Intimacy in coming to know

OK, I admit that coding is not really my genre. I find it a useful process to perhaps get inside data (interviews, dialogue) for a while, then I need to escape into another way of thinking and being with the data. It is a very reductionistic process and I have to push myself through it, feeling like walking through mud, with my brain being squeezed when really it wants to run and shout. I want to get inside the person that is writing, to understand them, their paradigm, to see them as a whole human being, with living educational theories. How do these shape who they are, what they say and how they be with others? I want to engage all my levels of womens' ways of knowing!

I want to lie down and gaze at the top of the trees with the clouds moving past and let my mind wonder and dream. I find I move too soon into theorising, wondering why, imagining, seeing myself in conversation with the research participators. I put myself in the facilators shoes and ask "how might I do it different?" before I have been thorough with the data. I move into praxis. Yet, in unpacking what I would do and asking what informs that, it enables me to go deep into the patterns in the data which is resonating with my theories and wondering. I begin to have insight and I find dimensions that are outside the reductionistic story. I find new questions to ask.

I have come to very much admire Helen's process of iterative layers of coding, drawing essences, sleep time, reflecting, seeing patterns, reflecting, looking for interpretative frameworks. It is very thorough and is more likely to stand up as a legitimate research process of inquiry compared to mine which is suited to the action research, auto-ethnography and lived experience genres that I used in my thesis.

We have been talking about the differences in our approaches. She describes what she does as small steps with think time in between. It is not just about these steps providing rigor of procedure, whereas my approach seems more imaginal (and less rigorous) but it enables her to become intimate with the data - it actually suits her ways of coming to know.

So I have got out my Inquiry Map that I created for my physics class and have been reflecting on how Helen and I move around this map. There is a complementarity to our processes which come together in rich and interesting dialogue. I begin to realise that what might seem to be "scattered" and not grounded in evidenced research is actually a very important part of developing and choosing interpretive lenses. I am zooming around the inquiry map like a buzzing bee... it is me trying to get a sense of the inquiry "whole". As long as I visit each quadrant enough to develop a path of rigor.

Phenomenological methodology with Roy Pugh

How can we feed back a value-added understanding to teachers we are engaged with in action research? Roy talked about using "narrative evaluation" as a method - a process of deep listening with caring and then telling the story that the person would like to have expressed - using their words as much as possible. Humanising the story by putting them and their place in it. The person can then reflect on their stories and others to come to new understandings.

Her research paradigm is about exploring experience and the meaning of experience. The researcher is situated in the research and deliberately honours that place - the research ultimately is a journey of self-understanding as this self through their interpretive lens comes to understand their world. They are on a journey of uncovering the meaning of the other's stories, drawing from their own lenses, other philosophers perspectives and others lived experience stories. Each iteration helps to go deeper into the lived experience. It is a process of enriching with meaning and potential rather than drawing out "bared" threads and coming up with assertions.

She encourages writers to take an active voice rather than using a passive voice. Beware of nouns which imprison meaning in single words. Open these up with speculation... eg. what does this person mean when they talk about "quality of relationship"....