A B S T R A C T This article suggests that the Pensieve -a magical instrument featured prominently in the Harry Potter books -is a useful metaphor for teaching qualitative researchers about reflexivity. Teaching naturalistic forms of inquiry poses many challenges. Drawing upon their experiences as teachers and students of qualitative research, the authors examine how a reflexive journal can serve as a much needed repository for a qualitative researcher's memories and reflections. The authors suggest that by documenting the researcher's perspective over time, the Pensieve can aid in the development of reflexivity by providing a space for metacognitive reflection on the research process, and creating an opportunity to engage others in the interpretation of data. K E Y W O R D S : epistemology, metaphor, reflexivity, researcher as instrument, teaching qualitative research
A R T I C L E 299Learning from Dumbledore's Pensieve: metaphor as an aid in teaching reflexivity in qualitative research 1
Exploring the experiences of African American students engaged in doctoral studies reveals disturbing realities. In this article, we use narrative inquiry to engage in a collaborative project between two White faculty members and three African American graduate students. Transgressive pedagogy provided a conceptual framework for both our initial study and our subsequent reflections on the need to create supportive networks for graduate students of color in the academy. In the project we conversed and reflected about how our understanding of race and status had an impact on our experiences in the academy. Our study contrasted student experiences in environments in which students expressed feeling like “casualties of war” with those in which they expressed feeling like valued colleagues. We found that unspoken assumptions about race and status often created a turbulent climate for the participating African American doctoral students and White faculty members who shared values of inclusivity.
Because most voters increasingly use the media as their primary source of information, their role in electoral politics is key to the functioning of a democracy. One of the top issues in the 2000 presidential election campaign was the candidates' views of educational issues. Using discourse analysis, the author examined how the media coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign operated as an arena of discourse. The author's analysis of the major television, newspaper, and radio coverage showed that the media, at best, represent shallow depictions of educational issues, which tend to be tightly controlled by how candidates define educational problems. These representations of education in the media tend to reinforce and reflect public assumptions that America 's educational system is failing. Only rarely did the major news media report educators 'concerns about how educational problems were being represented or the concerns of minority groups. By excluding alternative viewpoints, the author asserts that media (mis)representations hinder democracy.
In the wake of paradigmatic and methodological wars, a post-paradigmatic time of epistemological and theoretical diversity in educational research calls for rethinking graduate education. The authors argue for an engaged pedagogy, which represents a shift in emphasis from instrumental training in research methods to an approach in which students develop appreciation for complex possibilities. Through a pedagogy informed by Freire, Noddings, and hooks, the authors suggest that graduate students, valued as knowing subjects, may enrich their investigations of educational problems and questions with epistemologies and theoretical perspectives that value their individual identities and inform their "life-projects."
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