Do We Do It?
When invited to write this piece, the editors asked us to provide a ‘how-to’ piece based on our experience. So, what is the process the students follow to do their research? Are there different steps? How do they begin? We could say it very simply. We start from a collaborative-dialogic stance (Anderson, 1997, 2009, 2013). In our case, the students have already a full year of introduction to different concepts and frameworks to facilitate psychotherapy practices. Among these are social construction and relational practices; reflecting process; the concepts of social poetics and spontaneous response (Shotter, 2008); the concepts of withness (Hoffman, 2007; Shotter, 2010) and radical presence (McNamee, 2015); and as part of a philosophical foundation, they have read Rorty, Bakhtin, and Wittgenstein. So they start from a position of knowing some things about dialogue and generative processes but also assuming a not-knowing position as described in the many writings of Harlene Anderson. It is also important to notice, that DSI is not methodologically but dialogically and contextually driven, as Janice DeFehr describes in her dissertation and other pieces of work (2008, 2009, 2017a, 2017b; DeFehr et al., 2012). In Kanankil, we are not pretending to talk about others, their contexts, and their texts, but with others, their contexts, and their texts.
Inquiry Process
We agree with Bodiford and Camargo-Borges (2014) when they propose that a piece of research needs some design. They, for example, ‘design research’ based on four different principles: (1) research as relational and collaborative; (2) research as useful and generative; (3) the organic and dynamic aspect of inquiry; (4) engaging in complexity and multiplicity. In the same way, using the collaborative-dialogic philosophical stance proposed by Harlene Anderson based on a ‘not knowing position’ (2009, 2012), we follow some guidelines when facilitating research processes at Kanankil. The steps described are, more than anything, moments that help us engage all participants in each step of the inquiry process.
Constructing the Research Question(s)
Inspired by Madelyn Blair's Essay in two voices (2011), we ask the students to choose a partner to accompany them in the construction of their inquiry question(s). The intention is to engage in a dialogue that will help them clarify their ideas.
They start by each of them writing 300 words based on a question/issue that intrigues them about their daily practice. They exchange these, and within a week, each one responds with a reflection on their partner's proposal of 150 words that helps to focus the main ideas. Each one reads the reflection on her/his ideas and narrows the field of inquiry to 75 words. They exchange these words, and now the partner reduces the main ideas to 30 words. After a week, they exchange again, and each person writes her/his inquiry question(s).
Inviting Co-researchers
Once the main inquiry question(s) gets defined, the student invites three participants who have some experience with the theme to participate in the process. We call these individuals co-researchers and conversational partners interchangeable; we also refer to the researcher as a facilitator of the inquiry process or the research. In this phase, students present their intentions to the other participants and together explore a series of issues that have to do with the ethical aspects of the relationship.
Relational Ethics
Sheila McNamee (2018, p. 364) refers to relational ethics as one that ‘centers attention not on individuals and their isolated actions but relational processes of engagement. In other words, a relational ethic focuses on what people do together and what their “doing” makes. Thus, there is – by necessity – a relative nature to ethics. I refer to this relational ethic as relational responsibility’. She expands to distinguish the difference between the traditional code of ethics and relational ethics.
The difference, however, is that rather than champion a dislocated code of ethics as the truth, our relational focus provides us with the resources for seeing a standardizing ethical code as coherent within a particular community (i.e., usually a specific professional community, such as the law, healthcare, mental health, education). Our challenge is to respect the professional code of ethics to which we are bound and simultaneously maintain respect and curiosity for the diverse and complex moral orders created in the lives of those with whom we work. Important to note here is that the potential for incommensurate lifeworlds is enormous. Furthermore, as each of us is immersed in multiple communities simultaneously, the potential for difference is expanded even further. Each of us embodies multiple and often contradictory and/or incommensurate moral orders. We live in language; this is what distinguishes us from other creatures. (p. 367)
Once the guests have agreed to participate, they decide, where and how the conversations will take place – in person, blogging, by skype/zoom conference; individually or in a group; the kind of agreements they would like to have during the process; what names will be used – the participants could opt to have their legal names or choose those by which they want to be identified; ‘ownership’ of the knowledge generated; the possibility of editing what was said and how was it said; the use of the information – just for the thesis or if an article could be written about it; the length of time that this inquiry will take; and any other item they deem it necessary to clarify.
These relational moments are the beginning of what McNamee and Hosking (2012) suggest is an inquiry, from a socio-constructionist and collaborative perspective, which can be described as a social practice resting on an action driven by the individuals working together. All these conversations are recorded and, preferably, videotaped.
The First Round of Conversations
Once the place and time of the first conversation are set, it takes place without a script or guide, but the participants follow the path that emerges as the conversations flow. Harlene Anderson (2014) explains this very clearly in the following paragraph:
Participants in collaborative-dialogue are always on the way to learning and understanding and being careful to not assume or fill in the meaning and information gaps. In other words, participants mutually ‘inquire into’ something that has relevance for them. This learning, understanding, and carefulness require responsiveness in which a listener (who is also a speaker) is fully attentive and present for the other person and their utterances, whether expressed orally or otherwise. This also requires being aware of, showing acknowledgment of, and taking seriously what the other person has said and the importance of it. … This aim to learn and understand does not refer to asking questions to gather or verify information, facts, or data. Questions, as is any utterance, instead are posed as part of the conversational-dialogical process: to learn and understand as best one can what the other person is expressing and hopes will be heard. It is a responsive, interactive process rather than a passive one of surmising and knowing the other and their words based on pre-understanding such as a theory, hypothesis, or experience dialogical social beings as suggested by Bakhtin (1986), Buber (1970) and Wittgenstein (1953) and by Shotter's interpretations and extensions of Bakhtin's and Wittgenstein's perspectives. (p. 68)
Cynthia, reflecting on her conversations, says, ‘… the way it evolved, much more open, much more focused on seeing what will happen’, Carolina added ‘… other voices came in, and these voices invited other voices. Once, in the middle of a conversation, a third person came into the room, and then the co-researchers [people with whom I was having the conversation] raised the opportunity to invite them because they were talking of disability that is not normally spoken … it transformed the conversation into what ended up being, the story of three different families’. They went on to describe how the conversations that emerged were utterly different from what could have imagined at the beginning. Kenneth Gergen (2014)
