4 INFORMACIÓN POST-EMISIÓN

I prepare to interview Tracy Henderson. Equipment is placed around the room. Microphones are checked and then re-checked. Two basketballs are laid out for her to sign. My stomach rolls ever so slightly. I recite my mantra: “Maybe she will call and cancel the interview,” only to respond to myself, “That is a stupid thought.” I am scared. There is a knock at the door and three women stand on the other side of the threshold: two white women—a tall blonde, a short brunette (who turns out to be an intern) —and a tall African American.

After a two-hour delay waiting to leave Cleveland, upon arriving at the hotel, they have come straight to our room, and the exhaustion is apparent on their faces. The media spokesperson, Amanda, is a tall blonde with broad shoulders and a long mane of light hair; within seconds I have mentally nicknamed her “Stressball.” Tension leaps and crackles from her. She is focused and views this interview and interaction with an air of suspicion. I wonder why- is she merely tired or is she concerned about Tracy, the team, me, or the topic of motherhood. Tracy, the interviewee, is African American, tall and epitomizes the slang term “thick.” She has large muscular thighs, and well-conditioned arms. She is pretty and well- dressed, clad in a light purple sweater that I vaguely and slightly hysterically wonder if it was from The Limited, and a long leather coat that give her a chic pulled together look. Tracy folds her tall body into an armchair and waits; it is like she is waiting for an axe to drop. I seat myself on the couch, which is perpendicular to Tracy, and turn my body so that I am facing Tracy and Amanda/Stressball is sitting next to me. Amanda and I are now sitting together, but Amanda is sitting on the edge of the couch and her posture allows her to see Tracy over my shoulder while remaining out of my line of sight. The intern has chosen a seat at the table across the room and is sitting quietly. She is just happy to be there.

I begin to realize that my project is about more than motherhood and professional athletics. I realize that this process will not be simple or written up easily, but rather it will be the product of a messy web of emotion, stress, articulation, and fear. Some would say, “Welcome to dissertation writing,” but I begin to feel the birthing of another part of me, one that is afraid of myself, the researcher, and “the biases of an ocular, visual epistemology” (Denzin, 2003, p. 7). I am now desperately aware of my own position in the interview process and the knowledge of how hard it will be to “unsettle the writer’s place (my place) in the text, freeing the text and the writer to become interaction productions” (Denzin, 2003, p. 182) is upon me…

C

In the recent book Cultural Sport Psychology (Schinke & Hanrahan, 2009) myself and Christina Johnson (2009) suggested that a key strength of researcher reflexivity for sport psychology lies in is its potential to explore power issues in the research process to further

empower disempowered cultures and communities. While in the current chapter we focused upon confessional tales grounded in post-modernism as but one way to begin to realize these goals. Such goals can be realized in all research paradigms when researchers maintain an openness to variation—variation of self, variation of culture, variation of experience of research participants, and the variation of how data are collected, written up, and ultimately (re)presented.

Through acknowledging their backgrounds (e.g., education, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality) and their fears and vulnerabilities researchers can become aware of the different ways their own self-related views and backgrounds influence the research process in socially and culturally specific ways (McGannon & Johnson, 2009). As we have tried to show with our confessional tales, one way that researchers may accomplish self-reflection is by using field notes and/or personal journals in conjunction with participant interview data to construct stories about their own personal experiences—good and bad-- in the research process. The use of confessional tales can also allow us to acknowledge that researcher identities influence access and gaining trust—which are also complex and multifaceted-- in the research field. Furthermore, by constructing confessional tales with a post-modern sensibility researchers can begin to attend to how their own backgrounds and associated identities are complex, layered, multifaceted and impacted by broader social, cultural and political realms within academia. Social, cultural and political influences position both researchers and participants to tell about, and relive, themselves and their experiences in specific ways at particular points in time in particular contexts. In turn, we are reminded that there are multiple ways to both experience and frame the knowledge(s) gleaned from our research; there are multiple truths and not one singular truth because knowledge is partial, local, historical, and fragmented (Richardson, 2000b). Finally, when confessional tales are constructed from a post-modern perspective the process and knowledge gained from such tails can be used to acknowledge the existence and value of viewpoints outside of the researcher’s (i.e., our own) to begin to attend to and unpack the complex power relationships in the research process. Acknowledging and unpacking power relationships is important and necessary if the goal is to find ways that empower marginalized identities and groups within sport and exercise contexts toward behavioral and social change that benefits their lives, and not just the lives of researchers.

R

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Editor: Robert Schinke ©2009 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 12

USING PSYCHOLOGICAL SKILLS TRAINING FROM