Barry et al.'s (1999) experience in collaborative reflextivity made me think of the way knowledge is distributed in communities of practice. Both Barry et al. and Lee and Gregory (2008) discuss the value that is brought to a research effort when teams participate in collaborative reflexivity. As Barry et al. (1999) discuss, this can be an uncomfortable process at first, but the result of healthy collaboration and feedback in this regard seems to be a deeper understanding of both the phenomena witnessed and the group's ultimate characterization of it.
I ended up rereading Anderson and Kanuka (2003) and their discussion of the e-researcher and literature reviews before I realized that that was not one of the assigned readings this week. However, that chapter brought out some interesting points that highlight the importance of the work by Barry et al. (1999) and Lee and Gregory (2008). In their 2003 article, Anderson and Kanuka are quite skeptical of the "e-researcher" and the use of the Net, discussing the Internet in language that seems foreign or ill-at-ease. But what this highlighted for me was that knowledge and expertise is everywhere - it is distributed amongst the tools and people on the research team, and finding ways to take advantage of all of these perspectives is important in ensuring a robust research process.
While Barry et al. (1999) do point out that multiple voices in a research article may hinder its purpose (p. 36), they also discuss collaborative reflexivity as another form of triangulation. In my first skill builder, I wrote about using Pinterest as a collaborative reflection tool, and cited many of the issues that both papers brought up. It is difficult to share one's impressions with others, as we are used to going through this process in a solitary manner, but doing so both gives individuals insights into one another and contributes to the groups understanding of the phenomena and their own (tacit) epistemological stances. In this way, collaborative reflexivity is indeed a way of triangulating the data - it allows the research team to conceptualize the different ways in which specific data or codes may be interpreted.
I really like this statement: "...knowledge and expertise is everywhere..."
ReplyDeleteThis is often what drives me to pursue collaborative work. I find that shared expertise and distributed knowledge adds a layer of understanding and complexity to a research project that would not be conceived otherwise. Indeed, collaborative analysis brings with it some challenges, but so does lone/solo research.