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Teaming up in collaborative ethnographic research

University of British Columbia

In this thesis I explore the relationships in a collaborative research team and how the team approach influenced research tasks and results. To do this analysis I draw from my experience as a team member in an ethnographic evaluation of two exemplary adult education programs. The research team's meeting tapes were used as the major source of data. Through an analysis of the audio taped conversations and discussions I reconstructed the collaborative relationships that were established in the research team. As a result of this analysis, I argue that collaboration i s not a given; research teams become more collaborative during the shared work. Collaboration is a vision, an ideal that guides the team in building relationships and working together. This ideal is influenced by contextual factors - purpose, settings, skills , time, and confidentiality. To describe the concept of collaboration in a concrete manner, I present a characterization of roles and responsibilities in the team and how those changed at different stages in the research. I conclude that doing team research is different from more traditional approaches to research. Basically, reflexivity - a constant and rigorous scrutiny of methodology, researcher, and context - changes when traditionally private spaces, such as fieldnotes, become public. Collaborative team building can be supported by 1)creating a space for each fieldworker to reflect privately; 2)regarding research team meetings as collective reflections where the team makes sense of the data; 3)making provisions to acknowledge team meetings as data by taping and transcribing the meetings, and connecting the transcripts to other sources of data; 4)creating structures that build on people's strength and trust in each other, and giving continuous feedback to researchers; and 5)evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of including liaison researchers, and making provisions for that inclusion (or exclusion). My main conclusion is that deciding to do collaborative team research is not simply doing research by existing methods with more people. It is a different methodology. Therefore, if one embarks on a team research project, one needs to acknowledge the peculiarities of the approach and take advantage of the benefits of a group working together, otherwise it is not collaborative, and it is not team research.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-01-14

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/3642

Administrative, Adult and Higher Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace