Foreword (Caroline Dyer), 9-10
Lore Arthur, Elizabeth McNess, Michael Crossley Positioning Insider–Outsider Research in the Contemporary Context, 11-20
Elizabeth McNess, Lore Arthur, Michael Crossley 'Ethnographic Dazzle' and the Construction of the 'Other': shifting boundaries between the insider and the outsider, 21-38
Anna Robinson-Pant Exploring the Concept of Insider' Outsider in Comparative and International Research: essentialising culture or culturally essential?, 39-55
Peter Kelly Constructing the Insider and Outsider in Comparative Research, 57-73
Nilou M. Hawthorne Beyond ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’ in Research for Education Policy-making? The Discursive Positioning of the Researcher in International and Comparative Education, 75-93
Claire Planel Mind the Gap: reflections on boundaries and positioning in research in international and comparative education, 95-112
Nicola Savvides, Joanna Al-Youssef, Mindy Colin, Cecilia Garrido Methodological Challenges: negotiation, critical reflection and the cultural other, 113-129
Lizzi O. Milligan Insider–Outsider–Inbetweener? Researcher Positioning, Participative Methods and Cross-cultural Educational Research, 131-143
Sughra Choudhry Khan Multiplicities of Insiderness and Outsiderness: enriching research perspectives in Pakistan, 145-165
Juliet McCaffery Outside Inside, Inside Out: challenges and complexities of research in Gypsy and Traveller communities, 167-184
Qing Gu (Re)constructing Identities beyond Boundaries: revisiting insider–outsider perspectives in research on international students, 185-205
Hania Salter-Dvorak Investigating Processes Underlying Identity Formation of Second Language Master’s Students in UK Higher Education: insiders or outsiders?, 207-224
Ed Wickins, Michael Crossley Coming Alongside in the Co-construction of Professional Knowledge: a fluid approach to researcher positioning on the insider–outsider continuum, 225-240
Maroussia Raveaud Sharing Insights: how culture constructs and constricts knowledge, 241-258
Notes on Contributors, 259-263
Foreword (Caroline Dyer)
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Positioning Insider–Outsider Research in the Contemporary Context
Lore Arthur, Elizabeth McNess, Michael Crossley
Introduction
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'Ethnographic Dazzle' and the Construction of the 'Other': shifting boundaries between the insider and the outsider
Elizabeth McNess, Lore Arthur, Michael Crossley
In this chapter we present some initial ideas on how the theoretical concepts of the ‘insider’ and the ‘outsider’ might be re-examined in an era where advances in comparative, qualitative research methodologies seek to be more inclusive, collaborative, participatory, reflexive and nuanced. Earlier essentialist definitions of the outsider as detached and objective, and the insider as culturally embedded and subjective, are re-examined and set within an international research and teaching context which recognises the increased migration of people, ideas and educational policies. We argue that, in the context of such change, it has become more difficult to categorise and label groups and individuals as being ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ systems, professional communities, or research environments. We recognise that individual and group identities can be multiple, flexible and changing such that the boundary between the inside and the outside is permeable, less stable and less easy to draw.
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Exploring the Concept of Insider' Outsider in Comparative and International Research: essentialising culture or culturally essential?
Anna Robinson-Pant
From the title of this book we gain a sense of the distance travelled since this idea was first introduced to the field of comparative and international education. The comparative method is implicit in the terms ‘outsider/insider’, and in the early days of comparative education there would have been no need to ask ‘inside and outside of what?’ Sadler’s seminal speech in 1900 provides the answer: ‘The practical value of studying ... the working of foreign systems of education is it will result in our being better fitted to study and to understand our own’ (Sadler, 1900). The binaries of us/ them, English and ‘foreign’ systems of education provided the basis for comparison, and the purpose was to learn and develop through this analytical process.
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Constructing the Insider and Outsider in Comparative Research
Peter Kelly
This chapter seeks to explore the power relations that help to construct ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ within research groups. It identifies three idealised collectives – emergent, established and exclusive – and discusses how each of these constructs the insider and outsider and the implications of this for comparative researchers.
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Beyond ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’ in Research for Education Policy-making? The Discursive Positioning of the Researcher in International and Comparative Education
Nilou M. Hawthorne
The aims of this chapter are twofold. In the first place, it uses a discursive perspective to revisit the insider/outsider binary, considers some its conceptual limits, and re-examines the features that are typically captured in the use of insider/outsider constructs. In the second place, it seeks to support the opening of discursive space for researchers to actively participate in the re-positioning of researcher subjectivities; and this is treated as an intrinsic aspect of the development of the international and comparative education research field. Both of these aims are grounded in the observation that education researchers are actors in the education systems which are the object or site of their research activity, and so are not immune from the processes and practices through which researcher roles, identities and subjectivities are being reformulated and reformed. The relative positioning of the researcher within the research activity, and how it may be changing due to the dynamic context in which contemporary education research takes place, is a current issue of concern for international and comparative education research (McNess et al, 2013). McNess et al also emphasise that the insider/outsider construct, as applied to ‘researchers and the researched’ in international and comparative education, requires a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between these two groupings and how individuals might situate themselves through insider conceptions. A critical approach to discourse analysis as presented in this chapter provides an analytical method for reconceptualising these relationships.
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Mind the Gap: reflections on boundaries and positioning in research in international and comparative education
Claire Planel
This chapter considers five research projects in which the author was a researcher who explored the embedded cultural values of several European countries. The studies are not representative of research in international and comparative education. The chapter is ‘reflective’, as the concept of the ‘third space’ is applied after the completion of the original research projects. The boundaries and meeting points between national cultures of education where national values met were explored by researchers with varied positioning, in different locations, methodologies, areas and stages of research. The parties involved were multinational researchers and, in limited cases, the participants themselves.
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Methodological Challenges: negotiation, critical reflection and the cultural other
Nicola Savvides, Joanna Al-Youssef, Mindy Colin, Cecilia Garrido
During every research journey the production of ethical and credible research depends on researchers reflecting critically and being transparent about the methodological issues and challenges they face, including how their background and position as insider or outsider might shape the generation and interpretation of data. In this chapter we consider influences that challenge traditional methodological dichotomies of insider/outsider and self/other (defined by characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, language and professional status) as we recognise the limitations of these dichotomies in considering both our own role as researchers and that of our participants.
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Insider–Outsider–Inbetweener? Researcher Positioning, Participative Methods and Cross-cultural Educational Research
Lizzi O. Milligan
Insider and outsider positionings have long been theorised in the social sciences, with their definitions differing over time and across disciplines. Steeped in the history of both anthropology and sociology, these perspectives are integral to the debates regarding what valid research is deemed to be. In the field of international and comparative education, a number of authors have recently sought to reconsider insiderness and outsiderness and argued against their fixed dichotomous entities (Arthur, 2010; Katyal & King, 2011; McNess et al, 2013). Arthur (2010) argues that a researcher’s identity can shift dependent on the situation, the status of a researcher as an insider or outsider responding to the social, political and cultural values of a given context or moment. While this recent attention has highlighted theoretical developments in thinking about insider–outsider perspectives, less focus has been paid to the methodological processes that contribute to such shifting positionings while conducting cross-cultural research. This chapter seeks to address this by reflecting on the researcher experience during one such qualitative study.
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Multiplicities of Insiderness and Outsiderness: enriching research perspectives in Pakistan
Sughra Choudhry Khan
In this chapter I reflect upon my doctoral research in which I explored the perceptions of ‘feeling valued’ held by primary school teachers working for an educational organisation in rural, mountainous northern Pakistan. I did this as a bicultural researcher who possessed multiplicities of ‘insidernesses’ and ‘outsidernesses’ related to the research context and my previous professional experience within the organisation. In considering the theory surrounding the concepts of ‘insiderness’ and ‘outsiderness’, I acknowledge that rather than using a dichotomy of being either an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’ we need to have a more detailed understanding of how various researcher positionalities interact, as well as of the possible continuum along which they might move and how they influence the research process. I draw on the deemed advantages and disadvantages of being an insider and an outsider by virtue of the numerous interrelating and interacting ‘status sets’ that I held.
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Outside Inside, Inside Out: challenges and complexities of research in Gypsy and Traveller communities
Juliet McCaffery
This chapter examines insider–outsider experience during research on literacy among Gypsies and Travellers. It outlines the theoretical concepts underlying the approach and the ethnographic and constructivist methodologies adopted. It reflects on the process of gaining access to a marginalised community. It describes Gypsy and Traveller multiple identities, their culture and history and their suspicion of researchers. It refers to the settled or mainstream community’s prejudice, lack of knowledge of Gypsies and Travellers and the ongoing tension between the two communities.
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(Re)constructing Identities beyond Boundaries: revisiting insider–outsider perspectives in research on international students
Qing Gu
This chapter discusses the nature of international students’ transnational experiences and their impact on the (re)construction of their identities within and beyond national and cultural boundaries. The discussion is located in the theoretical framework of transnationalism and explores in detail the ways in which the students negotiate meaning as an insider and outsider, both in the host country of their study and also on their return to work in their home countries.
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Investigating Processes Underlying Identity Formation of Second Language Master’s Students in UK Higher Education: insiders or outsiders?
Hania Salter-Dvorak
In this chapter I deploy the outsider/insider concept as a heuristic for investigating the processes underlying the identity formation of two second language master’s (MA) students on different courses in anglophone academia. To this end, I adopt Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical ‘frontstage, backstage’ metaphor as an analytical lens. Viewing each course as a ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991), in which practices, underpinned by discourses, reflect values and interests of participants, I present data extracted from a 13-month ethnographic study which focused on the experience of second language students in their social learning spaces both ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’. In line with Pavlenko and Blackledge’s (2004) poststructuralist view of identities, I apply a socio-historical perspective to examine how the participants’ experiences contribute to the formation of both insider and outsider identities during the course of their master’s programmes.
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Coming Alongside in the Co-construction of Professional Knowledge: a fluid approach to researcher positioning on the insider–outsider continuum
Ed Wickins, Michael Crossley
This chapter reflects upon how the methodological positioning of one researcher shifted during a study about head teacher leadership challenges in international schools in Hong Kong. Although the initial research position was one of the neutral ‘outsider’, when data were collected and organised, the researcher moved alongside the participants to facilitate the co-construction of professional knowledge. The conclusions reflected the insider view of the lead researcher, who is working in a similar head teacher leadership role and school context as the core research participants. However, collaboration with the second author generated engagement with the broader international and methodological literature and, in the light of this, we argue that the fluidity offered by what became an ‘alongsider’ approach better reflected the complexity of the research process and supported the emergence of more nuanced and effectively contextualised conclusions about educational leadership in this sector of education in Hong Kong. In concluding, key findings from the Hong Kong study are identified along with a consideration of the potential of the alongsider approach for other practitioner researchers working in related fields.
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Sharing Insights: how culture constructs and constricts knowledge
Maroussia Raveaud
While we are aware of having acquired certain beliefs, knowledge and practices that we can consciously examine, much of what we think and do is less readily available for introspection. This chapter explores how an encounter with otherness can trigger an elicitation of taken-for-granted assumptions. My particular focus is on teachers’ knowledge and practices, and on fostering awareness of their professional knowledge and practices as sociocultural constructions. To do so, findings from comparative education research were harnessed to generate a cross-cultural experience of outsiderness in order to foster practitioners’ reflectivity.
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Notes on Contributors
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