Bricolage as a Method in Professional Practice (original) (raw)

Moving Beyond Templates: A Bricolage Approach to Conducting Trustworthy Qualitative Research

Organizational Research Methods, 2020

Although the rising popularity of methodological templates has yielded an increasing interest in qualitative research, we discuss how the misuse of methodological templates can diminish the quality of research. As an alternative, we propose methodological bricolage as an organizing metaphor for how to do qualitative methods, which involves the combining of analytic moves for the purpose of solving a problem or problems tailored to one’s own research project. To develop a methodological bricolage approach, we draw on our own research as well as a broader set of qualitative research articles to illustrate how authors arrange various methodological moves to create an effective arrangement that communicates trustworthiness. We outline the benefits of methodological bricolage and some cautions in using this approach.

Piecing Together—A Methodological Bricolage

Abstract: The use of narrative, reflective, and creative processes as interpretive tools has been considered by many critics to be naïvely humanistic and even romantically impulsive. This contribution challenges those views by putting performative research methods into practice—using the method to test the methodology. The meta-text, in which embedded texts (visual, audio-visual and literary) challenge, inform and enhance each other's meaning, has at its heart a digital mapping system that acts as a guiding link that provides alternative interpretive angles and mediating possibilities. The inclusion here of many kinds of text acknowledges that there are multiple ways in which human cognitive networks process information and make creative leaps. This contribution directly presents the case for multi-layered narrative inquiry as a paradigm of ethical activity. The researcher is seen here as a bricoleur, a maker of patchwork, a weaver of stories; one who assembles a theoretical montage through which meaning is constructed and conveyed according to a narrative ethic that is neither naïvely humanistic, nor romantically impulsive—but rather one that stimulates an inclusive and dynamic dialogue between the researcher and her audience.

Bricolage in Scientific Research Practice: An Attempt at Grasping the Meaning of the Concept

Kultura i Edukacja, 2020

The article presents the results of analyses aimed at capturing the significance of bricolage emerging from its uses in scientific research practice. The main point of my interest are scientific conceptualizations of the concept of bricolage relating to the practice of defining, characterizing and embedding its meaning in existing theoretical approaches. The empirical basis of the analysis is confined to a set of 47 scientific articles which contain the concept of bricolage in their titles, abstracts, and keywords. Collecting these articles involved searching through such bibliographic databases as Web of Science, Scopus, Wiley, and the Polish National Library Catalogue. The direction of the analysis was inductive and emergent, subordinated to such research issues as: 1. what meanings of bricolage emerge from its use in scientific research practice? 2. how researchers justify the possibility of using bricolage in the practice of social and humanistic research? 3. what theoretical concepts are responsible for creating its meaning? Answering these questions has led me to a reconstruction of three conceptions of bricolage: epistemological bricolage, methodological bricolage, and hybrid bricolage.

Constructing a bricolage of nursing research, education and practice

Nurse Education Today, 2009

Drawing upon post doctoral reflections of a shared methodology, the authors explore the use of bricolage as a way of better understanding the interrelated connections between theory, nursing practice and the felt experiences of service users. The origins of bricolage can be traced back to the work of Levi-Strauss, and Denzin and Lincoln's contribution to qualitative methodologies. Bricolage is a multifaceted approach to the research process. Differing epistemological positions and mixed methods of data collection are utilised to bring a richer understanding of human beings and the complexities of their lived experiences. For the bricoleur the object of inquiry, cannot be separated from its context, that is the language used to describe it, its historical situatedness and the social and cultural interpretations of its meaning as an entity in the world. The paper discusses the importance of being able to move beyond the notion of the research method being merely a procedure, to one that respects the complexities of the lived world.

Getting to Grips with Bricolage: A Personal Account

The Qualitative Report, 2012

""This paper presents a personal account of how a PhD supervisor came to an understanding of an approach to research that was unfamiliar to him. Additionally it addresses the question of what makes the approach, in this case bricolage, an acceptable format for academic work and in particular PhD study. Bricolage is a relatively little used approach to research; therefore, researchers utilizing bricolage as a research design have less exemplary texts to draw on in coming to their own understanding of this approach to research. This paper presents an account of getting to grips with bricolage as a way of undertaking research, of potential interest as an exemplar generally (and specifically in relation to bricolage) to supervisors, examiners and students alike. Key Words: Bricolage, Research Design, Doctoral Study.""

Creative Spaces for Qualitative Researching

2011

This series examines research, theory and practice in the context of university education, professional practice, work and society. Rather than focussing on a single topic the series examines areas where two or more of these arenas come together. Themes that will be explored in the series include: university education of professions, society expectations of professional practice, professional practice workplaces and strategies for investigating each of these areas. There are many challenges facing researchers, educators, practitioners and students in today's practice worlds. The authors in this series bring a wealth of practice wisdom and experience to examine these issues, share their practice knowledge, report research into strategies that address these challenges, share approaches to working and learning and raise yet more questions. The conversations conducted in the series will contribute to expanding the discourse around the way people encounter and experience practice, education, work and society.

Bricolage in Scientific Research Practice An Attempt at Grasping the Meaning of the Concept Kultura i Ed

Culture and Education, 2020

Praxis, Pedagogy and the Life of Being: Weaving with Bricolage in Self-Study

Textiles and Tapestries: Self- Study for Envisioning New Ways of Knowing, 2020

This self-study examines Carlos’s journey of shifting from Brazil as a qualified and experienced teacher to become a teacher in a primary school in New Zealand. Using bricolage (Rogers, 2012), the study weaves together the disparate threads involved in being from ‘somewhere else’ as he navigates language differences, curriculum differences, schooling differences, and cultural differences. This rich tapestry of experience is then examined using the concept of praxis to better understand the tensions that emerge between how he thinks about teaching (formed through biography, experience, and formal education) and how he enacts teaching (as it is constrained within schooling contexts). Praxis is a useful lens through which to understand teaching because it captures the dialectic process by which theory becomes enacted, embodied, and informed by practice (Freire, 1987). Rather than positioning such tensions as problematic, the study examines how the differences experienced can be generative for questioning how we reposition, reframe, and re-imagine possibilities for assembling praxis formed from the bricolage of our teaching past.

Landscapes of Practice: Bricolage as a Method for Situated Design

Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2001

This paper proposes a 'bricolage' approach to designing systems for cooperative work. This involves users, participatory designers and ethnographers in a continuing cycle of design and revised work practice, often in settings where resources are limited and short-term results are required. It exploits the flood to market of hardware, software and services. The approach is illustrated with results from a project with a practice of landscape architects. Their work is analysed in terms of communities of practice and actor networks. These perspectives help to identify the 'socialities' of people and of technologies and of the relationships between them. They help to distinguish different forms of cooperation with differing support needs, opportunities and vulnerabilities. They inform the design of technical support, the assessment of outcomes, and the design of further solutions, in a cycle of 'situated experimentation'.

Arts-Based Representation in Qualitative Research: Collage as a Contextualizing Analytic Strategy

1999

Memoing," the "theorizing write-up of ideas about codes and their relationships as they strike...the analyst's momentary ideation based on data...with conceptual elaboration" (B. Glaser, 1978), is an important analytic tobl used by qualitative researchers at all stages of the research process. The art form of collage is described as a contextualizing strategy in qualitative research that emulates memoing. In this paper an artist/graduate student and a teacher/researcher show how they embarked on a project to use collage as a contextualizing strategy, and the graduate student illustrates the process by examining her work in four collages done during a small research project on the creative decisions of artists. The four collages and accompanying commentary demonstrate how the ambiguity and multidimensionality of the collage medium set up conducive conditions for this analytic strategy. The collage process helps suspend linear thinking and allow elusive qualities of feelings and experiences to be addressed tangibly. The collages are attached. (Contains 30 references.) (SLD)

Bricolage as a Method in Professional Practice (original) (raw)

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