“I Tell You, It’s a Journey, Isn’t It?” Understanding Collaborative Meaning Making in Qualitative Research

Abstract

While collaboration is common in qualitative inquiry, few studies examine the collaborative process in detail. In our study, we adopt an interpretive, reflexive stance to explore our process as a collaborative qualitative research team. We analyzed transcripts of eight research meetings for aspects and assumptions underlying our collaboration. Three overarching aspects of our process emerged from the analysis: position-taking, meaning making, and producing. We adopt a learning stance in our work together and make meaning through an iterative, dialogic process that foregrounds and backgrounds key elements of the research process. While some scholars have questioned whether truly collaborative research ever occurs among peers, we illustrate through our findings what such a process can look like.

The missing link in human security research: Dialogue and insecurity in Kosovo

“…This is an alternative reading of power and positionality. It stands in contrast to the notions of 'studying up' or 'studying down' (Schrijvers, 1991), that reflect power inequalities in the research process, or 'studying sideways', as a way of displacing or distributing power between the researcher and researched of the same or similar status (Plesner, 2011;Paulus et al, 2010). By contrast, a dialogue as a practice in researching human security presupposes the equality of the vulnerable and marginalized, providing them with opportunities to realize and exercise that equality through collaboration and reciprocity in knowledge production.…”

Understanding Informal Group Learning in Online Communities Through Discourse Analysis

“…To begin, we present informal learning as group conversation (Paulus, Woodside, & Ziegler, 2010;Wenger, 1998;Ziegler, Paulus, & Woodside, 2006). To begin, we present informal learning as group conversation (Paulus, Woodside, & Ziegler, 2010;Wenger, 1998;Ziegler, Paulus, & Woodside, 2006).…”

“…(Paulus et al, 2010;Ziegler et al, 2006), whereas in organization-sponsored online communities such as those found in formal learning environments, researchers seldom found discussions to go beyond noticing and reinterpreting (Rourke & Kanuka, 2007) to include theorizing or questioning the assumptions of others. We have noted numerous examples of members engaging in aspects of the group meaning-making process that go beyond noticing and reinterpreting into theorizing and questioning assumptions.…”

Collaborative Meaning-making in Arts-based Research: Data Interpretation with an Artist, a Physician, and an Art Historian

“…In the case of animation, for instance, the data ordering primarily took place through montage, which can be controlled by only one person at a time. The collaboration was thus not horizontal with peers (see Paulus, Woodside & Ziegler, 2010), but rather was asymmetrical due to my artistic strategies and medium. In my way of working the narrative typically emerges from the act of editing, not before it, being a result of an improvisatory feedback loop between me and the recorded materials within a computer (software).…”