The idea of reflexivity emerges as an important legacy from the whiteness studies literature (Butryn, 2009, 2010; Riggs, 2004), though it has more generally developed out of the critical and interpretivist approaches of feminism (e.g., Deutsch, 2004; Ferrari, 2010; Wesely, 2006), as well as poststructuralism (e.g., McGannon & Johnson, 2009). At the crux of these works is the
recognition that research is a mutual journey taken by the researcher and the researched, wherein both parties influence and are changed by the research process and actively co-construct meaning through their interactions (Deutsch, 2004; Dupuis, 1999). Thus, the researcher is recognized as an acting, feeling, and thinking being, subjectively enmeshed in knowledge production processes rather than being viewed as an impartial subject, simply “discovering” knowledge. Reflexivity is elicited as an explicit and critical evaluation of the self, wherein researchers become aware of the
ways in which they operate from particular social, cultural, historical, and political standpoints that influence how they think about, research, and present people’s lives (Bott, 2010; Butryn, 2010; McGannon & Johnson, 2009; Schinke et al., 2012; Shaw, 2010; Sparkes, 2002).
As Dupuis (1999) proposed, locating our subjective selves through reflexive research processes is imperative if we are to present honest and comprehensive accounts of the lives we study, for our own stories and standpoints provide grounding for our understandings and therefore become entangled with the stories and standpoints of our participants (Shaw, 2010; Wesely, 2006). It was therefore necessary for me to become more aware of how my own subjectivities (e.g., my white racial identity, Euro-Canadian ethnicity, female gender, and educational positioning) were shaping the way I engaged in CSP and the stories I was telling through my research about the Aboriginal participants. Through a reflexive examination, the intent was to bring attention to the contested nature of culture and how it was working multi- directionally within the research process to shape meaning and knowledge between the
participants and myself. The underlying presupposition was that through this increased reflexive awareness I could work more collaboratively and supportively with the Aboriginal community members, becoming more conscious of the cultural power dynamics at play in our interactions and my role in eliciting or subverting the community members’ identities and knowledges. Moreover, it was presumed that my reflexivity would enable others (e.g., the readers of this dissertation) to assess the quality of the research through a more explicit awareness of the processes underpinning it.
Reflexivity raises questions such as “‘How do my identity and social position bring me to ask particular questions and interpret phenomena in particular ways?’ and ‘How do my own identity and social position privilege particular choices in the research process while also
marginalizing particular choices?’” (McGannon & Johnson, 2009, p. 59; Schinke et al., 2012). Through these considerations, the project was designed to highlight the webs of power that circulate in the research process and influence how the Aboriginal community members are ultimately researched and portrayed (Bott, 2010; Dupuis, 1999; McGannon & Johnson, 2009; Schinke et al., 2012; Sparkes, 2002). Many of the key issues of traditional sport psychology research became centralized – issues of who gets studied and who gets ignored, which questions get asked and which are left unexplored, whose voices are presented in research reports and whose are absent, who benefits from research and who is exploited, etc. Through a more overt awareness of these issues, the current initiative was geared towards challenging the degree to which power differentials are maintained in traditional research approaches, and facilitating more socially just and culturally supportive processes. These efforts would advance and enhance the research as a form of decolonizing CSP.
Reflexivity has only recently been espoused in sport psychology in a number of
contributions pertaining to CSP (McGannon & Johnson, 2009; Parham, 2011; Ryba & Schinke, 2009; Schinke et al., 2012) and reflective writing practices such as autoethnographies (Butryn, 2009; Knowles & Gilbourne, 2010; Sparkes, 2002) and confessional tales (Douglas & Carless, 2010; McGannon & Metz, 2009; Sparkes, 2002). In part, this may be due to the fact that being openly reflexive can be uncomfortable and even risky for researchers. For one, it goes against traditional “scientific” training and (post)positivist ideals regarding how research should be conducted and reported (Butryn, 2009; Dupuis, 1999; Sparkes, 2002). Researchers are often taught to assume a hierarchical relationship with their participants without considering it problematic or unjust, and are then taught to report their work in author-evacuated third-person accounts using accepted academic language and a scientific structure that depicts research as a
process that is objective, tidy, and linear. These standards are in stark contrast to the subjectivity brought forth through self-reflexive CSP processes wherein tensions, surprises, and new
understandings are continually being identified and (re)negotiated through the interchange amongst participants and researchers as they collaboratively construct meaning in a messy and dynamic context (Bott, 2010; Dupuis, 1999; Schinke et al., 2012).
The second risk of reflexivity for researchers is that personal disclosure makes us vulnerable and visible (Bott, 2010; Butryn, 2009; Ferrari, 2010; Johnson, 2009). As noted by Trussell (2010) and Johnson (2009), it is easier to expose the vulnerability of the lives we study than it is to expose our own. However, this vulnerability is at the crux of CSP as a critical position from which social change is driven forward. When researchers open themselves up through reflexive processes, they step out of a privileged position and become situated amongst those they are working with, where they are able to gain more honest insight into lived
experiences of marginalization and uncover possibilities for improving participants’ realities (Deutsch, 2004; Dupuis, 1999).
A third aspect related to the difficulty of reflexivity is that this process requires
continuous, intentional, and systematic introspection throughout each stage of the research rather than being a one-time awareness-raising activity or an afterthought in the writing process
(Doucet, 2008; Dupuis, 1999; Ferrari, 2010; Shaw, 2010). Even when researchers have the intent to be reflexive and locate themselves within their research processes, they can only be as
reflexive as the discourses or narratives available to them allow. Thus, researchers may discuss and write of reflexive processes without actually achieving significant reflexive awareness or deeper understandings. In regard to this point, researchers must be cautious not to flood research processes and texts with their own thoughts and subjectivities in ways that are self-indulgent and
subverting of the voices and thoughts of the participants (Doucet, 2008; Sparkes, 2002). The “how to” of engaging in reflexivity and faithfully presenting the voices and perspectives of marginalized participants as well as acknowledging those of the researcher can therefore be problematic. These actions have profound implications in terms of who’s story is being told, who is doing the speaking and when, and who benefits from the work (Sparkes, 2002). Some scholars have recommended that reflexive research incorporate a participatory approach in order to recognize the active, collaborative role that both the participants and researchers play in meaning making (Dupuis, 1999), as was done in the current research. As another strategy, scholars have suggested that the written products of research go beyond traditional (realist or scientific) narrative forms that promote the illusion of the disembodied researcher-author, and open up to less traditional forms of representation (Dupuis, 1999; Smith & Sparkes, 2009, 2010; Sparkes, 2002). Though some have urged academics to take ownership of their research contributions and acknowledge the interpretive nature of knowledge production by writing in the first person (e.g., Webb, 1992), it has more recently been suggested that it is not enough to simply incorporate the pronoun “I” into writings without including critical, meaningful self-disclosures (Dupuis, 1999).
To more deeply address these issues of reflexivity and representation, non-traditional narrative genres such as confessional tales (e.g., Douglas & Carless, 2010; McGannon & Metz, 2009), autoethnographies (e.g., Butryn, 2009; Denison, 1996; Purdy, Potrc, & Jones, 2008; Tsang, 2000), poetic representations (Carless & Douglas, 2009; Sparkes & Douglas, 2007; Sparkes, Nilges, Swan, & Dowling, 2003), and vignettes (e.g., Blodgett, Schinke, Peltier, Wabano, Fisher, Eys, et al., 2010; Blodgett, Schinke, Smith, Peltier, & Pheasant, 2011) have been gaining ground within qualitative sport research. In these texts, while the voices of the marginalized are the focal point, the researcher is explicitly situated as a storyteller who has the
ability to shape what people come to hold as truth regarding marginalized identities.
A narrative strategy was used to present the experiences of the Aboriginal athletes in the current project. In depth storytelling quotes were drawn from the participants’ interview
transcripts and used to share their accounts of relocation through their own voices and
worldviews. These contextual narratives helped to reduce the degree to which my own academic voice was interjected into the participants’ accounts, while still acknowledging that I was the academic storyteller within the larger dissertation document. Through this narrative effort, I was able to position myself as one culturally informed voice engaged in dialogue with multiple other culturally informed (and non-academic) voices. This helped to make overt the collaborative nature of knowledge production that is at the core of transformative research, or research-as- praxis (Freire, 2005; Lather, 1987). Moving one step beyond this narrative storytelling approach, the Aboriginal athletes’ mandala drawings were also engaged as visual stories. Presented in the community without any textual framing or academic analysis, these images helped to show the athletes’ relocation experiences through their own culturally bound perspectives. Finally, in an effort to balance out the participants’ storytelling with my own, I also wrote reflexively about my experiences, leanings, and challenges engaging in this research.