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The Luxury of Vulnerability: Reflexive Inquiry as Privileged Praxis

Decentering the Researcher in Intimate Scholarship

ISBN: 978-1-78754-636-3, eISBN: 978-1-78754-635-6

Publication date: 17 October 2018

Abstract

Since the publication of Schon’s (1984) landmark text The Reflective Practitioner, there has been a surge in research literature demonstrating reflection as an essential “best practice” for teachers. However, it often feels as if reflection is forced into our lives or we happen upon it at inopportune times, creating a contradiction of un/predictability – it is touted as crucial but afforded only particular spaces or purposes, while it sneaks into our lives at inappropriate times. From our perspective, this indicates underlying flawed modernist and humanist logics at work in conceptualizations of teacher and teachers’ work –we cannot plan on bodies in motion being predictable, and just because reflection seems located in the mind, does not mean the human is solely involved in reflection. The purpose of this chapter is to explore reflexivity as un/predictable in order to generate new possibilities and potential that are not bound by modernism’s penchant toward structure and humanism’s myopic self-awareness. Via co/autoethnography, we present individual narratives illustrating our relationships with reflexivity in various spaces of our lives. By using various types of mirrors (e.g., classic mirror, interrogation mirror, window as mirror, water as mirror) as analytical devices, we illustrate reflexivity as embodied processes that emerge un/predictably as we traverse various geotemporal–political locations and engage with other human, non-human and material bodies. By recasting reflexivity as dynamic and fluid, we raise possibilities for spontaneously incorporating reflexivity into teaching–learning and research, thereby untethering critical reflection from modernist and humanist logics that attempt to corral reflection into discrete activities and truncate its potential for transforming praxis.

Keywords

Citation

Kress, T.M. and Frazier-Booth, K.J. (2018), "The Luxury of Vulnerability: Reflexive Inquiry as Privileged Praxis", Decentering the Researcher in Intimate Scholarship (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 31), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 105-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720180000031009

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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