Editorial

Citation

Vicars, M. (2013), "Editorial", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/qrj.2013.60313baa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Qualitative Research Journal, Volume 13, Issue 2.

Presented in this issue are a selection of papers drawn from the 2012 Association of Qualitative Research/Discourse, Power and Resistance (DPR) conference. The first Australian DPR conference, in 2011, started with the objective of promoting innovative debate around ways of “doing” qualitative research. It sought to provide delegates with discursive opportunities to focus critical lenses on research methodologies to rethink how knowledge becomes constructed and represented and how qualitative research practices are increasingly situated and contested. Promoting provocative conversations around the possibilities for re-imagining the “proper” and “improper” ways of being in, and doing, academic work the theme of the second conference in 2012 was Embodying Good Research – What Counts and Who Decides. Scholars, practitioners and researchers from a range of fields and from across the globe, gathered together in Darwin, in the Northern Territories of Australia to rethink and reconsider the inherently political, critical and subversive nature of qualitative research. The papers in this issue, account for the diversity of fields represented and topics presented at the conference. Duckett et al. pose the question “what is good research?” from the perspective of critical researchers working in the discipline of psychology. Discussing what it means to be “good”, and what it means to be critical, the paper provides a context to understand critical research. Baldwin’s paper, an autoethnography located in the lived and diarised experiences of refereeing team sports in Australia and uses dialogue interwoven with field notes and descriptive accounts to narrate “passion” and show “personality”. Meera’s paper presents a Habermasian – critical theory approach to address and examine the role of ICT in developing marginalised women from southern India while Dilworth et al. use discourse analysis to critically examine clinical supervision sessions of health professionals situating the socially constructed reality of healthcare and adult learning. Irving, also draws on critical discourse analysis to uncover the dominant discursive formations that underlie the career education and guidance policy guidelines in New Zealand and to illustrate how these have been used to normalise ideological standpoints, shape “common-sense” thinking, construct the subjectivities of career advisers/teachers and delimit the scope of practice. Billany's paper, situated in the working lives of health care professionals proposes an innovative methodology in health research that blurs two methodological boundaries, of constructivist and interpretivist principles to investigate chiasmatic interpretative communities. The final paper is this issue by Potvin presents new understandings about the concepts of literacy and reflexivity, and draws on thick descriptions of phenomena which go against the grain of technical approaches currently privileged under neo-liberal education systems.

I hope this issue provides a thoughtful and stimulating read. The next AQR/DPR conference, scheduled for 2-5 November will be held in Melbourne, Australia. The theme of the conference this year is to explore the nature of qualitative work as it becomes increasingly shaped, examined and defined by ERA, PRBF and RAE/REF research assessment exercises. Keynote Speakers are: Professor Diane Reay, University of Cambridge, Professor Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Professor Roger Slee, Victoria University, Melbourne and Professor Shirley Brice, Stanford University. I look forward to welcoming you there.

Mark Vicars