Una mirada a los modelos pedagógicos de la EDPJA

Qualitative studies provide for an “in-depth understanding of the issue under examination” (Liamputtong, 2012, p.14), allowing the researcher to select the

124 interpretive practices and empirical materials which offer the strongest means to

explore the research questions.The broad field of qualitative social inquiry is primarily concerned with “people, situations, events, and the processes that connect these” (Maxwell, 2013, p.29). A variety of methods and methodologies for gathering and interpreting the data are used by qualitative researchers. Denzin and Lincoln (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011)describe qualitative inquiry as:

… a situated activity that locates the observer in the world. Qualitative research consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices transform the world … qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (p.3)

Qualitative research is concerned with more than describing the world. Denzin and Lincolnclaim that qualitative researchers want to transform the world. Grace and Gandolfo (2013) suggest that good qualitative research has “the potential to bring about desirable social change” (p.85). Olesen (2011) argues that feminist qualitative researchers developed their research praxis as they raged at the injustice of excluding women as research subjects and as researchers. They prioritised the subjective, contextualised, and embodied nature of women’s lived experience as a source of new knowledge (Gunew, 1990; Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2007; Schumann, 2016). In this research, the lived and embodied experiences of the women research participants are presented to illustrate the particularity and diversity of women’s lived experience.

Context is central to qualitative inquiry. The dynamic environments of Neighbourhood Houses in Victoria provided the discursive, social, and locational context for this study. Qualitative inquiry focuses on lived experiences of people within the contexts in which

125 they participate and work, in order to gather, explore, and interpret the rich and

complex ways in which human experiences are created and given meaning through interactions within particular social, cultural, and historical discourses and practices (Butler-Kisber, 2010; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Liamputtong, 2012; Maxwell, 2013; Patton, 2015). Research which is contextualised provides the most reliable means for understanding the “viewpoints and behaviour of social actors” (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p.83). This makes qualitative inquiry a strong and relevant approach for exploring and describing how women participants and managers of Neighbourhood Houses subjectively experience, reinterpret, and make meaning of their world (Grace & Gandolfo, 2013; Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011).

The epistemology of this research is based on a feminist perspective of how knowledge and meaning is produced and what constitutes knowledge. This perspective recognises multiple knowledges and ways of knowing (Belenky et al., 1997; Grace & Gandolfo, 2013; Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2007). Early feminist researchers rejected positivist research methods in favour of epistemologies that challenge the notion of objectivity in knowledge production (Maynard, 1994). They troubled the concepts of the researcher as socially and politically neutral, and that the knowledge produced was objective and value-free (Schumann, 2016). In exposing the exclusionary, value-laden nature and sexist biases of positivist forms of knowledge production they challenged the

knowledge/power nexus in which men created knowledge, and therefore truth, according to their androcentric world views(Foucault, 1980; Gunew, 1990; Hesse- Biber & Leavy, 2011; Maynard, 1994; Maynard & Purvis, 2005).Theseknowledge paradigms discounted and ignored minority, local, and subjugated knowledges, denied epistemic authority to women, and excluded women’s experiences in research

(Anderson, 2010; Schumann, 2016). Feminist researchers have developed research approaches that move beyond positivist paradigms to incorporate:

126 … interpretation, subjectivity, emotion, and embodiment into the knowledge-building process, elements historically associated with women and excluded from

mainstream, positivist research … to illuminate potential new sources of knowledge and understanding precisely within the lived experiences, interpretations,

subjectivities, and emotions of women. (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011, p.13) (italics in original).

Early feminist epistemology was theorised as a singular standpoint based on the assumption of structural gender inequalities shared by all women. Feminists of colour interrogated these assumptions arguing for recognition of multiple and intersecting sources of oppression across class, culture, race, ethnicity, and gender (Brooks & Hesse-Biber Nagy, 2007). Poststructural feminist perspectives problematise the essentialism of the category woman, and the universalism of a “women’s perspective”

or set of experiences (Ackerley & True, 2010, p.466), and argue for “a plurality of feminist epistemologies” (Stanley & Wise, 1990, p.29), which are partial and contested and constructed within relations of power (Lather, 1991).

Contemporary feminist approaches decentre the notion of the subject as stable, a “knowing, rational, conscious, a priori, grammatical doer who exists ahead of the deed” (St. Pierre, 2016, p.103). They argue the importance of re-theorising and viewing the subject as constituted through multiple and contradictory discursive and material practices, and power/knowledge relations (Davies & Gannon, 2011; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Foucault, 1980). This fundamentally disrupts the Cartesian ontology of the constituting

subject who is “the center of knowledge building and the bearer of truth” (Leavy, 2007, p.96). Subjectivity is conceptualised as fluid, “the ongoing construction of human being, human being in flux, in process” (St. Pierre, 2016, p.109), subjects are becoming

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Feminist research

Contemporary feminist inquiry and scholarship is a broad, highly diverse and contested field, not limited to any one particular theoretical or methodological approach, or

concerned with any one aspect of the research process (Ackerley & True, 2010; Stanley & Wise, 1990). It acknowledges women’s subjective and embodied experience as a source of knowledge, and emphasises an approach to gathering data which is cognisant of and sensitive to the power relationship that exists between the researcher and the research participant. Liamputtong (2012) proposes that all aspects of feminist research intertwine with and affect each other.

Feminist research is distinguished by its political intent and “potential to bring about change in women’s lives” (Maynard, 1994, p.16). In exploring, highlighting, and documenting the nature of women’s lives, feminist research is a form of activism making an important contribution towards ending women’s inequality and making the world a more just place for women (Lather, 1991). Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2007) claim that, “By documenting women’s lives, experiences, and concerns, illuminating gender- based stereotypes and biases, and unearthing women’s subjugated knowledge, feminist research challenges the basic structures and ideologies that oppress women” (p.4). Contemporary feminist inquiry gives substantial recognition to the multiple and diverse ways in which gender intersects with other dimensions of power and inequality (Olesen, 2003; Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2002). Much feminist research begins with seeking women’s views and exploring women’s experiences in order to more fully understand the diversity of their experiences (Grace, 2002), and to redress the

marginalised and deviant status of women’s lives in research (Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2002).

128 This research explores women’s experiences in Neighbourhood Houses using a

poststructuralist research perspective to understand the nuances of power in their everyday lives. While use of the category women (Gunnarsson, 2011)has been questioned because it may imply an essentialised understanding of what the category means, it remains relevant to explore women’s experiences because a pervasive gender culture continues to shape women’s lives (Ford, 2017).The approach of this research recognises the multiple, diverse and fluid nature of women’s lived

experiences.