Collaborative research from a methodological point of view. Editorial introduction (original) (raw)
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Conference Essay: A Cultural Psychological Reflection on Collaborative Research
Forum Qualitative …, 2007
This essay reports on discussions that took place at a workshop on collaborative research in European cultural psychology. The production of knowledge in social interaction is, for sociocultural psychologists, something that is observed and theorised as it is undertaken by research participants. Researchers less frequently reflect on the social relations through which their own scientific knowledge is produced. The workshop focused on five empirical collaborative research projects and aimed to explore the intellectual significance of the social relations of collaboration. In the course of the workshop, we developed a cultural psychological conceptualisation of collaboration as an institutionally situated interaction between divergent perspectives with a (partially) shared goal. This perspective leads us to consider the value of divergent perspectives in instigating reflexivity and novelty. We present here a framework of dimensions for describing different forms of scientific collaboration which may be useful for researchers planning future collaborations.
(Un)doing collaboration: reflections on the practice of collaborative research
2013
Collaboration is often put forward as a programmatic ideal, or invoked as an antidote to conventional research methods in the humanities and social sciences. Collaboration also increasingly features in the lexicon of 'innovation ', 'interdisciplinarity', 'partnership', 'engagement' and 'impact' that accompanies the restructuring of Higher Education as well as the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge. But despite this turn to 'collaboration' and the set of tensions it generates, there has been comparatively little sustained attention to the actual practices of doing collaborative research. In this Working Paper, researchers from the CRESC Encounters Collaborative reflect on their experiences of collaborative research, offering a series of case studies that describe research with actors ranging from City Councils to a feminist community allotment, from Eurostat to intraacademic projects. Through these case studies we unpack the research process in ways that serve to disrupt conventional representations of research as a linear, sequential activity resulting in a set of knowable outputs. Rather we find that collaborative research often requires that the definition of research problems, methods or outputs be left open or remain undetermined, whilst at the same time posing questions about the authorship and ownership of knowledge production that are often otherwise foreclosed in conventional research. Furthermore, via an analysis of our research encounters, we find that the relationships that underpin collaborative research are often sustained through the production and exchange of particular kinds of 'gifts', which may be missed in contemporary regimes of 'impact'. In these ways, the accounts presented in this Paper throw into relief the artefactual character of representations of research that as academics we are often incited to construct. Yet, by paying attention to the mundane and opportunistic ways in which collaborative research often proceeds (or fails to proceed), the case studies also serve to complicate a reified opposition between conventional and collaborative research. Rather, we find that the distinctiveness of collaboration lies less in a deviation from some kind of imagined, non-collaborative research process, than in the way it forces a reflexive acknowledgment of the emergent quality of knowledge in research relationships across time and space. 1 The CRESC Encounters Collaborative is made up of current and former CRESC researchers: . Collaborative work also poses challenges for the conventions of authorship. To elaborate: This paper was inspired by conversations amongst this group since the summer of 2012. The introduction and conclusion were formulated by Hannah Knox, Niamh Moore and Mike Upton, and written primarily by Mike Upton. Case studies were provided by the researchers named at the beginning of each section. Further information about the work of the CRESC Encounters Collaborative can be found at www.cresc.ac.uk/our-research/cresc-encounterscollaborative.
Reflections on collaborative research: to what extent and on whose terms?
Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 2014
Collaborative research, for instance, emancipatory and participatory disability research, arose from critique against the lack of active disabled people's participation in research, which failed to emphasize their personal experiences. By referring to power positions in a qualitative sociological study with young women with an intellectual impairment, and inspired by collaborative research, I discuss the possible methodological and ethical dilemmas found in different research phases, and in relation to the participants. I argue that collaborative research can benefit from being problematized and discussed further regarding the categorization of disability, as well as participation.
This paper explores ethical and methodological implications of collaborative research, and we discuss our examination of ways to work towards participatory, ethical relationships in research. Our core concerns pertain to the experiential, lived and qualitative relations within emergent research communities. Questions that have guided us include: What does "we" mean in research practice? How do we become a community of researchers? What forms of relations are shaped in the continuous process of inquiry? Whose interests are served? How can a community of researchers and their participants, formed and sustained by reciprocal, ethical relations, of trust, shared knowledges, curiosity and friendship, emerge? Key to approaching these is examining the contingent epistemological goals of research. We discuss four essential elements in the ethical qualities of research as a community of practice that stand out for "us. http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1657
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2007
The aim of this paper is to analyse the sociocultural dynamics underlying collaborative research. The article is based on an international collaborative project on the everyday lives of working families in Italy, Sweden and the USA. The aim of this paper is to show that collaborative research does not necessarily produce collaboration: this is possible only with very strong rules between partners. It proposes a distinction between collaboration and cooperation, and uses this distinction to examine intergroup and intragroup joint activity. Through the analysis of the communicative exchanges occurring between researchers, the paper highlights conditions in which cooperation can become fruitful collaboration.
This article critically examines team and collaborative research as an 'academic mode of production'. Our main argument is that while theoretically qualitative social science research is rooted within a postfoundational epistemological paradigm, normative team-based research practices embody foundational principles.Team research relies on a division of labour that creates divisions and hierarchies of knowledge, particularly between researchers who gather embodied and contextual knowledge 'in the field' and those who produce textual knowledge 'in the office'. We argue that a theoretical commitment to a postfoundational epistemology demands that we translate this into concrete research practices that rely on concerted team-based relations rather than divisions of labour, and a reflexive research practice that strives to involve all team members in all aspects of knowledge construction processes.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2007
This special issue examines collaborative research from a methodological point of view. It considers the implications of the social processes of collaboration for the construction of scientific knowledge, in the interest, not of problematising the scientific process, but of drawing the process of collaboration into our methodological purview. Methodological scholarship has primarily been concerned with refining methodological techniques, such as questionnaires, interviews and experiments, without regard for the social conditions of knowledge construction—such as whether the research is individual or collaborative, the nature of the collaboration, or within which kind of social institution the research is carried out. We propose that the social practices through which research is conducted, the composition of the research team, the organisation of the team, and the social dynamics within the team should all be considered part of the methodology of scientific research.The need for a meth
2010
In 2009 the Faculty of Education at the University of Southern Queensland began an ambitious agenda to improve both the quality and the quantity of its research outcomes. It encouraged the establishment of small, informal research teams with some financial incentives to support a research agenda. In this chapter, three members of one such team consider their experiences of research collaboration in relation to collective mindfulness, a term that one of the researchers used during a focused conversation. The analysis articulates and then synthesises the authors" understandings and experiences of the term, which is posited as a useful theoretical and practical device for helping research teams to maximise their outcomes and at the same time to contribute positively to relevant social action.