersubjective nature of their interview dialogue, commenting, that even after cleaning up the transcript their ‘dialogue retains much of the circularity (e.g. we circle back to the theme of similarity and difference) … ’ indicating that this fluid shape to the research encounter is important.

In this time/sequence circle metaphor, the shape depicts the lack of distinction between stages, the seamless flow, and the blurring of the beginning and the end.

The circle as visual metaphor for inclusion

Bravington (2023) advocates for greater integration of the visual in interview methods such as the use of circles in graphic elicitation. Also evident in the literature is the use of the circle as a visual metaphor indicating what is within or without, or what is closer to the centre (as in the Brofenbrenner example above). Teachman and Gibson (2018), for example, used the visual metaphor of a circle in their graphic elicitation technique that (after McKeever et al. 2015) they termed Belonging Circles. They employed Belonging Circles for participants (youth with communication difficulties) to ‘indicate their sense of belonging or inclusion by selecting a location on a simple schematic diagram of three concentric circles’ (4). This typifies a recurrent idea in this paper that the circle represents a sense of inclusion and a mechanism for belonging. As well as circles within circles, we see circles divided into quadrants to depict both separateness and interconnectedness as in the indigenous methods described by (Lavallée 2009). In indigenous research the circle may represent not just belonging and inclusion but ‘infinite life’ (Lavallée 2009, 24).

The circle as safe container for non-hierarchical sharing/democratic dialogue

Most common is the research design metaphor whereby circles depict safe spaces for mutual sharing of information, emotions, experiences and stories in non-hierarchical interaction. This is particularly the case in Sistah circles which date back to the Black women’s club movement of the 1850s in the United States (Haynes et al. 2023). The Sistah circle acts as a safe supportive intersectional networking space for Black women. This idea of the safe supportive space is also seen in the indigenous methods of sharing circles, talking circles and yarning circles. In these, often the participants physically arrange themselves to sit in a circle. Lavallée (2009) compares the indigenous Sharing circle with the Western focus group, as both use a group discussion format to enable the sharing and capturing of people’s experiences within a non-hierarchical circle of engagement. Sharing circles, though, have distinctive inherent purposes of growth and transformation, even healing for the participants. This relates to the circles being acts of sharing heart, mind, body, and spirit. Yarning circles similarly engage people in a circle to elicit stories (Osmond and Phillips 2019; Atkinson, Baird and Adams 2021; Reiger et al. 2023) encompassing knowledge from the heart and mind. These circles have sacred meaning in many Indigenous cultures and generations old traditions. As Lavallée (2009, 29) describes them, in Sharing circles:

Energy is created in the circle by the spirit of the people involved. The circle is nonjudgmental, helpful, and supportive. Respect is important, and this includes listening to others. Sometimes people speak as they are seated in the circle, either going in a clockwise or counter clockwise direction and hold an object such as a talking stick or eagle feather. Circles begin with a smudging ceremony to rid the circle and people of negativity. Items may be placed in the centre of the circle, depending on the purpose.

In Sharing circles everyone, including the facilitator whatever their status in other contexts, is equal (Lavallée 2009). The sharing is emotional (Lavallée, 2009), the listening is respectfully attentive, and the circle seeks understandings and solutions that benefit the community (Rothe, Ozegovic and Carroll 2009; Hunt and Young 2021). The democratic dialogic features are complemented by ceremonial features which bring a rhythm to the event with opening (cleansing) and closing (thanking) rituals book-ending the open or turn-taking format of speaking or story-telling. Passing round a feather or talking stick can indicate the participant’s turn to speak without interruption (Rothe et al. 2009), time pressure, or hierarchy (Lavallée 2009; Hunt and Young 2021). They may then go round the circle again.

The potential of indigenous practices for research purposes is recognized as the methods literature shows. Following their similarities with focus groups, and their capacity to facilitate knowing, Sharing circles have been co-opted and adapted by qualitative researchers working with First Nation people. The research protocols seek to respect indigenous traditions and cultures as they enable people to express themselves, reflecting without interruption or questioning (Hunt and Young 2021). Waddell et al. (2020) and Waddell-Henowitch et al. (2022) introduce the idea of being outside the circle in research; they explain that in their research the circles happen without the Western research partners, ‘because consistent with cultural practices, in some situations, it is important for the Western partners to sit outside the circle rather than take space within the circle’ (Waddell-Henowitch et al. 2022, 4); they only participate when invited by the Indigenous leaders. This is different from Western democratic dialogue but still opposes hierarchy. In another adaptation, Brown (2023) discusses Photoyarn (from Rogers 2017), which brings together Photovoice and Yarning circles in open, free-flowing dialogue. The importance of the shape of the coming together in these research contexts is absorbed implicitly within other forms of focus group or discussion-based research with other populations. One example is Talking circles, used by Kingsley and Chapman (2013) to explore quality in community-based research. Another example is Learning circles, which Rowell et al. (2015) combine with the Delphi method in facilitating democratic, collaborative knowledge-building dialogue. Ravensbergen and Vanderplaat (2010) also use the term Learning circles to describe the ‘communicative space’ they created in an adult education context for developing new or counter-discourses in social action research.

It is Bennett et al. (2019) who engage more explicitly with the circle shape. In discussing photovoice-inspired Learning circles adapted from Sharing circles in their First Nation research, they refer to translation of the local language term as ‘looking or searching in a circular fashion’ (4). The circles incorporate the key elements of ceremonial opening, group sharing etc but these authors include data on the significance of the circle shape in which participants were seated. They cite one participant saying, ‘When you are in a circle you are not behind anybody or in front of anybody’ and an elder adding ‘Sitting in a circle is for equality for everyone’ (5). With the final learning circle enabling participants to reflect and conclude, the safe space to pass round photos and artefacts concept combines with our opening metaphor of coming back to where we began.

The idea of the circle as a container for non-hierarchical interaction/democratic dialogue does not just stem from indigenous cultures. Various research circles have been set up to support participation in democratic dialogue following the theoretical influences of Klafki’s (1997) critical constructive didactics, and the theories of Freire and Habermas. Månsson and Rubinstein Reich (2014) examine aspects of democracy derived from participation in two so-called Research circles built on traditional Swedish Study circles. They discuss the participatory and democratic ideas arising in those circles as they relate to perspectives on early childhood education. In a mixing of metaphors, the ‘research-like’ (Holmstrand and Härnsten 2003) circles were a means to bridge the worlds of researchers and practitioners, theory and practice, through egalitarian participation. Here circles, comprising student teachers, teachers and teacher educator/researchers who met monthly for one or two years, were structured to give each participant a chance in turn to contribute. The authors evaluate the participatory, inclusive, democratic nature of the circles, drawing attention to the importance of control of the agenda and duration of connection for their success, but not to the circle nature of the encounters. It is the potential the circle affords for democratic interaction that is critical to our argument, rather than the idea the circle is in itself democratic.

The Collaborative Inquiry Circle discussed by Broderick et al. (2012) (and returned to below) is underpinned by narrative inquiry traditions (e.g. Clandinin and Connelly 2000) in qualitative research, and a desire to ‘restory’ (828) and counter traditional disability narratives in education, bringing in the influences of disability studies in education and critical race theory. Again, the circle describes the safe space for non-hierarchical dialogue among the teacher educators and newly qualified teachers. The coming together in the circle provides mutual support and ‘the comfort of conversing with colleagues who share a similar lens, reminding ourselves of our common commitments’ (Broderick et al. 2012, 827) while challenging themselves and each other. Without dwelling on the circle itself, the authors show the sense of belonging and collective action that participants of an inquiry circle can feel. It is this Collaborative Inquiry Circle that most directly inspired the two versions of the circle in research that we developed and that we discuss next.

Circles in research design: our own shaping of research

Melanie: the diary circle

I had enjoyed decades of engagement with qualitative and education research methods when I started to design a package of research into research methods pedagogy in the social sciences. Appreciating that pedagogy can be elusive I wanted to bring in video stimulated recall, reflection and dialogue between teachers and learners to elicit knowing in action (Nind, Kilburn and Wiles 2015). I also appreciated the need to understand learning over time from the perspectives of learners, ideally through non-hierarchical dialogue. To support the goals of creating methods that teach and supporting pedagogic development (Nind and Lewthwaite 2018), the research needed to be designed to support learners not just to recall experiences for articulating self-reflection as in traditional diary methods (Bartlett and Milligan 2015) but to enable them to engage in mutual reflection and to learn from each other (Nind et al. 2020). Taking inspiration from the Collaborative Inquiry Circle described by Broderick et al. (2012), we adapted diary method into a bespoke methods learning online diary circle with linked focus group discussion, seeking to optimize the dialogic mutual support dimension.

The work of diary circle is already published. Nind et al. (2020) share the findings on student perspectives on their learning journeys including the emotional dimension and implications for teaching social research methods. That paper, however, does not focus methodological reflection on the circle dimension and here I focus anew on the circle in the research design. The participants (ten doctoral and early career researchers) met together in person first for a focus group in which, seated in circular fashion we introduced ourselves and our methods learning journey contexts in turn. This gathering enjoyed some of the features of the circles described above: space to talk and reflect, attentive listening, mutual support, sharing of emotion as well as experiences. It provided a safe space for participants to get a sense of each other as they went off for a year of sharing together their learning diary entries (78 in total) in an online password protected blog. By framing this as a diary circle we were stressing that the online platform was a virtual circle, safely containing their entries and interactions.

The desire for mutual benefit was realized with participants frequently engaging with each other’s posts ‘Thanks for this Sarah – I feel like you are living in my brain with this post!!’ (Nancy). Together participating methods learners circled round some discussion topics, most notably the metaphors for their own research with eight entries on the topic of being data harvesters or data hunters as they connected around the circle. The data include references to circling round and coming back to the beginning in their research planning and to keep coming back round to thoughts as if they were contained in the circle and swirling round:

I haven’t written in quite a while because I felt the need to get something pinned down with my methods before writing. Unfortunately my experience has been one of going around in circles. I guess this post really points towards learning that methods are driven by the research as much as the other way around. (Sean)

The participants thought of and referred to what they were engaged in as a circle, for example, ‘This is my first post in the circle’ (Nancy) and ‘in our circle we are all scribes!’ (Marlon). They also thought of it as a group discussion and thinking space: ‘looking forward to the dialogue between the MDC [methods diary circle] group’ (Wendy). The focus group meeting in person at the beginning and after a year was referred to, adopting a latent circle metaphor, as a ‘round table’.

There was some implicit (‘Your comment made me really think about it’) and explicit mention of the learning process of the circle:

I think we are all participating in the Diary Circle and I would welcome responses and posts from everyone. I have enjoyed reading people’s responses to posts, and think that it can really contribute to, and drive the collaborative learning process. (Emma)

Participants used each other’s metaphors to think aloud with. For example,

The metaphor of Cezanne’s tree and tree-ness captures case study perfectly. Spot on. I actually googled Cezanne’s paintings with trees and tried to find a link to big data while looking at them. … [I] tried to find some links between tree-ness and big data forest but failed. Then, three weeks later I … (Marlon)

And in the circle members explained to others so as to build understanding of a method or phenomenon. In charting their learning about methods they even reflected on the diary circle method itself, with Sean commenting that ‘it feels a bit weird writing a personal reflection knowing that other people will be reading it!’ and noting ‘I’m not sure I would be so candid in an interview’.

On the theme of the diary circle as a supportive space, my co-researcher and I had not anticipated how much care the circle members would take of each other. They respected each other by providing updates, answering posted questions and apologizing to and thanking others; they showed real desire to meet their obligations to the diary circle community. The virtual circle became a nurturing space and the data show that the members empathized, connected, advised, inquired, and listened. Moreover, the circle seemed to work in some interesting ways, including as a confessional (‘I sat there feeling very foolish’); as somewhere to support others with practical suggestions and empathy (‘when you are struggling post on here’); for advice sharing and reinforcing key ideas (‘I agree this is so important’); for comparing notes and experiences, highs and lows (‘the trip to London has inspired me to want to know more about diary methods’); for hypothesizing and checking out with others ‘I guess that has relevance to big data’; for asserting value positions, entering into a dialogue and provoking reflection (‘I’m really interested to know what you think’). Like Sharing circles and Talking circles, and even meeting mostly virtually and sporadically, the emotion in the circles could become quite intense. Here the circle members would use humour to reduce the intensity and in the data we find funny anecdotes and talk of cat adventures and chocolate eating. In this respect the circle really did act as a safe container.

Sadhbh: the collaborative inquiry circle

Our next example of the circle in research designs that support participants and their interaction and learning comes from my PhD research, which was on the transformative learning that occurs for dyslexia specialists in higher education when they engage with theories of social justice and critical pedagogy. Dyslexia specialists in UK universities are called Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) tutors and I have also worked as an SpLD tutor. We work with students who are neurodivergent but we are often quite marginalized in our university workplaces and rarely get the opportunity to engage with research. Furthermore, SpLD training courses do not engage with theories of social justice or critical pedagogy, a major omission for those of us who work with students who often experience injustice. I had been trained to incorporate visual imagery into my work with learners as an aid for interpretation and I wanted to find a research method that mirrored my research topic of introducing SpLD tutors to theories of inclusion and social justice.

My ‘aha’ moment of incorporating shape with my research occurred when my supervisors invited me to read about the Collaborative Inquiry Circles used by Broderick et al. (2012). Broderick et al. (2012) viewed the Collaborative Inquiry Circle as a way to ‘continue dialogue with colleagues who share similar experiences and challenges’ with a particular emphasis on ‘what it means for inclusive educators to teach for social justice […] to engage in socially just teacher preparation of inclusive education’ (827–828). They were responding to a lack of discourse on social justice or on conceptual frameworks of disability and inclusion in teacher training courses (in the USA though this would apply in the UK too). In particular, these educators felt strongly that teacher education tends to simply focus on the ‘tools’ needed for the classroom but not the theoretical tools needed to analyse and discuss the ideological systems that impact the classroom (Broderick et al. 2012).

I felt that Collaborative Inquiry Circles were a strong fit for my research, offering a way for SpLD tutors to work collaboratively on theories and to make use of an opportunity for open dialogue. I wanted to give SpLD tutors the opportunity to engage with the work of key theorists in this area and I was influenced too by Freire’s (1998) concept of the circle. His literary circles enabled participants to engage in dialogue and reflection. This process of dialogue and reflection leads to what Freire (1972) has famously described as ‘conscientization’, which can lead to a praxis of liberation. In the Collaborative Inquiry Circles we chose to study Freirean ideas of critical pedagogy and these ideas also formed part of my methodology. The research was strongly guided by Freire’s (1972, 53) view that ‘knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other’. This collaborative hopeful inquiry of theory was a crucial part in the rationale of providing otherwise missing opportunities to discuss theories of social justice or critical pedagogy in a safe, welcoming and inclusive space – a circle.

There is not much guidance on how to facilitate a Collaborative Inquiry Circle unlike the plethora of guidance on focus groups and interview methods. Therefore I turned to my prior knowledge for this – namely using mindfulness approaches (O'Dwyer 2015). Mindfulness draws on core concepts of Buddhism specifically developing an inquiring yet non-judgemental mind (Kabat-Zinn 2013). To facilitate a mindfulness circle you need to incorporate four main concepts: stewardship, homiletics, guidance and inquiry (McCown 2013). Stewardship is the sense of making everyone feel welcome while homiletics is the term for friendly conversation so that everyone feels at ease. The circle itself in mindfulness is ‘emblematic of the stewardship skill set. It defines the group. It has an outside, which defines the group, and an inside, which belongs to the group. The circle also suggests a meeting of equals’ (McCown et al. 2016, 5). The facilitator guides the circle so that people can engage in inquiry, an inquiry that is ‘shared work, which no one owns or controls’ (McCown 2013, 110–111). It is this sense of a meeting of equals, of sharing without control and ownership that resonated with me and fit with the idea of doing the research inclusively and collaboratively, so that it was not ‘owned’ by the researcher alone.

I worked with thirteen SpLD tutors in three different Collaborative Inquiry Circles each meeting three times over six months, with a final ‘coming together’ of all three circles at the end of the project. The circle members who I saw as co-inquirers were also offered the opportunity to meet again to work on analysing their contributions – four co-inquirers took part in the data analysis. We initially met face-to-face but subsequently met online due to COVID-19 restrictions. We sat in a circle in our face-to-face meetings. Each circle gathering was planned for one hour although the online sessions often went over this. Each was given a selection of materials from the work of Paulo Freire, Pierre Bourdieu, Henry Giroux, bell hooks and Amartya Sen in various formats (journal articles, blogs, slide shares, videos, accessible secondary sources and book chapters). I made these materials available on a password-protected shared drive to aid accessibility.

The aim of designing the research this way was that participants would be free to choose whatever they wished to read/view on a certain theme before the circle met. I did not want to dictate what we should engage with, rather I wished to offer a range of theories and materials to enable discussion. The idea was not to provide a full in-depth MSc-level course on social justice and critical pedagogy, rather to signpost the participants to theories which could then be discussed together.

An unexpected finding was that the discussions in our circles provided the nonlinear space and time to go ‘off the path’ and this was very helpful to those who were neurodivergent. Jane who is dyslexic shared an example of ideas ‘jumping around’ in her Collaborative Inquiry Circle which she likened to the ‘grasshopper concept’ of learning:

I think it just gives us some space to sort of jump about as well which you know, everybody here loves probably as much as I do, but I think some of us clearly don’t mind doing that. And I always think of that – from my teacher training days, my schoolteacher training days that Steve Chinn, who was a maths teacher – wrote brilliant books about maths and he’s got that dimension of grasshopper versus inchworm approach to solving problems. And there’s a lot of grasshopping going on here and I just feel so – it’s fun, and we do have to do a lot of inchworm stuff actually when we’re in our tutorial rooms with our students, and it’s just nice isn’t it? (Jane CIC2)

This ‘jumping around’ was also referred to by Ford who has ADHD and dyspraxia. She acknowledged that the Collaborative Inquiry Circles may have been hard to steer at times but that this jumping around was very beneficial:

It’s very difficult to reign us all in when we’re all barking all over the place, talking all over each other, swearing, going around in circles [all laugh], interrupting each other and then Catherine brings out this amazing pre-prepared perfect map of what she wants to say, and we’re just like ah, ah, ah. So, it was great to have that for me as a person who’s also a hexagon, well I’m not, I don’t know what I am, I’m an octahedron or whatever it is that just doesn’t even come anywhere near having a sign in a box. It was a very refreshing for me because I’ve had a very untraditional route […] And I felt Sadhbh that you did that really well, I didn’t know it was a circle or whatever, I just felt it was like a bit of a vent and the fact it had no rules and I don’t really like rules, and that’s the one I liked the most. (Ford CIC4)

This sense of ‘going around in circles’ and of the Collaborative Inquiry Circle as an elastic space that is beneficial to those of us who are neurodiverse was an unexpected outcome. It was something that I too appreciated as a dyspraxic person, noting in my research diary:

Some of the co-inquirers are people with ADHD and other SpLDs and they can get distracted by other topics. But I too have similar traits and I love the digressions. I have always found the digressions in a conversation to be the most intriguing. (Reflection 14)

The sense of the circle also resonated deeply with me when I came across a quote from a workshop on indigenous research that matched our sense of the digressions helping us understand more of the ‘story’, with the neurodivergent circle members particularly appreciating the lack of straight lines.

Stories go in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. It helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside and between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. Part of finding is getting lost, and when you are lost you start to open up and listen. (Tafoya 1995, 12)

Conclusion: interpreting the role of circles in qualitative research in education

In this paper we have explored how educationalists use circles to represent ideas and how qualitative researchers, including ourselves, use circles – metaphorically and literally – in designing research. Here we conclude that this can be a useful stimulus for other researchers, new or experienced. By interrogating a mix of what is written about circles in qualitative research, our own research in education and our supervisory experiences, the important features of circles become evident. Circles communicate the ways in which in research, as in other aspects of narrative practice, we come back to where we begin, perhaps wiser and having circled around ideas in the process. Our progress has movement and flow without straight lines, tick boxes and hard edges. The circle becomes a safe space – or route – for growth and transformation of understanding of self and others despite current institutional challenges and expectations.

If the research is designed to envelop participants or co-inquirers within a circle they may experience this as a safe space, a container for their talk and interaction. Here the circle can embody belonging, being with, being held. A circle though is not a box, the shape is softer and suited to fluid non-hierarchical dialogue with no one being at the top or bottom, in front or behind. In a circle you can circle round in turn, see and listen to each other, perhaps move to the centre or edge but remain encircled. Research circles work as spaces for sharing ideas, emotions, experiences and stories. Our own experiences underline this. Indigenous researchers appreciate the power of the circle in all of these respects and also appreciate that there is an energy to the respectful attending fostered in listening or sharing in a circle. We have experienced this energy.

We conclude that shape matters in how we think about achieving our research goals. The implication is that the process of training and inducting social researchers should include attention to the shape of research and invitations to reflect in circles and about circles. Research methods education is typified by active and experiential learning (Nind and Katramadou 2023) and it makes sense that researchers’ will develop their appreciation of the potential of the circle as a research device by experiencing the energy of the circle, as we have shown through our examples. We are not suggesting that every educational researcher uses circle-based designs, or that the use of circles automatically bestows the benefits we have discussed. We are arguing, though, that our exploration of the circle in shaping research has been useful to us and can be for others. This is particularly the case for researchers who share our desires that those taking part in research should have positive experiences of collaboration, belonging, growth and transformation via contributing, sharing and being listened to. We have circled around metaphors and lived experiences, words and action, theory and method and we contend that it is not by accident that the circle is used so often to represent particular kinds of qualitative research. However subtle or latent, the circle carries meaning that imbues the research and shapes the experience of those involved even during neoliberal times.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).