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This chapter explores the potential of grounded theory research methods for eliciting threshold concepts. It begins with an overview of threshold concept theory, then reviews current methodological approaches, as well as challenges encountered, when researching threshold concepts. The discussion argues for the suitability of grounded theory for this purpose, using a specific case for illustration. Specific elements of the research design that strengthened the use of grounded theory in the exploration of threshold concepts are described. The case example used is of graduate students and practicing professionals’ learning experiences when acquiring expertise in the online environment. The case is used to demonstrate the grounded theory method’s efficacy for eliciting evidence of transformative learning experiences, leading to implications for improving curriculum design.

The domain of study on mediated suffering is ensconced within an Orientalist paradigm which ideologically structures our visuality and gaze. The consignment of suffering through bodies of alterity and the geo-politics of the Global South encodes the coloniality of power as a dominant reading. It then naturalizes the West as the voyeur in its consumption of the abject bodies of the Global South. Creating a binary through this East-West polarization in the oeuvre of suffering as a realm of study, it creates the hegemony of the West as the moral guardian of suffering, imbuing it with the right to accord pity and compassion to the lesser Other. Beyond elongating the Orientalist trajectory which lodged the body politic of the Global South as a sustained ideological site of suffering, it hermeneutically seals the East as irredeemable, ordaining it through the gaze over the Other as a mode of coloniality. In countering this Eurocentric proposition, this chapter contends that this coloniality of gaze needs further rumination and new sensibilities in the study of mediated suffering, particularly following 9/11 and the shifting of the geo-politics of suffering in which the West is dispossessed through its own manufactured ideologies of the ‘War on Terror’ such that it is under constant threat of terrorist attacks and through the movement of the displaced Other into the Global North. Besieged and entrapped through its own pathologies of risks and threats, the West is projected through its own victimhood and the politics of the Anthropocene within which risks are seemingly democratized by environmental degradation as an overarching threat for all of humanity. Despite these shifts in the global politics, the scholarship of suffering is locked into this polarity. The chapter interrogates this innate crisis within this field of scholarship.

To explore the intersecting dynamics of gender, ethnicity, age, safety, power and sexuality in two cases of qualitative research

Reflexive analysis of community participatory action research.

Being an ‘insider’ is a nuanced and complex identity in social research leading to power flows that are not unidirectional. In addition, not only is gender not the only difference that makes a difference, but it is also important to consider the importance of difference within ‘sameness’.

In considering intersecting identities, difference and sameness this chapter adds to the assertion that research is never ‘hygienic’ and the role of self and research participants are vital considerations at all stages from design to dissemination.

In this chapter, I address the issues in doing a feminist ethnography based on the archives of a lesbian feminist community structured around music. In doing so, I grapple with questions central to archival research with marginalized social movement communities. I pose these questions as moments of interrogation where I draw on personal experience as well as literature on archival research to create a framework aimed at social movement researchers who are considering or doing archival work. These interrogations cover three broad areas and apply to different moments in the research process. First, what are the origin stories of social movement archives? Second, how can researchers construct the stories of marginalized and vulnerable communities? Third, how can we access the voices of community members found in the archives? To answer these questions, I identify how conceptual tools such as identifying community boundaries and documenting types of interaction can aid a scholar in the research process.

The research on Black underachievement is well documented. But the explanations posited as causes for this failure are problematic. They are reductive and fail to explain adequately the reasons for Black children’s underperformance. The wealth of research into Black underachievement is not matched by research into Black achievement, and explanations for this are equally flawed, as are policies designed to curtail underperformance. I argue in this paper that underachievement is the product of social and cultural forces, and success is dependent on all concerned in the educational development of the child, including the child, overcoming those forces and accommodating each other in order to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success.