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Interpretive processes in collaborative research.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This paper provides a content analysis of published narratives about the experiences of educational researchers conducting interdisciplinary interpretive research in K-12 partnerships. A model of stages of the collaborative process is presented.

Introduction

Although models have been presented about factors that influence the effectiveness or sustainability of collaborative research teams, few studies provide in-depth analyses of collaborative research practices (John-Steiner, Weber, & Minnis, 1998). Little is known about how collaborators collectively accomplish the process of analysis and interpretation. Insight in to how collaborators achieve new insight offers a way to evaluate the outcomes of collaborative endeavors.

This paper provides a content analysis of published narratives about the experiences of educational researchers conducting interdisciplinary interpretive research in K-12 partnerships. The paper is organized by four steps in a model of the interpretive process I derived from my own research and integration of the accounts. My purpose in the analysis is to examine, when taken together, what the self-reflexive accounts reveal about the nature of the collaborative process. A key step in the collaborative process occurs when collaborators appropriate each other's skills and expertise (John-Steiner, 2000). In hierarchical relationships where one member is senior by virtue of expertise, the process of appropriation most often takes the form of a one-way transfer of knowledge. These are more likely to reproduce knowledge than to create it (Lunsford & Ede, 1990). The process of appropriation has greater potential to lead to new insight when it is occurs within the context of a co-equal relationship among collaborators who bring distinct areas of expertise.

Methodology

I conducted a content analysis of four self-reflexive accounts of interdisciplinary collaborative qualitative research projects published in mainstream journals addressed to an audience of teacher educators and educational researchers (Clark, et al., 1996; Eisenhart & Borko, 1991; Liggett, Glesne, Johnston, Hasazi, & Schattman, 1994; Wasser & Bresler, 1996). All are accounts of educational researchers working on funded projects in collaboration with K-12 teachers. When taken individually, a collaborative narrative can be dismissed as anecdotal. Comparing them in cross-case analyses is a way to enhance the external validity or generalizability of their findings.

I have done a considerable amount of primary research based on interviews with faculty about their experiences as collaborators. After discovering that a number of published accounts resonated with key themes arising in my own empirical research, I performed a form of confirmatory analysis by applying the coding scheme to the self-reflexive accounts I developed to analyze transcripts from interviews with long-term research collaborators. The candor of the accounts and the willingness of the authors to acknowledge tensions contribute to their credibility. The analysis uses triangulation to demonstrate the trustworthiness of...

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