Abstract
Researchers’ positionality shapes the research facilitation and data analysis. This chapter illustrates the multiple positionalities of the two authors in a study of an informal multicultural teacher education programme. This positionality is central to the interpretation of visual data—short videos produced by a group of pre-service teachers. Embedded in such interpretive processes are the authors’ own ethnic identities and their perceptions of participants’ ethnicity. The reflexivity in these processes offers a nuanced understanding of how researchers actively, but implicitly, construct cultural lines of differences by the classification of English names and usage of pronouns between them and their participants. The interweaving of positionalities resulted in a methodological perspective-taking that underlies culturally sensitive research facilitation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Ethics approval was obtained from The Education University of Hong Kong (Reference No.: A2020-2021-0413).
References
Banks, J.A. 1998. The lives and values of researchers: Implications for educating citizens in a multicultural society. Educational Researcher 27 (7): 4–17.
Benson, M., and K. O’Reilly. 2022. Reflexive practice in live sociology: Lessons from researching Brexit in the lives of British citizens living in the EU-27. Qualitative Research 22 (2): 177–193. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120977795.
Bilgen, A., A. Nasir, and J. Schöneberg. 2021. Why positionalities matter: Reflections on power, hierarchy, and knowledges in “development” research. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement 42 (4): 519–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2021.1871593.
Booth, M.Z., J.M. Gerard, G.M. Deom, and C.J. Frey. 2022. Deconstructing adolescent ethnicity: A longitudinal analysis of ethnic-racial identity development and self-categorization. Journal of Adolescence 94: 366–379. https://doi.org/10.1002/jad.12028.
Burkholder, C., and J. Gube. 2018. Exploring racial identities through participatory visual and ethnographic methods: (Re)presenting the identities of ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong. Visual Studies 33 (3): 219–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2018.1527187.
Census and Statistics Department. 2022. 2021 population census. https://www.census2021.gov.hk/doc/pub/21c-summary-results.pdf.
Committee on Professional Development of Teachers and Principals. 2015. Professional standards for teachers and principals of Hong Kong. https://cotap.hk/images/T-standard/T-standard-Booklet.pdf.
Cornell, S., and D. Hartmann. 1998. Ethnicity and race: Making identities in a changing world. California: Pine Forge Press.
Delamont, S. 2020. Sociology of education. In Handbook of qualitative research in education, ed. M.R.M. Ward and S. Delamont. Glos: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Delamont, S., and P. Atkinson. 1995. Fighting familiarity: Essays on education and ethnography. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.
Equal Opportunities Commission. 2019. Closing the gap: Report of the working group on education for ethnic minorities. https://www.eoc.org.hk/s/ClosingtheGap/Closing_the_Gap_Report.pdf.
Finlay, L. 2002a. Negotiating the swamp: The opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in research practice. Qualitative Research 2 (2): 209–230.
———. 2002b. “Outing” the researcher: The provenance, process, and practice of reflexivity. Qualitative Health Research 12 (4): 531–545. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973202129120052.
Fleming, K. 2019. Who is “diverse”?: (In)tolerance, education, and race in Hong Kong. In Education, ethnicity and equity in the multilingual Asian context, ed. J. Gube and F. Gao, 89–103. Singapore: Springer.
Gay, G. 2018. Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. 3rd ed. New York: Teachers College Press.
Gube, J. 2016. Musings yesterday and knowledge tomorrow: Beyond reflexive accounts of research encounters. In What’s next in educational research? ed. N. Fitzallen, F. Fan, and J. Wells, 11–20. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Han, Y., and J. Chen. 2019. “We were not at school today”: First-person pronouns and discursive construction of identities by emerging middle-class Chinese parents. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics 42 (3): 285–306. https://doi.org/10.1515/CJAL-2019-0018.
Harris, B., R.D. Ravert, and A.L. Sullivan. 2017. Adolescent racial identity: Self-identification of multiple and “other” race/ethnicities. Urban Education 52 (6): 775–794. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915574527.
Kapinga, L., R. Huizinga, and R. Shaker. 2022. Reflexivity through positionality meetings: Religion, Muslims and ‘non-religious’ researchers. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 25 (1): 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2020.1853876.
Kassan, A., S. Nutter, A.R. Green, N. Arthur, S. Russell-Mayhew, and M. Sesma-Vasquez. 2020. Capturing the shadow and light of researcher positionality: A picture-prompted poly-ethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 19: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920977325.
Oxfam Hong Kong, K.Y. Loh, and O.Y. Hung. 2020. A study on the challenges faced by mainstream schools in educating ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. https://www.eoc.org.hk/eoc/upload/ResearchReport/researchreport_20200115_e.pdf.
Lamont, M. 2000. The rhetorics of racism and anti-racism in France and the United States. In Rethinking comparative cultural sociology: Repertoires of evaluation in France and the United States, ed. M. Lamont and L. Thevenot, 25–55. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, K.-M., and L.-Y. Law. 2016. Hong Kong Chinese “orientalism”: Discourse reflections on studying ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. In Ethnic minorities: Perceptions, cultural barriers and health inequalities, ed. A. Pratt. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated.
McHugh, M.C. 2020. Feminist qualitative research: Working toward transforming science and social justice. In The Oxford handbook of qualitative research, ed. P. Leavy, 200–242. New York: Oxford University Press.
McLeod, J., and L. Yates. 2003. Who is ‘us’? Students negotiating discourses of racism and national identification in Australia. Race Ethnicity and Education 6 (1): 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332022000044576.
Milner, H.R. 2007. Race, culture, and researcher positionality: Working through dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen. Educational Researcher 36 (7): 388–400. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X07309471.
Phinney, J.S., and A.D. Ong. 2007. Conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity: Current status and future directions. Journal of Counseling Psychology 54 (3): 271–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.54.3.271.
Reich, J.A. 2021. Power, positionality, and the ethic of care in qualitative research. Qualitative Sociology 44: 575–581. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-021-09500-4.
Skinner, D., J. Valsiner, and D. Holland. 2001. Discerning the dialogical self: A theoretical and methodological examination of a Nepali adolescent’s narrative. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 2 (3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-2.3.913.
Skukauskaite, A., I.Y. Trout, and K.A. Robinson. 2022. Deepening reflexivity through art in learning qualitative research. Qualitative Research 22 (3): 403–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120985676.
Takacs, D. 2003. How does your positionality bias your epistemology? Thought & Action 19: 27–38.
Tengelin, E., E. Dahlborg, I. Berndtsson, and P.H. Bülow. 2020. From political correctness to reflexivity: A norm-critical perspective on nursing education. Nursing Inquiry 27 (3): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12344.
Trafimow, D. 2014. Considering quantitative and qualitative issues together. Qualitative Research in Psychology 11: 15–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2012.743202.
Williams, D.D., and R. Kimmons. 2022. Qualitative rigor: How do I conduct qualitative research in a rigorous manner? In Education research: Across multiple paradigms, ed. R. Kimmons. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/education_research/qualitative_rigor.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chau, E.Y.M., Gube, J. (2023). Researcher Positionality: Reflexivity, Ethnic Identities, and Cultural Lines of Difference in Multicultural Research. In: Burkholder, C., Schwab-Cartas, J., Aladejebi, F. (eds) Facilitating Visual Socialities. Social Visualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-25258-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-25259-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)