A Reflection on Post-Qualitative Research – A Methodology-in-Becoming
Conference Presentation Review by Alana Hoare, Thompson Rivers University
de Oliveira Jayme, B., Sanford, K., Manning-Lewis, T., & Farrell, A. (2024, June 15). Post-qualitative research: A methodology-in-becoming. Canadian Association for Social Justice Education (CASJE), Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE), Cégep du Vieux Montréal, Montréal, QC.
While at Congress in Montreal this year, I attended several research methods-oriented sessions as part of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE) annual conference. After two days of presentations and roundtable discussions, my heart and mind were heavy with talks of rigour, validity, large sample sizes, and data saturation. Presentations and subsequent Q&As felt like competitions between jargonophiles, rather than critical conversations about what it means to be a researcher in today’s world. I was craving more critical perspectives and opportunities to question how history and truth are constituted and presented.
On my last day of the conference, I attended a presentation that gave me cause for hope. Post-qualitative Research: A Methodology-in-Becoming, led by Bruno de Oliveira Jamye and joined by colleagues Kathy Sanford, Tanya Manning-Lewis, and Amy Farrell, offered a “Philosophical and methodological odyssey, challenging imperialist research methodologies” (Abstract).
Bruno de Oliveira Jayme began the presentation by telling a story about his early morning flight to Montréal earlier that week. While standing in line to buy coffee at the airport, he met a young girl who proudly pronounced: “I’m a princess” and “Going to my kingdom”.
Ever the researcher, de Oliveira Jayme asked the young girl: “How do you know that you are a princess?”
She replied, “I am wearing a princess dress.”
*Of course*
He then asked, “If I wore a princess dress, would I be a princess too?”
To which she replied, “No. You are too big.”
And so, it was settled. Only girls can pretend to be princesses, not grown men.
de Oliveira Jayme uses this story as an example of how art can be used as an accessible entry point to research. Here, the child used art (wearing a costume, acting for an audience) to share her understanding of gender roles in society.
Next, Kathy Sanford humbly introduced herself as new to post-qualitative research – an emergent paradigm that is yet to be fully defined – but admitted that it packages much of the angst that she experiences when attempting to borrow paradigms that often ignore, dismiss, or discredit Indigenous, decolonial, art-based, and eco-feminist perspectives. Post-qualitative scholars critique the notion that social sciences must be modeled off of the natural sciences, and advocate for the decentering of scientific methodologies that can constrain, limit, and “box” researchers into defined categories.
Rich with many posts- and -isms (post-colonialism, post-humanism, post-definitional), post-qualitative inquiry draws inspiration from Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction theory, Paulo Freire’s emancipatory pedagogy, and Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre and Patti Lather’s provocations and critiques of conventional educational research practices. It further pulls inspiration from Karen Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemology, which emphasizes the entanglement of ethics, ontology, and epistemology in research, and argues that knowing and being are inseparable.
Engaging in self-reflexivity
Kathy Sanford confirmed that post-qualitative research isn’t a methodology but rather a paradigm – a way of viewing research as messy and iterative, and allowing for the blending, braiding, and weaving of multiple methodologies and methods. She explained that there isn’t a textbook to follow. So don’t bother asking.
Post-qualitative research requires researchers to be self-reflexive. Feminist researchers have long been aware that self-reflexivity – the reflection upon and critical examination of the nature of the research process and researchers’ role in it – is important. Tanya Manning-Lewis teaches research to graduate students in education. She has morphed her classroom into a place of belonging, creating a “reflexive kitchen table” for a community of scholars to share food and critical conversations about what research is and who it’s for. Student researchers are encouraged to embrace uncertainty, complexity, and the unexpected in the research process. At the kitchen table the traditional teacher/student hierarchy is disrupted and Manning-Lewis humbly enters the space as a learner alongside the students.
Expanding what counts as ‘evidence’ and questioning who owns the ‘data’
From a post-qualitative perspective, evidence and data become sites of tension. What counts as evidence is often shaped by dominant paradigms and power structures, but post-qualitative researchers call for a more critical and reflexive approach to understanding and using evidence.
Tanya Manning-Lewis described her approach of using graphic novels to help Jamaican youth share their lived experiences. Through creative expression and narrative inquiry, the research process facilitated the “reconstruction of assumed knowledge” as the youth challenged how others viewed them and disrupted stereotypes. Using graphic novels as a medium for collecting, analyzing, and sharing data helped to break down the walls between researcher and researched. Research instead evolved into a process of becoming where the researcher worked alongside the participants, co-constructing ideas and co-learning.
Bruno de Oliveira Jayme uses art-based research in the creation of mosaics and invites hundreds of participants to contribute a small piece of art to a much larger tapestry in response to a question posed. de Oliveira Jayme argues that arts-based research can emerge as a powerful medium, transcending linguistic constraints. But, he wonders, what happens when data is placed on display in an art gallery or museum? Post-qualitative scholars, like de Oliveira Jayme, problematize normative assumptions of data ownership, including questioning who owns a piece of art created by 600 people.
Writing as inquiry
Post-qualitative scholars advocate for the idea of writing as a form of inquiry, where the process of writing itself is a method of thinking and discovering. This approach encourages researchers to see writing not just as a way of reporting findings but as a creative and critical process that can generate new insights.
Amy Farrell braids creative writing, storying, and sacred Anishinaabe stories to share the narratives of strong Indigenous women. Farrell answers her research questions through a matrix of characters, plots, and settings. Farrell’s work is deeply personal and, as the researcher, she is embedded within the writing (not separate from), contradicting normative assumptions of the researcher as neutral, objective, and disembodied.
Giving back to community
From a post-qualitative perspective, researchers focus on the impacts of their work on participants and communities, striving for research that is not only methodologically sound but also socially just. Ethical considerations become more expansive as research must have value for those being researched for it to be valid. Who owns the ‘data’ and how it is disseminated and used are also important ethical considerations.
Farrell described her use of participatory exhibition practices to invite community members to help make sense of her stories (‘data’) as an important part of the research process. In this way, participants have the opportunity for their authentic stories to emerge and have greater autonomy over how that story is told, which she refers to as “authentic storying”.
Significance for community and cultural mapping research
Important parallels can be drawn between the values that motivate post-qualitative thinkers and community and cultural mapping researchers. In particular, the use of participatory exhibitions, which has been a central practice of members of the Community and Cultural Mapping Research Group, for example, the Trades Mapping Showcase, PRIDE Exhibition, and EmpowerHer Public Art Exhibit, among so many others.
Cultural mapping, too, seeks to make lived and living experience visible, and to hold space through exhibition for individual voices, to celebrate what we might call “the wisdom of the vernacular”, as Will Garrett-Petts likes to say. Within these art spaces, the practical knowledge, insights, and common sense that emerge from everyday life and ordinary people are shared in communal spaces, decentering the academy, or rather reconfiguring what constitutes academic space and institutional knowledge.
Participatory exhibition practices emphasize the value of local knowledge systems and the importance of recognizing and respecting the insights that come from lived experiences and community-based understandings – a central tenet of post-qualitative research. Participatory exhibition suggests that there is significant value in the perspectives and knowledge held by people outside formal educational settings.
While I entered the session with a heavy mind and heart, I left feeling energized and inspired. The presentation and subsequent conversations were messy, provocative, and disruptive. The presenters invited us into a space that was rich with humanity and humility, openness, and many examples of alternative research paths for inquiry focused on social justice and research in service to community.
Alana
Alana Hoare, EdD Assistant Teaching Professor, Graduate Programs in Education Thompson Rivers University
