Description
The symposium presents inquiries into methodological tensions in postqualitative research. Postqualitative research invites humans, matter and nonhumans into the scientific processes, pointing to non-linear and dynamic events shaping the study. Doing research from such positions of speculative middles suggests thinking and doing research differently, from inside events, never as objective outsiders, sometimes inventing new methods or reimagining traditional ones (Springgay & Truman, 2018). However, nurturing (in) tensions or frictions when doing research differently becomes important to envision new futures. Thus, the symposium opens up tensions or frictions as spaces of unlearning/reimagining in four studies involving humans and matter through engaging with diverse movements of research praxises, crafting powerful artifacts and attuning to the mundane of matter in postqualitative research.The symposium responds to current questions about the potentials and challenges of post-qualitative inquiry as openings towards immersive and embodied research practices to explore more-than-human and material agencies and dynamics. The methodological approaches discussed critically consider various concepts, ideas and practices of postqualitative research that offer inspiring, risky and uncomfortable encounters with human and more-than-human research members. Hilli and colleagues plug into literature's thing-power in teacher student’s learning diaries through a practice of painting with movement and consider how such an approach created further movements in the researchers’ collective thinking and moving with each other, learning diaries, theories and images. Jones and colleagues resist the notion of consensus when doing qualitative research together, and explore how a decolonial research praxis of walking-with can cultivate humility, vulnerability and unlearning in higher education. Clucas elaborates on crafting powerful artifacts in mutuality for participating humans and non-humans in STEAM learning spaces as possibilities to shift to relational ontological positions. Mehto focuses on tensions when attuning to agentic materiality and the mundane of materiality in students' learning-by-making projects to draw attention to how nonlinear interactions with materials provide the potential to foster learning with the world.
By turning the focus towards research practices and themselves as researchers, the presenters of this symposium consider practical consequences in teacher education and for re-imagining/developing pedagogical practices. The four studies grapple with various discordances, clashes, and unpredictabilities of post-qualitative research as challenging and enriching possibilities to create knowledge beyond human-centred perspectives. Each presentation is 15 minutes long, followed by a 10-minute discussion by the discussant. The symposium ends with a joint discussion with questions from the audience.
References:
Springgay, S., & Truman, S. E. (2018). On the Need for Methods Beyond Proceduralism: Speculative Middles, (In)Tensions, and Response-Ability in Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(3), 203-214. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417704464
| Period | 6 Mar 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | NERA 2025 Education for a better and just world |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Helsinki, FinlandShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |