Explicating Positionality: A Journey of Dialogical and Reflexive Storytelling

Qualitative researchers must be aware of and explicit about their social background as well as political and ideological assumptions. To facilitate this awareness, we believe that researchers need to begin with their own story as they seek to understand the stories of others. Taking into account the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Qualitative Methods
Main Authors: Celina Carter MN, Jennifer L. Lapum PhD, Lynn F. Lavallée PhD, Lori Schindel Martin PhD
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691401300118
https://doaj.org/article/639a0bea19a04bd8b72725f585963b1c
Description
Summary:Qualitative researchers must be aware of and explicit about their social background as well as political and ideological assumptions. To facilitate this awareness, we believe that researchers need to begin with their own story as they seek to understand the stories of others. Taking into account the vulnerable act of storytelling, it is salient to consider how to share personal narratives in an authentic way within academic settings. In this article, we share our process and reflections of engaging in reflexive and dialogical storytelling. The focus of the article is the re-storying of one researcher's experience as she and her research team explore her emotions and positionality prior to conducting research on First Nations men's narratives of identity. We integrate a series of methodological lessons concerning reflexivity throughout the re-storying.